Merry Christmas, Indeed!

This year, my family and I not only celebrated Christmas together... we almost ceremoniously celebrated the World Series VICTORY by our beloved Philadelphia Phillies.

We wore our team shirts.

We discussed intricate details of the Series.

We played with the confetti picked up by my aunt and uncle from the parade down Broad Street as we watched the parade on DVD.

We watched Part II of Game 5... with Harry Kalas's radio broadcast of the pitch-by-pitch.

And... we stepped back in time to watch the last several innings of a game we went to in 1989. September 17th, to be exact. We've watched the VHS taped version of the game dozens of times since then and we still talk about that game amongst each other. We were along the 3rd base line for the first game of a double-header against the Cardinals. The Phils had a ton of hits, but couldn't put them together to score runs... so with a 5-5 tie game, we went into extra innings. The Eagles were playing the Redskins at the same time [in Washington] and the Vet aired the game on the stadium TVs. The crowd erupted as the Eagles did something miraculous and pulled off a win. Minutes [and maybe even seconds] later, John Kruk stepped up to the plate and blasted a 12th inning walk-off home run.

That small window of time is memorialized in my brain forever as one of my all-time favorite sports memories. Well... it was my very favorite... until the whole winning a World Series thing came along. The '89 game isn't irrelevant to my life... but it certainly plays second fiddle now to October 2008.

So now we're World Champs. Philly fans have been let down for eons, it seems... so to finally have something to REALLY cheer about for our city is still a little bit surreal. Getting to celebrate with my family certainly helped... but it's still hard to believe that they actually did it.

The Philadelphia Phillies actually won a World Series. A team from Philly actually won a championship!

Merry Christmas to me!!