Tag Archive for Phillies

Opening Day Picks and Poetry

March 31, 2011 popular culture, serenity 2 comments

April’s still chilled air
Is the perfect medium
For a hanging curve

Opening Day of baseball season always inspires thoughts of happiness, warmth, and new beginnings. Anything is possible! The sun is shining! The closer is on the disabled list (gulp!)

My Phillies are looking a little less unstoppable than they were at the start of spring training. Brad Lidge — the aforementioned closer — is on the aforementioned DL. Both the veteran rock of the infield — Chase Utley — and the future phenon of the outfield — Dominic Brown — are also out indefinitely with injuries before the season even starts. Even so, the thought of a clean slate combined with the scent of popcorn and spring is enough to warm even a crappy, snowy, Rochester day.

I’m going out on a limb, but for the record, here are my picks for the how the season will end up. Check back in 162 games to see how wildly off-base I am.

AL EAST: NY Yankees
AL CENTRAL: Detroit Tigers
AL WEST: Texas Rangers
AL WILD CARD: Boston Red Sox

NL EAST: Phillies
NL CENTRAL: St. Louis Cardinals
NL WEST: San Diego Padres
NL WILD CARD: Cincinnati Reds

AL WORLD SERIES TEAM: Boston
NL WORLD SERIES TEAM: Phillies

WORLD SERIES: PHILLIES!

Rest in Peace, Harry the K

April 13, 2009 popular culture No comments

Harry Kalas“Swing and a long drive … watch … this … baby! … OUTTA HERE!” 

Harry Kalas started calling Philadelphia Phillies’ games in 1971, the year that I was born. Today he died in the broadcast booth, a couple hours before the game against the Washington Nationals. 

Back in the days before cable TV, most home games weren’t televised. (OK, if that first sentence didn’t make me old, that last one did.) I grew up listening to games on the radio. I still do today, only now the radio travels over the Internet as opposed to the literal airwaves. 

Kalas had a way — especially clear on the radio — of speaking more slowly and deliberately the more exciting the action got on the field. He was a low-key guy who was a master of building drama. 

Everyone over the age of nine in Philadelphia can do an impression of Harry Kalas. And everyone from age nine to 99 will miss The Voice. 

 

Harry Kalas leads the crowd in singing High Hopes, a Phillies and Kalas tradition.

–lori

What Does Winning Feel Like?

October 29, 2008 serenity 3 comments

phillies celebrateWinning feels like a cherry coke made with real syrup.

Winning feels like pots and pans banged together in the cold autumn night.

Winning feels like a thousand whistles going off all at once.

Winning feels like the helicopter rides your dad would give you before you got too big.

Winning feels like that photo on the right looks like.

Winning feels like — finally — not losing.

As a fourth-grader in 1980,  I lay on my living room floor wearing my yellow footie pajamas and clapping my feet together over my head in joy as Tug McGraw struck out Willie Wilson to win the World Series for Philadelphia.

Twenty-eight years later, I’m sitting alone in my attic in Rochester: not ideal viewing conditions, I grant you. I am not in Philadelphia. I am not sitting in a suburban sports bar surrounded by rabid fans, jumping up and down, screaming, cheering. I actually gave up my tickets for a Henry Rollins concert tonight so that I could be here, watching on TV from 350 miles away. 

I worried that if we actually did win tonight, it would somehow feel anti-climactic. But with one out and one on in the top of the ninth, I started feeling that feeling. That feeling that feels like winning. My stomach wouldn’t stay in its designated spot, and instead started jumping up and down inside my rib cage. My legs and feet were tingling, like they wanted to go somewhere. And when Brad Lidge struck out Erik Hinske, falling to his knees where McGraw had leaped in the air, it was deja vu all over again.  

Tonight I am 36 and, sadly, do not own a pair of footie pajamas. But I’m so happy, the only thing I can think to do is clap my feet together over my head.  

–lori

It Ain’t Over Till … It Ain’t Over

October 28, 2008 popular culture One comment

The World Series entered some kind of weather-induced limbo last night, just as my Phils were on the verge of possibly, maybe, hopefully winning the city’s first major sports championship in 25 years.

Watching the game on the big screen at the Distillery sports bar here in Rochester, I couldn’t help recalling that old feeling from November 2000, when a nation went to bed not knowing who had won the presidential election or even if  it had been won at all. Let us hope this hanging chad of a baseball game is not an ominous portent of next Tuesday night. 

By the way, the Distillery has more than 30 televisions. Guess how many were tuned to baseball. THREE!! Really, Distillery? Really? Given the choice between Monday Night Football and the possible concluding game of THE WORLD SERIES, you go with the Colts at the Titans? Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what this country is coming to.

–lori