I don't know how to react to this win by the Phillies. I was 3 when it happened the first time, and I have no memory of it. I vaguely recall the 1983 Series when the Phils lost to Cal Ripken, but I have never seen anything like this.

I witnessed the whole thing at work, so it has not sunk in yet. I am going to update our web site and head out into the night seeking championship regalia.

I do want to say that this win is for Bill Clark, Sr., a man who was like a grandfather to me and was beloved by many in the Philly area. Mr. Clark was a great Phillies fan who spent many years supporting the team, and I hope he is smiling somewhere in Heaven.

More on this later after I get my title-winning hat and reflect a bit.

I have been thinking about the Game 5 fiasco for a couple of days, and I feel empty inside about it.

I have been waiting a long time for the Phillies to be in this position, but I feel more for the young kids who have waited their whole lives to see a Philly team amount to something. In 126 years, this team has one championship. And if you missed it or were born too late, tough luck.

As a native of Tampa Bay, I can say for a fact that fans there do not deserve a World Series title. Call me in 100 years, then we'll talk. It's a joke of a franchise and, nothing against the guys playing for the Rays, but the fans have so ill supported that team that it is shameful that they have all come out of the woodwork.

Bud Selig and his flunkies are liars. They should have stopped the game after five innings and said they were going to finish the game no matter what the rules said. That would have been a bold move, and Selig didn't have the guts. He knew he would have to face the small minority of media and Philly drunks who would have claimed that the Phils deserved to be world champs because they led after five innings. It's a stupid rule and no self-respecting player or Phillies fan would have claimed the title in that instance.

But Selig had no right to keep that game going until the Rays scored so that he could sleep better at night with a tie game. Selig has always been ill prepared for any type of adversity. Here is the guy who was ready to roll J.D. Drew and David Wright out to the mound in the All-Star Game, but his bravado was not available when it was time to make a stand this time around.

I have not wanted to even think or talk about it since it happened, but somehow, I keep doing so. Tough not to when you work in this business.

No matter what, tonight's ridiculous truncated game fragment is must-see TV.

For years, my dad has been saying, in response to lollygagging in football:
"If I was that coach, I would tell that guy to take his uniform off and head for the showers."

I always thought he was being ridiculous, but 49ers coach Mike Singletary actually did just that Sunday with Vernon Davis. I applaud Singletary for this move and hope more coaches are willing to stand up to players who aren't working under the team concept.

I have wanted to see Singletary get a chance for a while now. Here's hoping he can prove himself as a strong NFL head coach. He is certainly off to a good start.

For the generation that experienced the Phillies in 1980, tomorrow night could be a pleasant encore of that wonderful season.

For the generation that experienced the Phillies in 1993 (and since), it could finally be the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that has been mostly black.

With Cole Hamels pitching at home with a 3-1 Series lead, Philadelphia is as close as it can be to ending its title drought without actually doing so.

Seeing how excited people are in Philly, the suburbs, Jersey and Delaware this fall has been amazing. Seeing my dad excited about the Phils again is incredible. Seeing my sons getting into it is worth all the heartache the Phillies have been through.

But it's not over. When it is, maybe I'll be able to put it into words.

Until then. Same Cole time, same Cole channel....

This a late post regarding last night's game, but my computer was on the fritz and getting out of work at 3:45 a.m. is never fun.

My cousin used to live in Toledo, Ohio, and he was a big Mud Hens fan. In 1992, there was a picher who made 20 starts for the Mud Hens while trying to catch on with another Major League team. That pitcher was Jamie Moyer. If you had told me then that the guy would pitch in the World Series for the Phillies 16 years later, I would have bet anything against it.

Last night's game was one for the ages, and tonight is huge for the Phils. If they win this one and they have Cole Hamels at home to close it out, it could finally be celebration time for Phillies fans.

If the Rays rebound to win tonight, it's anyone's Series.

I am dismayed, though not surprised, that this series has gotten low ratings. There are teams other than Boston and the Yankees in this league, but not many people know that because of the way baseball is marketed. A lot of people are missing a good series.

According to a recent radio ad, the Phillies are the first pro sports team to "go green" all the way. Well, that makes sense, since the wind energy created by the abundance of swing-and-misses by Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Jayson Werth and Pedro Feliz could power Scranton for a week.

I originally said that I wanted Brett Myers to pitch Game 3 and have Jamie Moyer in Game 2. One one hand, Myers did not pitch a bad game at all. On the other, if the Phils had lost this game with Moyer, they would be coming back with Myers tomorrow at home.

Enough with the pitching though. The Phillies' bats were silent, and when Eric Bruntlett has to show you how to hit home runs, it is a sad state of affairs.

The Phils were fortunate to get a split in St. Pete, and we'll see if coming home gets their bats going.

I noted yesterday that the Elite XC mixed martial arts promotion is going out of business. This is the promotion that brought us the two CBS MMA debacles earlier this year, including the recent Kimbo Slice defeat.

The shows were built completely around Kimbo and how he was this invincible monster. When Seth Petruzelli beat him in 14 seconds, he destroyed the marketing machine that was Kimbo.

CBS knew they had to protect the golden goose, and thus Petruzelli alleged that he was offered extra money to trade punches with Kimbo instead of using a better strategy - um, you know, any other strategy. MMA is supposed to be legit, but in order to prevent a Mike Tyson-like fall, the promoters got greedy and tried to fix it, sort of.

When Tyson was on top, people paid $30 and $40 on pay-per-view to watch him destroy people. After he lost to Buster Douglas, he was never the same fighter, nor the same draw. But he made millions while he was dominating, enough to feed bengal tigers daily goat carcasses while they lived in his bedroom. And then it all went away.

Kimbo may go the same way, though he makes a good living at his day job as private security for porn lords in Miami. By the way, I have a feeling that if Slice met Petruzelli on the streets, the fight would come out differently.

There is hope, though. A Ken Shamrock vs. Frank Shamrock bout is in the works. That would be very interesting. Here's hoping boxing promoters can lure the Klitschkos into the ring against each other as well.

Three of my best friends from childhood went to Game 1 tonight in St. Petersburg, and two of them talked some trash about the Rays getting ready to take down the Phils.
(The third guy - Dan "The Man" Trammel - flew down to attend the game with his dad and was very magnanimous despite being a Mets fan. Dan and his father had not been to a game since Rusty Staub was playing, so I am thrilled they got to be there. As a side note, Dan is responsible for many of the brilliant crossword puzzles in The Trentonian lately, and we thank him for that.)

As for the other clowns, I used one of my favorite Star Wars analogies to respond to their smack.
"Cole Hamels will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now."

As for the game, the pitching was magnificent. The Phillies were 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position, and the Rays' 2-3-4 hitters were 0-for-12. This was a Classic indeed, and I hope the ratings bear out that someone outside of Philly and Florida watched it.

It is clear in this postseason that if Cole Hamels goes 7 innings with the lead, it's lights out with Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge. It reminds me of the Mariano Rivera-John Wetteland combination for the Yankees in 1996.

The Phils are three wins from a World Championship, and it's going to be a wild week.

Stay tuned later tonight.

Longtime Trentonian staffer Joe O'Gorman was left out of the World Series picks Tuesday night in our special section due to the lateness of the hour and last-minute nature of the picking process.

He wanted folks to know that he picks Rays in 7.

For anyone who doesn't know, nobody covers local college sports and local field hockey better than Joe. Read all his stuff in the print edition, because it is well worth it.

I am surprised that Charlie Manuel isn’t pitching Brett Myers in Game 3 at Citizens Bank Park, where he won 11 games this year including playoffs and is the all-time winningest pitcher (32 wins). Myers will instead pitch in the Thunderdome (it will always be that to me) in Game 2.
I would not consider it a demotion to move Myers back to Game 3. I don’t believe playing to your statistical strengths is a panic move. In fact, Myers would then be in line to pitch Game 7, and what better declaration of faith is there than that?
Additionally, if Jamie Moyer struggles in Game 3 as he has in his other playoff starts, who is going to start Game 7 then? J.A. Happ?
Exactly.

The Phillies and Rays have only played 15 regular season games against each other in 11 years, and that is only because of the abomination known as Interleague Play. If it wasn’t for some backroom dealings, they would have played a lot more as rivals in the National League East.
Does anyone find it strange that, of the four new expansion teams, three of them (Florida, Colorado, and Arizona) are in the National League and one of them is in the American League?
Before 1993, there were 14 teams in the American League and 12 in the National League. Plans were to expand by four teams over a five-year period and have 16 NL teams.
Of course, there are 16 NL teams, but not the way anyone thought there would be.
Let’s go back to 1992, when the San Francisco Giants were supposed to move to St. Petersburg. The team was sold, the deal was done, and Bud Selig reversed it all and forced the Giants to give the people another chance to build them a stadium out west.
This was a blow to Tampa Bay, but we Florida folk were told back then that it was OK, because we would get an expansion team in the first wave of two teams.
That of course didn’t happen, as Denver and Miami got the first two teams. This is because Marlins owner H. Wayne Huizenga had more money and more friends than folks in Tampa Bay.
Huizenga didn’t stop there. He insisted that, when Tampa Bay was awarded its franchise, that the Rays were not in the NL with the Marlins. The Arizona owners had a few friends, too, and they demanded assurances that the D-backs would stay in the NL.
So how did the Rays end up in the AL? What team would want to switch leagues and give up all the rivalries its fans had grown accustomed to for a whole new group of teams?
The only solution was for Bud Selig to move his own team – the Milwaukee Brewers – into the NL to open up a spot in the AL for the Rays.
This had two effects on the Rays’ franchise. First, 80 years of spring training in the area had built a strong fan base for National League teams, which meant that a lot of longtime baseball fans would not be able to see their teams. Hence, horrible attendance for a decade.
Second, they were stuck in a division with the megapowers – the Yankees and Red Sox – for all eternity. Hence, a horrible team for a decade.
Clearly, they overcame it this year, but will it last once the Yanks have an unlimited revenue stream in a new stadium?

If it costs $36 for Phillies hats with the World Series patch on the side, and T-shirts are $25, and locker room hats are $32 or so, how much merchandise will be sold during this weeklong break between series?
If we assume the average Phillie fan buying souvenirs spends $30, and we assume that a half-million people minimum in the tri-state area will buy World Series gear, that is $15 million right there that the Phils never budgeted. That won’t all be profit since they have to make the stuff, but the markup on that stuff is extremely high.
So, Pat can get paid for a year just on T-shirt sales, more or less.
In all seriousness, with the money the Phils are bringing in with record attendance, etc. there is no excuse not to sign Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels and Pat Burrell to respectable deals this offseason.
As a side note, Pat Burrell or Tampa Bay’s David Price will become the fourth No. 1 overall draft pick to win the World Series with the team that drafted them. The other four are Darryl Strawberry, Chipper Jones and Darin Erstad.

Since I am a native of St. Petersburg, Fla., this World Series is quite bizarre for me. All my friends and family from home are rooting for the Rays, and my Philly family is behind the Phils, as I am.
The worst part, though, is it seems like everyone I know has tickets but me – in both cities. That can get annoying. My phone is burning up with texts about my friends landing duckets.
Some folks had trouble getting tickets down in St. Pete due to a quirk in the Ticketmaster system. According to my sources back home, codes given to season ticket holders could be used online at multiple terminals at the same time. This means a season ticket holder with two regular seats can give their code to others and come up with all kinds of extra tickets before the folks who own the ticket lottery even get a chance to buy.
That seems a little shady to me, but I guess that is because I didn’t think of it first.
It does not surprise me, though. Rays tickets have never had any value whatsoever until about a month ago, so why should they know how to handle it? Still, tickets are pricy enough in Philadelphia that some folks here are buying tickets in St. Pete, getting flights on Jet Blue, getting a room at a seedy Gulf Boulevard hotel and STILL coming out ahead financially.