world series champions

Growing up I never paid much attention to baseball. Baseball was Jack Brickhouse doing the play by play of Cubs games on tv Sunday afternoonst while dad slept on the couch covered by parts of the Sunday newspaper. If we dared to change the station we were invariably told loudly, "I was watching that." I never found the late 1960's Cubs to be all that entertaining. Later when I had a paper route and had some money I chose to spend some of it on football cards rather than the baseball variety.

I didn't begin paying attention to baseball until we spent the summer of 1979 in Philadelphia and then moved there in the summer of 1980. The Phillies won their first World Series in franchise history that fall so it was easy to get swept up in the excitement. With Mike Schmidt at 3rd, Larry Bowa at short, Garry Maddox, plus Steve Carleton pitching it was fun team to watch even on our little black and white television. Sometimes it was even better to listen to the games on the radio and hear the banter between Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn.

Later when we bought our run down rowhouse I spent a lot of evenings hanging sheetrock and painting while listening to Phillies games. In spite of the work it wasn't a bad way to spend an evening. We also went to numerous games during our ten years in the city. Generally I would go with some guys from church after the services were over. We would bring cooked hot dogs in a large thermos, one guy insisted on bringing some big stogies, and we were all set to go. Usually we just bought tickets for the cheap seats and relaxed from high on the third base side so we could see into the Phillies dugout.

The best seats I ever had was when a friend, Bruce, had friends who had friends with access to tickets owned by a radio station. It was the second or third game of the season, it was cold, and nobody wanted them so Bruce and I went. We sat at ground level just beyond first base. I learned quickly it was important to pay attention especially to foul balls.

I figured I should at least mention the Phillies won the World Series last week for the first time since 1980. It was a rather pleasant diversion from all the presidential politics which had taken a decidely negative turn over the last couple of weeks. It brought back good memories of the ten years we lived in Philadelphia. Plus with all the Cardinal fans who live around here who seem to feel entitled to a championship every couple of years, and this year all the Cubs fans who for some reason seemed to believe "this was the year," it was fun to ask, "how about those Phillies?"