An event that was over a decade in the making. Phillies fans were given the ride of a lifetime in a season that had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. A year of historic proportions. A superstar injured, an all-star second baseman injured, a superstar injured again, managerial change, and a month that not only captured the hearts and souls of a city for baseball again but put the entire nation on notice. These are the 2022 Philadelphia Phillies.
In order to completely understand the magnitude of this season we need to contextualize the drought with some numbers. The Phillies went 1598 games before Jose Quintana threw his first pitch to Kyle Schwarber in game one of the wild card round. In those 1598 games the Phillies went 785-813 There have been 6 managers who have taken charge of the Phillies since 2011. The Phillies went through 3 front office regimes from 2011 to now. There were 4,015 days between NLDS game 5 in 2011 against the Cardinals and game 1 of the NLWCS also against the Cardinals. There were 293 different players that the Phillies used since their trip to the playoffs in 2011 and 2022. And for a personal anecdote, I was an 8 year old boy when the Phillies made the playoffs in 2011 and a 19 year old when they made it this past year.
Throughout this entire drought I along with many Phillies fans could only dream of the Phillies making the playoffs again. My many MLB The Show franchise save files throughout the years can attest to that, but this joyride that we were put on is more than we could dream in our heads or build in a simulation, it is a feeling that can’t be described, it can only be experienced. From the comeback in St.Louis, the bat spike that put a divot in the ground, Bedlam at The Bank, the 5-0 comeback, Nick Castellanos web gems, and the Broad Street Bombers. Baseball is back in Philadelphia, and boy did we miss it.
