Please Actually Win This Series, I Can't Do the "Well At Least They Fought Hard" Thing Twice in One Year

AU is done making excuses (for the Phillies, he'll never be done making them for the Sixers).

I cannot believe we're fucking back here. Again. Already!

Stop me when this sounds familiar (or don't because it's gonna sound real familiar real quick and I'm gonna do the whole thing regardless): Our team is in a knock-down, drag-out first-round post-wildcard series with our division rivals from New York, who have less top-end talent but better vibes and less history-based pressure than us -- and while our absolute best guys have mostly been playing like superstars, a lot of the supporting cast has been disappointing, and we let one of the first two games slip away in heartbreaking late-game fashion. Not even six months after an agonizing and ecstatic (but more agonizing) Sixers-Knicks series, we're already in narrative syndication. Same shit, different sport. 

Doing this once was hard enough on the psyche and the immune system; doing it twice in the same calendar year -- and now with baseball, a sport that's pretty much guaranteed torture even when you win -- is something I wouldn't even wish on Celtics fans. The only thing that will make it forgivable is if the Phillies actually win this series against the Mets, and save me from having to make enough excuses to stretch the length of I-95 as to why this early-playoffs failure can still be considered some amount of feel-good story. I'm tapped out after the Sixers, I don't have a second spin job of that level left in me. 

Of course, as many parallels as there are between Knicks-Sixers and Phillies-Mets, there's one very big difference -- this current series is now even, something Philly-NY Pt. 1 never was again after 0-0. And that felt impossible as recently as the sixth inning of Game Two, when Pete Alonso hit a solo shot off Jose Ruiz to make it 3-0 Mets and the Phils looked for all the world like a third-inning would-be Schwarbomb that somehow died at the warning track was the closest they were gonna come to legitimate offense all night. But then Luis Severino served up a two-run meatball to Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos followed that with a game-tying shot of his own, and a couple Your Turn My Turns later, the Fightins ended a night of absurd back-and-forth with a two-out ninth inning rally, capped by Casty depositing a Tylor Megill slider into left field for the walk-off. It might not have been as statistically unlikely a W as the Tyrese Maxey Game, but it was about as emotionally cathartic. 

But again, even the Tyrese Maxey Game only brought us back to down 3-2, still on the brink of elimination, where neither the Sixers or Phillies have ever exactly thrived. These Phils, on the other hand, get to go to Citi Field -- the other big non-parallels in this series of course being home field advantage and a superior regular-season record -- with the series knotted at 1-1, and still every opportunity in the world to actually survive and advance. The Mets are terrifying and infuriating just like the Knicks were, and I'd be lying if I said I felt particularly optimistic about the upcoming best-of-three even after this huge W. But New York had numerous chances to end this series before it even started, and maybe kill off an entire era of Philly baseball (or at least any good feelings associated with it) in the process, and they blew em all. Now I don't even know how you calculate where the momentum is in this series. Maybe this series is just a series now. 

So all of this is to say: I'd really like the Phillies to actually win this. Talking with my mom about this one post-game, I could feel the old hedging instincts kicking in: Well, if nothing else, at least we won a classic playoff game at home, at least our best guys proved they're still prime-time performers, at least we didn't get swept, at least we didn't get totally humiliated. Minutes after an all-time, series-tying playoff win and here I was, already prepping for inevitable failure. That's what seven years of playoff Sixers basketball (combined with no small amount of natural cowardice) will get you. 

Who's Ready for These Phils' First Postseason With Actual Expectations??

But it doesn't actually have to be this way. The Phillies might be in a similar place on their historical timeline as the Sixers, but they are not actually the Sixers -- they've proven more, accomplished more, disappointed and underperformed and been tragedized far less. Bryce Harper is not Joel Embiid, Zack Wheeler is not Ben Simmons or James Harden, and you better fucking believe with your whole heart and soul that Nick Castellanos is not Tobias Harris. The Mets have that Team of Destiny feeling to them, for sure, but this is baseball; that shit disappears in a BLINK if you're not careful. (Especially if you hang a 1-2 slider to Nick Castellanos when all you had to do was throw him three more pitches in the dirt and stay confident that there was no chance in hell he was keeping his bat on his shoulder four times in a row.) Now, one win in CitiField and we can turn them back into low-level antagonists in our own collective hero's journey. 

And if not... well, that will suck, a lot, and this Game Two victory will probably turn into an even more buried footnote in the story of this Phillies season than the Tyrese Maxey Game was for the Sixers. And if there is a silver lining to be found in that, then I wish you luck in finding it, because I'm not going to do it myself. I bright-sided that shit for the Sixers in May because I believed it and because I had to, but you won't be hearing any moral victory talk from me this October. I've put in my time. Go Phils, but if they lose, y'all are on your own with this one. 

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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