As shared last month, I recently had a chance to check out Jayson Stark’s new book “Worth the Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies.”
As a Yankees fan, it was interesting to see how a championship run is experienced in a baseball town outside of Yankeeland – especially in another baseball-crazy place. (And, in my opinion, the baseball fans in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago are in a class by themselves in terms of how they live and die with their teams.)
However, the situation in Philly was different than New York. Prior to their 2008 ring, it had been 28 years since the Phillies won a World Series. In fact, it had been a quarter-century since any team in Philadelphia won a championship. And, of the 13 metropolian areas in America with teams in all four major sports, none of them had a championship drought within eight years of the twenty five they were waiting in Philadelphia.
Obviosuly, you can see why Stark went with the title “Worth the Wait.”
With his work, Stark provides some background on the 2008 Phillies and how their mindset was forged during Spring Training. But, he also highlights the five moments from 2008 that defined the Phillies season. And, most of all, he brings you through every post-season game that the Phillies played last season as well as covering the off-days between those games.
I found “Worth the Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies” to be an entertaining and informative read – and recommend it to any baseball fan. The book provides great insight to what happens to a baseball team, its fans, and the city as a whole when they finally win a ring – after a long, long, time.
For me, again, as a Yankees fan, one section of the book that I found very interesting was from Stark’s coverage of the Phillies Spring Training camp and how the team’s mental approach had changed from prior seasons. Here’s a snip of that:
“I had always known it takes hard work and dedication.” [Phillies pitcher Brett] Myers said. “But what it really takes is a team.”
We know there are still people on this planet who believe chemistry in baseball is a hoax, a myth, a slice of fiction perpetrated by the media knuckleheads who don’t know any better. But we wish those people luck trying to convince this group of that.
Not so long ago, as [Phillies manager] Charlie Manuel said, the men who wore the Phillies uniform were preoccupied with their own numbers, their own paychecks, their own rationales for never quite getting it right.
Now, said [Phillies shortstop Jimmy] Rollins, these guys are “more focused on we need to get it right. Not you get it right, and you get right, and you get right. We’re going to get right, We’re going to be right… Now it doesn’t matter who gets it done. We don’t care about who the hero is.”
Back when Bobby Abreu was the Phillies’ centerpiece player, Rollins can recall being sent to the plate to “get on base for Bobby.” Now that he’s a centerpiece player, hitting in front of bats like Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, he heads for the plate in the same kinds of situations, with the mindset that somebody will make it happen.
“Before,” Rollins said, “it was like ‘Let’s try to get Bobby up there and we’ll have a chance.’ Now I have the confidence that if I don’t get it done, somebody will get it done behind me. Now we have a team.”
“This excerpt from Worth the Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies is printed with the permission of Triumph Books.”
Food for thought there, at least to me, for the Yankees and their fans. Especially this part:
…[players] preoccupied with their own numbers, their own paychecks, their own rationales for never quite getting it right…
Sound like anyone on the Yankees that we know?
