So the saying goes.
With great sadness, I am simultaneously announcing my departure from Mike and Mike's Phillies Blog and the grand opening of my Untitled Phillies Blog (I told Mike I loved that name). It was not an easy decision, but in the end, I prefer to leave this blog exactly the way it is (with a few exceptions) as a testament to a remarkable 2008 Phillies season and the championship they won five months ago today.
Please check back from time to time to relive some of the memories. As an added bonus I plan to fill in some of the blanks I blatantly advertised I would write about but never delivered on (yeah, sorry about that). While I plan to post them in their correct place chronologically to reduce confusion for future internet archaeologists, you won't have to search for them because I will create direct links to them at both Untitled Phillies Blog and on a "new update" post here. Until then, please feel free to drop by my new digs.
Finally, while I wipe a tear of joy from my eyes, please enjoy something I wrote for an iMac photo book mrs. tmmullen put together with pictures from us at the ballpark during the 2008 season. It was a gift to ourselves, our moms who came with us to many games last season, and some who were no longer with us when Brad Lidge did his thing:
When our 2008 Phillies journey began at the last Spring Training game in a windy and cold Citizen's Bank Park on March 29, 2008, no one could have predicted that exactly seven months later - in a cold and windy Citizen's Bank Park on October 29, 2008 - the Phillies would win the World Series. And what a journey it was.See you at the ballpark.
I will never forget Paige's reaction when she first spied the field in March. Holding my hand when it came into view, she pulled me to a stop and breathlessly whispered, "Daddy... there's the field... it's so green..." I immediately recalled walking through the Vet's round concrete cavern as a child, straining my neck to catch that first glimpse of the astroturf that seemed a million times greener in person than on television.
In Pat Burrell's first at-bat of that game, Paige proudly pleaded, "Come on Pat! Hit a tater!" And he did. Seven months later, in his last at-bat in a Phillies uniform, she yelled even louder for a homerun. And he tried. He smoked the ball more than 400 feet just left of centerfield where it hit less than a foot from the top of the wall. It wasn't a tater, but it was close enough.
It was an incredibly long road from the last World Championship to this one. And there are many who began it with us who were not there to taste the champagne that Kerry so smartly remembered to bring along to Game Five - twice. Whitey. Tug. Vuk. Johnny Marz. And most of all, Wally (mrs. tmmullen's dad). But they were with us in spirit.
Finally, I am so thrilled we could share this with Paige. It was even sweeter to watch it through her eyes. I will always remember the disappointment in her voice at the the end of the second inning of the game in March, when the crowd of fans getting up to visit the refreshment stands or the bathrooms prompted her to ask us a question. She asked the very same question seven months later when we told her we were finally headed to the exits, some two hours or so after Brad Lidge's last pitch:
"Is it over already? I don't want to go yet." Me either, Paige. Me either.
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