A Small Request for Phillies Playoff Berth

Baseball runs for a long, long season. I can only imagine how emotionally draining it must be to be a player and have to fight for 162 games during the year. And without a doubt making the playoffs is an amazing accomplishment since only 8 teams in the entire league get there. Fortunately, the Phillies should very well be one of those 8 teams this year. We'll find out tonight (hopefully) or tomorrow if they're in.

My one small request for the Phillies clinching the playoffs is... after you clinch a playoff berth adhere to this quote:

"Act like you've been there before."

That quote applies more usually to football players scoring a touchdown, but I think it would help the Phils' chances in the playoffs since they won't be going through an emotional roller coaster, but rather stay level and focused. Win the World Series? Go nuts, hell the fans will. But clinch a playoff spot, show your cool and get ready to get down to business in a couple of days.

That's my 2 cents.

Phillies... Playoffs???

I know, I know, it's sacrosanct to utter the "p-word" when talking about the Phillies until they actually clinch the right to go to the p-word, but I just had to delve into a little bit of history, to discover some trivia gems. To wit:

-Should the Phillies make the postseason in 2008, it will be the first time since the Wild Card system was enacted they made it in back-to-back years.

-The last time the Phillies made the playoffs in back-to-back years, it was 1980 and 1981. And yep, we all know what happened in 1980... Tug McGraw jumped off the mound to celebrate the team's World Series victory.

-Prior to that, in the team's 125 year history, the Phils had back-to-back playoff appearances only one other time, and that was in 1976, '77, and '78.

-Interestingly, the Chicago Cubs, the NL Central winner last year and this year (they clinched already), also hadn't been in the Major League playoffs in back to back years since the Wild Card system was implemented, and the last time that they earned playoff rights in consecutive years was in 1906, '07, and '08. And guess what? They won the World Series in 1907 and 1908.

Little eerie, huh?

Thanks to baseballreference.com for allowing me to do some playoff research.

Phillies Random Locker Room Postings

Lately I've read about two separate locker room postings that caught my attention.

First I heard about Mike Schmidt emailing this message to the Phillies in regards to the storm of the Phillies/Mets series:

"The Mets know you're better than they are. They remember last year."

For starters, I'm rather impressed that Mike Schmidt uses email. It's kind of cool to think of my childhood idol shooting a motivational email off to a bunch of younger guys. As of right now the email seems to be working as the Phils are closing the gap on the Mets, having won the first two games of the series.

Today I read about another locker room message that was posted between games of today's doubleheader. According to ESPN, Charlie Manuel apparently wants to keep his team focused before the second game of the day, so he posted the following directive:

"No football on any TV after 7:15."

Hmmm... I hate to break it to Charlie, but football games are basically over at 7:15, not to mention that I'm sure most or all of these guys could sneak a game on their cell phones if they really wanted to. Not to mention the other fact that the game time is 8:05 so I'm sure most of the guys will be warming up at that time anyway. All in all, it's not quite the spine-tingling "Win today and we walk together forever" message left by Fred Shero for the Flyers final game in the Stanley Cup.

Now we wait for the next exciting message to be found on the Phillies' locker room wall...