2009 Phillies didn’t win it all, but their journey to the World Series was still special | Bob Brookover

The Phillies will hold another reunion this weekend at Citizens Bank Park, another celebration of a special team in franchise history.

Last season, they recognized the 25-year anniversary of the 1993 National League champions and it was a wonderful event because that lightning-in-a-bottle ballclub inspired some of broadcaster Harry Kalas’ best renditions of “High Hopes.”

The Phillies also paid tribute to the 2008 World Series champions on their 10-year anniversary and that, of course, was extraordinary because that merry band of ballplayers ended the city’s 25-year championship drought, but only after sitting through a couple of long, rainy days.

This year’s celebration of the 2009 National League-champion Phillies does not seem quite the same for one obvious reason: They did not win it all the year after they won it all.

For that reason, they will never be embraced in this town quite the way the 2008 team was, even though Chase Utley believes the second of the two teams to reach the World Series might have been a bit more talented.

It’s the same affliction felt by the 1977 Phillies, arguably the most talented team of the first golden era in Phillies baseball. When a great team does not win the title, we naturally recall the scars as much as or more than the stars who steered the mostly joyful ride.

Perhaps we’d have a softer view of the 2009 team if either the 2010 or 2011 teams had reached their desired destination, but their playoff exits were even more excruciating.

For the participants, at least, time does heal the wounds.

“I think all those seasons are special,” then-pitching coach Rich Dubee said. “[2009], ’10, ’11, they all hurt at the end. But as time goes by, you step back and really realize how hard it is to win the whole thing. You have to be good, healthy, and playing your best and peaking at the right time. We weren’t in those seasons, but they were not failures by any means. They were great seasons and very, very special times.”

The 2009 Phillies had a chance to take down the mighty New York Yankees, win consecutive titles, and enter the conversation as the city’s greatest champion of all time. Instead, they fell in six games to Jeter, A-Rod, and especially Godzilla, the nickname for Japanese star Hideki Matsui, who hit .615 with three home runs to earn the World Series MVP award.

“I was so excited to play the Yankees in the World Series," manager Charlie Manuel said. "I knew if we could beat the Yankees, it would have been the biggest win in the history of the team. But we didn’t play good defensively in that series and the Yankees were a good team. We could not overcome our mistakes.”

The Phillies had a lot to overcome that season. Cole Hamels, the World Series MVP the year before, was not the same pitcher in 2009, and Mr. Perfect (closer Brad Lidge) in 2008 was far from it in 2009. Utley was coming off hip surgery, and the Phillies also had a rookie general manager with Ruben Amaro Jr. replacing Hall of Famer Pat Gillick.

A lot could have gone wrong, and as mentioned, some things did. But a lot more went right again in 2009, as the Phillies established themselves as the beasts not only of the National League East but also of the entire league.

Amaro’s first big decision as general manager was to let popular clubhouse presence Pat Burrell leave as a free agent just a few days after he had taken an adoring ride down Broad Street. Amaro replaced Burrell with Raul Ibanez, who, at 36, was four years and four months older than Burrell. Amaro also decided to re-sign Jamie Moyer, who was 46.

“That season was exciting in so many ways,” Amaro said. “A lot of people said there were a lot of pieces in place when I took over as general manager, and there were a lot of them.

"As an assistant GM, I felt like I had something to do with that, and obviously so did Pat Gillick and Mike Arbuckle and Ed Wade. But I thought we needed to make some changes right out of the chute, and not re-signing Pat Burrell was the first big decision. We put a lot of eggs in Raul’s basket.”

It turned out to be the right basket. Ibanez, in his first season in the National League, got off to the best start of his career, hitting .312 with 22 home runs and 59 RBIs through the first 63 games while the Phillies built a three-game lead in the division.

“He was the MVP of the first half,” Amaro said.

For Ibanez, playing in Philadelphia was a dream come true.

“I had never experienced that type of electricity before in my entire career,” he said. “You’d do something late in a game and the people would cheer and scream and you could just feel it. Every hair on my arm would stand up as it was happening. In fact, they’re standing up right now as I’m talking about it."

Ibanez admitted to some fear of the unknown when he first arrived, however.

“I had heard all these terrible things about the fans of Philadelphia before going there,” Ibanez said. "Then early in the season, I swung at a breaking ball in the dirt and struck out with runners at second and third.

"I ran down the first-base line thinking, ‘Oh, am I going to hear it.’ Instead, this section behind the dugout stands up and starts yelling, ‘That’s the way you ... play the game.’ I thought, ‘This town and I are going to get along just fine.’ "

Cries of “Raaaaaauuuuul” were heard throughout the season. Ibanez, however, suffered a groin injury that sent him to the disabled list for nearly a month, and the Phillies struggled through their worst stretch of the season, losing 12 of 15 games and their lead in the division.

Order was restored with a three-game sweep of the New York Mets, which started a stretch in which the Phillies went 20-5 to blow the rest of the division away. The 20th win came on the final day of July with newcomer Cliff Lee on the mound.

Amaro, after finally giving up hope on his bid to land Roy Halladay from the Toronto Blue Jays, had traded four prospects (Carlos Carrasco, Jason Donald, Jason Knapp, and Lou Marson) to acquire Lee from the Cleveland Indians because the new general manager wanted to win a lot more than a division in his first season.

“I don’t know if there was a better pitcher in baseball over the last quarter of the season,” Amaro said.

Halladay, with a 2.97 ERA, was actually better over his final 12 starts that season than Lee, who had a 3.39 ERA. But the lefty from the Indians was just what the Phillies needed to make another World Series run. In five postseason starts, Lee was 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA.

The high point of the season came when he pitched a six-hitter against the high-powered Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series.

“I just remember being in the dugout and looking around and thinking, ‘I can’t believe we are in Yankee Stadium for Game 1 of the World Series,' ” Amaro said.

“Having the opportunity to do something like that as a first-time GM, I just wanted to enjoy it. I had talked to enough people to know it might never happen again. I was sitting there with [assistants] Benny Looper and Scott Proefrock next to me and just thinking, ‘This is a special, special moment.’ ”

A little while later, he was summoned upstairs by team president David Montgomery because Michelle Obama and Jill Biden wanted a photograph with the general manager and shortstop Jimmy Rollins.

And then Lee pitched his gem.

“Give the Yankees credit,” Amaro said. “They had a great team. We gave them a run for their money.”

Amaro’s other major addition that season was Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez. His career was seemingly over after a rough 2008 with the New York Mets, but Amaro dispatched Looper and scout Charley Kerfeld to the Dominican Republic in July, and it was decided that Martinez still had a little left in the tank.

“Getting Pedro was such a cool move for our club,” Amaro said. “He was a winning player coming into a winning situation, and I really felt he was an upgrade for our club. It caused some controversy because Jamie [Moyer] was really upset, but I really thought Pedro could help us win another World Series.”

The Phillies went 8-1 in Martinez’s nine regular-season starts, and then he pitched seven shutout innings in Game 2 of the NLCS in Los Angeles. The Phillies lost that game and also lost in Game 2 of the World Series despite a quality start from Martinez. The Yankees roughed up an ailing Martinez to clinch the World Series in Game 6, and that would be the final appearance of the pitcher’s career.

Even though Matsui was the MVP of that World Series, Utley’s feat of five home runs was equally remarkable. Only Utley, Reggie Jackson, and George Springer have hit that many homers in a World Series.

“I can’t even imagine having grandkids, but if they ask me about it, sure, I’ll talk to them about it,” Utley said. “But I don’t think I need to brag about it unless they really aren’t listening to me one day when I’m trying to teach them something about baseball. I might throw it in then.

“One hundred percent, I still view that as an amazing season. It didn’t have the outcome as the previous season, but making it to the World Series is not an easy task. Clearly, you have to have a lot of talent, but you have to have some breaks go your way along the way as far as health issues and the way the ball bounces.”

The Phillies, of course, would learn more about that in the next two seasons. There will be no reunion for the 2010 and 2011 teams, but the number of magical moments they produced made Philadelphia the envy of every baseball city.

Amaro finally landed Halladay for the 2010 season, and he produced a regular-season perfect game, a postseason no-hitter, a 20-win season, and a Cy Young Award. Roy Oswalt was added to the mix at the trade deadline and went 7-1 with a 1.74 ERA in 13 starts.

The Phillies were eight games over .500 and trailed Atlanta by 3½ games going into August, but they went 41-17 the rest of the way to blow the Braves away and finish with the best record in baseball for the first time in franchise history.

The quest for a second World Series title in three years ended, however, on a Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies scored twice in the first inning but could not score again in a 3-2 NL Championship Series loss to the San Francisco Giants, who went on to win what would be their first of three World Series titles in a five-year span.

A year later, with Lee back in the fold and four aces and a Vanimal (Vance Worley) in the rotation, the Phillies won a franchise-record 102 games, with the last three victories coming in a season-ending sweep at Atlanta that allowed the white-hot St. Louis Cardinals to win the wild-card playoff berth.

The Cardinals, of course, would go on to win their 11th World Series title, but not before eliminating the Phillies in a five-game Division Series that concluded with an epic pitching battle between best friends Halladay and Chris Carpenter.

The final out of the 1-0 loss, with Ryan Howard collapsing a few feet from home plate after rupturing his left Achilles tendon, will forever be etched in the minds of Phillies fans.

“It’s all tough, especially when you lose in the postseason,” Utley said. “But 2011 was really tough because Roy had pitched this amazing game and I just have this vision of him sitting down in the clubhouse afterward and contemplating that game. I will always have that vision.”

Ibanez concedes that he replays some of the failures from time to time, too.

“You always think about that,” he said. “What could we have done different? All three of those years, we lost to the eventual World Series champion. But then I think about all we did right. The character, the chemistry, the talent. I would have loved to have been part of a parade in Philadelphia, but I don’t regret anything about those three seasons. Magic is the right word to describe all I felt there."

The journey can still be fabulous even when you do not reach the desired destination.