Will the real Philadelphia Phillies please stand up? This may sound facetious, but I'm not sure from one day to the next which team will show up.
After dropping the Houston series two weeks ago, things looked grim. After taking two of three from the Florida Marlins and three of four from the Atlanta Braves, the club apparently left word around the National League's Eastern Division that it wasn't going to roll over and play dead during the stretch run. Taking two of three from the Marlins in Florida was something that I never expected, particularly since one of those games was against Cy Young candidate Dontrelle Willis.
When the Phillies scored 10 runs in the ninth inning to take Saturday's game against Willis, it put an interesting thought into my head. So many unlikely things can happen in this game that it is indeed possible that the Phillies can pull it off. Although I didn't like their chances, based on a number of factors, I won't be terribly surprised if they get to the playoffs. If the 1964 team could lose a 6 1/2-game lead with 12 games left to play, why can't these Phillies catch lightning in a bottle and take either the wild-card spot or the division crown?
Some readers have reminded me that I seemed to be somewhat pessimistic during the season. I can only assure everyone that my thinking was based on history and the analysis of information. I didn't think the team could win with Charlie Manuel at the helm, and I thought that it would be extremely difficult to recover from the losses of slugger Jim Thome and pitcher Randy Wolf.
In a recent e-mail, Ed Dolan shared my opinion that if the Phils made the playoffs, it would be in spite of Manuel. Here's the downside to this, Ed: I was of the opinion that to save face, the team would have an excuse to replace Manuel and still keep him on the payroll as Thome's personal hitting coach if the Phillies flopped down the stretch. If Philadelphia does clinch a playoff spot, how can the manager be fired? I think we're in a Catch-22 situation here, which is why I think the club should have made a managerial change three months ago.
Since this column will go on hiatus soon, this is my last chance to address an issue that has once again come to the forefront now that Barry Bonds is playing and hitting home runs. I have been fielding questions about this issue since the congressional hearings earlier this year and again when Rafael Palmeiro was suspended after a positive drug test for illegal substances.
Baseball is a game of numbers, and nothing is more sacred than the home run figures posted by the immortals that most of us have only read about. Babe Ruth was larger-than-life in legend, and he hit 714 homers with the aid of nothing but enormous amounts of food, liquor and tobacco.
Ruth was challenged and eclipsed by great players that I saw only at the end of their careers when they were shadows of themselves. Nevertheless, if Willie Mays or Hank Aaron had any vices, I'm not aware of them.
Of course, I did grow up in this city watching Mike Schmidt poke many of his 548 dingers at Veterans Stadium, and he did so with the burden of an extremely testy relationship with Phillies fans who didn't seem to appreciate him.
Nobody questions their home runs, but the same can't be said for Bonds, Palmeiro, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. We all enjoyed the home run race between McGwire and Sosa in 1998. Now that a cloud has passed over their achievements, it has lost its luster in my mind.
For a comparison, let's look at the 1961 New York Yankees. It was before my time, but most of us have read that Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle engaged in a similar battle for home run supremacy that season. I imagine the excitement was similar to what we experienced in 1998. And while Maris was a clean-living, Midwestern farm boy, Mantle, like Ruth, spent much of his time away from the park carousing in the bars and nightclubs.
Those numbers are special, so I say yes. Any player whose homers are suspect because it has been proven that they used performance-enhancing substances should have an asterisk in the books. Let's see if Palmeiro or McGwire could hit as many home runs while eating like a glutton, drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney. Babe Ruth did.
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