What We Witnessed Tonight Was Truly The End Of An Era Of Phillies Baseball
Edward M. Pio Roda. Getty Images.It's over. It's time for everybody to sit down and accept the reality that it's over.
This era of Phillies deserves plenty of credit for reinvigorating the love for baseball back into Philadelphia. There were a ton of sad, dark, miserable years here of completely meaningless baseball. And then here came this group of Phillies shot out of a goddamn cannon in 2022 to send this town into a frenzy. It was fun. It was exciting. It was a change of pace for the traditional Philly sports fan experience. You had people singing along to Bryson Stott's stupid fucking walkup song. You had everybody singing along to "Dancing On My Own" in bars all across the city.
4 years later it is over. 4 years later, there's not a single redeeming quality about this team. They are a bunch of overpaid losers who have gotten progressively worse each and every single year. From the World Series, to the NLCS, to losing the NLDS against the Mets when they should have won, to losing the NLDS against the Dodgers when they should have lost anyway, and now bowing out in the Wild Card against Atlanta in the most Aaron Nola fashion possible.
4 batters into this game and it was over. Nola threw 11 balls in 13 pitches. Walked Acuna, walked Olson, and the dreaded Aaron Nola deep ball was the final dagger to this era of Phillies baseball.
The rest of the game was merely a formality considering the offense was never going to do shit. Part of the reason the Phillies found themselves in this predicament in the first place is because the offense was a joke down the stretch. They played like a bunch of pathetic losers for the final 2 weeks of the season, forced their pitching staff to go deep into September, and now everybody had to throw on short rest. Nola was likely going to blow this game anyway, but the offense didn't do him any favors.
Bryce Harper. Kyle Schwarber. Trea Turner. Aaron Nola. Stott, Bohm, Marsh, Realmuto. This is a group of guys who this city wanted to love so much. A group of guys who could have been revered as gods in Philadelphia for the rest of time. But this era of Phillies baseball is coming to an end on such a sour note that it'll be impossible to remember how you truly feel about them. It's the McNabb Eagles. It's the Iverson Sixers. It's the Lindros Flyers. Fun teams that had some really good years and always made you feel like you had a chance. But they were never able to get the job done and always left you wondering "what if".
But at least its over, and we can all start moving on now. This group will never be able to get the job done and it's time to start over. No more running it back. No more just tinkering with the lineup. It's not just a chapter that is coming to an end. It's the whole damn book.