Patting the Bat Goodbye

I remember the first time I knew the Phillies were going to win the World Series. I have this memory of sitting around in middle school with my friends, in the winter of 1999-2000, talking about sports. There was a lot to talk about just then. If you will recall, it seemed like all of our teams were starting to click, beginning to become really exciting all at the same time. John and Justin were basketball fans; Iverson had been in town for three years, and he was just beginning to play winning basketball, as opposed to exciting basketball. Andy Reid was in the midst of a surprising barnstorming of Philadelphia, and my friend Louis loved his stud quarterback, who oozed with athleticism and joie de vivre, and the Flyers were busy getting the last they could out of Lindros and his Legion of Doom, on the way to blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Devils in the playoffs. But nearest and dearest to me was the situation of my beloved Phillies. I felt, in that way only awkward teenagers can, that my feelings were not given adequate pride of place. That winter, there was an unfamiliar smell in the air, a smell of promise and anticipation, of eagerness, that had not been there in quite a while. Things were happening. So, I threw it out there: "Guys," I said, "I guarantee you that the Phillies will win the World Series in the next ten years. I guarantee it." This missive went largely ignored, I immediately felt foolish, and generally wished I hadn't said anything. But I had my reasons.

 Ever since the '93 season, which had filled me with an abundance of joy, of unbridled admiration and became one of the most important formative experiences of my life, my eight year-old soul lifted only to be dropped and trampled underfoot by a bunch of Canadians who would rather have been watching hockey anyway, I had longed for a reason to hope for my Phillies. It was a truly bleak time to be a Phillies' fan. You went to the ballpark, saw little of value, just Curt Schilling, backed up by the likes of Benito Santiago and Mark Lewis, saw your team get beat by someone better, then did it all over again. You did it out of a sense of dutiful obligation rather than hope. You wished it would get better, you remembered how it was, and you sat there longing, though not believing. But this year, I believed, things would all be different. Now, the Phillies had a ballclub. I plead my case thusly:

"Look at their roster," I cried in newly full and hopeful tone, as my buddy ate my tater tots, and I tried to catch a glimpse of one of several girls I longed for just as forlornly as the World Series. "We got Andy Ashby. We gave up Adam Eaton to get him, and Eaton's gonna be pretty good, (oops) but Ashby was an All-Star last year, and he won 17 games the year before that. Schilling and Paul Byrd both won 15 games last year. Scott Rolen's only gonna be better. Abreu's a stud, and" my narrative assumes hushed tones here of the sort reserved for Babe Ruth, my mother, Jesus and no one else, "Burrell's gonna be coming up."

This last was the clincher. Burrell's coming. Burrell was like the Cavalry, like a monsoon, a transformative force of nature who could carry the whole team. He was The One. What I thought, what we all thought, or a least hoped, was that Pat the Bat would take us over the top. With Pat Burrell, we believed, the team that finished eight games below .500 the year before and had added: 

1) a 32 year-old pitcher with some miles on his odometer, 

2) a healthy Desi Relaford, 

3) Mckey Morandini's carcass, 

4) a more experienced Marlon Anderson,

5) Chad Ogea, and

5) the aged and doddering Jeff Brantley, 

could do amazing things. I believed that Ron Gant and Doug Glanville would round out the outfield quite well. I believed. I believed in that year's Phillies. I believed that the organization had finally proved it would shell out some cash. Not a lot, but some. So I said my piece. "Ten years," I said. "Ten years." Then, Noah stole my tater tot.

Nine years have passed now, and the Phillies just snuck in under the wire. I didn't mind the wait, really. It just made the Championship that much sweeter. I kept the faith, I held out, through Bowa Millwood, Mesa and all the rest. But there is little resemblance between those Phillies (who crashed, burned and traded a Hall of Famer entering his prime for Travis Lee's Kotex and Vicente Padilla's Ritalin) and the Phillies who won. Only Burrell.

The writing, as we all know, is on the wall for Pat as well. This is, as Bill Conlin smirkingly and Phil Sheridan sweetly observe, as bittersweet as bittersweet can be. More than that though, Pat Burrell, in addition to being the longest-tenured Phillie, has for years been an achingly symbolic paean to the sufferings of our fair city and its Phillies. I remember watching his debut with my father. They were playing the Astros in Houston. He came up, big, lumbering guy, great pedigree, great nickname, great big fly-swatting swing. He seemed a chisled masterpiece, our red wheelbarrow upon which so much has depended.

Time wore on, and you saw chinks in his armor. His absolute lack of speed, his agonizing inability to get the bat on the ball squarely in big spots. He seemed exposed at times, a victim of his own expectations, of our lofty demands. Still, he put together a decent rookie year, a better sophomore campaign, and then swatted 37 dingers, with 116 RBIs his third year. The club looked better around him, too, Bowa strutting around like a bantam cock, his baseball machine in tow. Not a contender, yet, but contending for contention, moving purposefully. I remember seeing a game with my dad that year at the Vet. Burrell connected with a hanger and sent a screaming liner off of the plexiglass bullpen wall in left, the ball bouncing back to the infield on just a few hops, making a noise like a gunshot.

Though there were chinks with him, and with the team, Burrell was a force. Looking back on the contract he signed after that season, Burrell looked, as so many excellent power hitters before him, like a great talent on the verge of making adjustments. He was compared favorably to Michael Jack Schmidt, (a mortal sin, a Madden Curse, a folly) he was lauded as a man strapped to a veritable rocket of potential. We saw his virtue, and when Eddie Wade snapped him up to a six-year deal, we must all remember this, not a soul could be kept from rejoicing.

And then there came The Slump. Something wasn't right. He had flown too close to the Gods, his swing was off, he wasn't seeing the ball, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face, he was head over heels in unhappy love, his foot was attached to the rest of his body with safety pins and electric tape, whatever it was, he was just not the same. Burrell's occasional difficulties with slow stuff away became the groping, drunken staggering of a beaten fighter punching. He waved at the gas heat inside with all of the conviction and grace of Andy Reid on third and short. It was excruciating. Hard to watch, certainly, but it must have been a new circle of hell to live through.

Unlike so many athletes, Burrell seemed to get it, that he was being offered the opportunity to make franchise money, to carry his organization, that he was our Atlas. Rolen was always somewhat flaky through this period, would turn in fantastic performances followed up by rounds of sniping with Bowa and/or Dallas Green, an injury, and endless posturing and falderal concerning his image and his self-referential odes to being old-school, talking about it all the way to the bank.

Burrell didn't do it that way. By all accounts, he wanted to be, as the Splendid Splinter had it, the best goddamned ballplayer in the world. Burrell showed up early, stayed late, occasionally mumbled something about the team, worked his butt off, and sank even deeper into the quicksand quagmire that his 2003 campaign became. He hit .209. He made a bad face quite frequently. He bore the marks of agonized frustration more visibly than anyone I can remember in this town, other than Mitch Williams.

The boos, when they inevitably came, reflected this, I think. We were not out for Pat's blood, or his bat, or his pride. We just... could no longer hold the frustration in, needed an outlet for the feeling that, if anything, we wished would somehow propel him toward his rightful destiny as our savior. This is something that the Joe/Tim Bucking McCarvers of the world miss. In some towns, a boo is a boo is a boo is just an ugly boo. Boos register disappointment, displeasure, a sort of delicate, contrived peevishness to register one's dissatisfaction with the product that has been turned out. Philadelphia is not like that. Philadelphia is not just any other town. In Philadelphia, we boo you with character. We boo from the soul. We boo you for love.

To his credit, I think that Burrell understood this subtlety. It must have helped that his struggles came after the very public campaign to sever Jose Mesa's balls and manhood, then throw the whole mess in a burgundy '86 Impala headed off the Jersey end of the Tacony Palmyra, never to be seen again. We wanted Mesa gone. We wanted him to leave painfully, and we wanted to tell Ed Wade to never, ever make that sort of crass mistake again. Failed closers can get you riled. Burrell was in a different class.

Burrell, I think, knew that our lungs were engaged in a cathartic plea, a prayer for revivification and a return of his powers. He wanted them back too. It took a large set of gonads to show up every day, work his way through his struggles, find a way to make himself into a useful player when he could so easily have folded and burned his way through mountains of coke and felt sorry for himself. Say what you will, the man has integrity. When he doubled off the wall to put the World Series-winning run in scoring position, one might have understood some feelings of vindication on his part, thrown a bit of an impromptu bow and wave, some vainglorious gesture. But there he was, lifted for Bruntlett, quietly appreciating the moment, classy.

During the course of his Odyssey, Burrell was a better player than what he looked like, too. Though he rarely moved runners over and struck out much too much, he got on base a lot, took advantage of his RBI opportunities, protected Howard and Utley in the lineup and the part of every fan that is devoted to agonizing over the development of a young player, and was a well-liked teammate. It would have been nice to see him back, but that was probably never going to happen. There was a lot of water under that bridge, and an organization that has just spent $50 million for mediocrity is an organization that feels burned. Truth be told, Burrell is going out on top, and it's probably for the best.

So, we have Raul Ibanez. The mechanisms of welcome are out and about, as they should be. Ibanez has said all the right things, is a fresh start of sorts for everyone involved, has a reputation as a solid human being, and could well be a better player with what will probably end up being a more favorable contract than Burrell's. Forgive me, though, my feeling of sad regret, when I read of Burrell speaking of the things he loved about Philly, like walking his dogs in in Rittenhouse Square, where I saw him once or twice. He was, as they say, a jolly good fellow.