Phillies podcast: How the NL East clincher in 2007 ignited a four-year postseason run

Opening day is postponed, but we’re still rolling. Join us for the ride every Thursday with the Extra Innings podcast, featuring Matt Breen, Bob Brookover and Scott Lauber. This week, we look back at the NL East clincher in 2007. The Extra Innings podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Matt Breen (MB): Once again guys, we’re digging into the YouTube vault and trying to find some classic Phillies games to watch as we wait for baseball to eventually return.

And today we watched the final game of the 2007 regular season. Phillies clinch the NL East title that day against the Nationals. But they were really playing almost two games in one day. They were playing against the Nationals, obviously, in Philadelphia but then they were scoreboard watching the Mets and the Marlins game up at Shea. And it’s just a day that encapsulates a crazy run that season, but also gives you a glimpse into what’s going to happen in the future. To me, this is the day that started a really historic run in Phillies baseball.

Scott Lauber (SL): Yeah, we talked about the 1980 Game 5 NLCS clincher as being the most important game in Phillies history. We talked about the Matt Stairs game in the ’08 NLCS kind of being the defining game of that playoff run.

I think this in a lot of ways, as you said, it kind of foreshadows what we’re going to get. You have to think back in your mind because now you think of that team and you think of them in a certain way because they got over the top in 2008, won the World Series, got back in 2009, won the division again in 2010 and 2011, and we now think of this as the golden era in Phillies history. But I kind of had to remind myself that this team you’re watching at the end of the ‘07 season, they had gone through two or three years in a row of nearly missing the playoffs. They were seven back with 17 to play memorably in this particular season. They hadn’t accomplished much of anything yet. And you know in your mind, I think you were sort of thinking how are they going to blow this? How are they going to come up just short this time? It would’ve been so Phillies of that era, in ‘04, ‘05, ‘06, to just miss. And the fact that they win this game, they do it so convincingly and the Mets get stomped in New York. There was drama, but it was a little anticlimactic I found toward the end because they weren’t going to blow it. And then we’re going to get over the top and this was different than anything the Phillies had experienced in 14 years since 1993. So if you think of it in those terms, it was really kind of an emotional day for the organization.

Bob Brookover (BB): Well, that’s true except for when they went to the playoffs and got squashed by the Rockies in three games. But getting over the hump was very important. But the playoff performance was so disappointing. I was seeing it from a different perspective. It was a great day in New York for me because I was covering the Eagles at the time. And you know, the celebration is happening in Philadelphia and a hangover was happening in the Meadowlands that day because the Eagles got crushed by the Giants. I think McNabb got sacked like 17,000 times. That was a prelude to a Giants team that went on to win the Super Bowl against the undefeated Patriots team.