Another Year, Another Miserable Ending to the Phillies Season

Think about where you were on August 8, 2021.

It was a beautiful summer day, the Phillies officially retired the number 34 in honor of the late great Roy Halladay. Zack Wheeler took the mound and honored Doc by throwing a complete game shutout against the Mets, his former team. It was the moment that buried the Mets in the standings and put Wheeler in the NL Cy Young conversation. Citizens Bank Park had not been this electric in a decade. It was supposed to be the moment when the Phillies were finally back.

But we should have known better.

We should have known that even without their best player, the Braves were the Braves and things would go their way as they always do in the regular season. (Its not until October when things do go wrong for them as is the case for the past 30 years.) The Cardinals would be the Cardinals and have stupid good luck happen to them, leading to a 17 game winning streak just as they were honoring the 10 year anniversary of THAT 2011 team who handed the Phillies their worst lost in franchise history (you heard me) and they still haven’t recovered. And the Phillies would be the Phillies. Just as you think the Phils are back to their late ’00s and early ’10s form, they revert back to the same old team they’ve been for the past few years.

Aaron Nola would go from reliable starter to September Nola, a nightmare of a starting pitcher. The bullpen would be the bullpen and crush your soul the way they constantly have. Joe Girardi would come off as inconsistent as Gabe Kapler did in 2 years, whereas the latter needed a change of scenery to become John McGraw reincarnated in San Francisco. The rest of the talented lineup that is getting paid a lot of money would never get the big hit when they needed to. Bryce Harper, to his credit, stepped up in August and September and tried to give the Phillies a chance, but even he couldn’t save them from another unavoidable collapse.

You notice by the time the Phillies fall out of the playoff race no one in the area talks about them anymore. They don’t want to have to go through the pain and humiliation of missing October again and shift their energy on complaining about the Eagles, thinking of Ben Simmons trade proposals, and optimism for the Flyers.

By the time next season starts we will probably get excited for the Phillies again with offseason moves and draft picks, only for none of them to work out most likely and go through the same cycle again. Eventually John Middleton will go insane and either blow the team up and start over or just sell the franchise away. This miserable ending to the season is a microcosm for ten years of disappointment. The Phillies history is littered with terrible baseball with brief periods of success. Younger fans who were spoiled by the great run of 2005-2011 have learned the hard way that their baseball team were losers in the past and always will be. Hopefully we live long enough to see that brief run of success rise up again in any form.

Now that I got you in a lousy mood, I dare you to watch this video detailing a decade of misery.