In 2008, the Phillies ended Philadelphia’s long pro sports title drought. Here’s a look back at how it happened.

Young Philadelphia fans today may not realize this, but there was a time when the thought of a Philly team winning a pro sports championship was a zero-chance possibility. Sure, we’re not exactly swimming in titles around here these days, but it hasn’t even been five years since the Eagles won the Super Bowl.

Imagine a title drought more than five times longer than that. That’s how long it had been for Philadelphia when the Phillies faced the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2008 World Series. The city’s last championship had been won by Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Maurice Cheeks, and the 76ers in June 1983. In that time, 99 seasons of the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers came and went without a title.

When the Phillies finished off the Rays on Oct. 29, 2008, it had been 25 years and 150 days since the Sixers’ championship. (The Inquirer used to update that number every day on the second page of the sports section.) With the Phils back in the World Series against the Astros (with whom they have some playoff history), it’s a good time to look back on that 2008 Fall Classic, when Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins busted Philly’s title drought.

The Phillies got out of the gate fast, putting up two runs in the top of the first at Tampa’s Tropicana Field on a Chase Utley home run. They added what turned out to be an important insurance run on a Carlos Ruiz groundout in the fourth inning, thanks to a questionable decision by Rays manager Joe Maddon. Hamels gave up two runs in seven innings, and Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge each pitched a perfect inning to close out the victory.

Here is some of the coverage from The Inquirer, Daily News, and philly.com (RIP) after Game 1:

James Shields was the star for Tampa Bay, pitching 5⅔ scoreless innings to send the series back to Philly tied at one game apiece. The Phillies had their chances, but couldn’t cash enough of them in to get the win. According to David Murphy, an Inquirer columnist who at that time was the Phillies beat writer for the Daily News:

The Rays scored their runs in the first four innings, all off starter Brett Myers. The Phils didn’t dent home plate until the eighth.

The start was delayed by 91 minutes (not the last time Mother Nature made her presence felt in this series), but when Ruiz’s walk-off, infield single scored Eric Bruntlett with no outs in the bottom of the ninth at 1:47 a.m., the Phillies had a 2-1 series lead. Howard hit his first home run of the postseason, the second of back-to-back dingers with Utley in the sixth inning.

Jamie Moyer started for the Phils and got into the seventh inning before leaving with a 4-2 lead. This time the bullpen did not hold, allowing an inherited runner to score in the seventh and another run to cross home in the eighth. The Phils’ lineup, however, made quick work of the Rays’ J.P. Howell and Grant Balfour in the ninth. Howell hit Bruntlett with a pitch to lead off, then Balfour took over and did this:

Phillies fans went home happy (and probably a little wet and tired) in the first World Series game in Philadelphia in 15 years.

Howard blasted two homers; Jayson Werth added another; and starting pitcher Joe Blanton launched one, too, as the Phillies routed the Rays. Blanton’s dinger was the first by a pitcher in the World Series since 1974, and will likely be the last one ever (unless Shohei Ohtani gets there someday). Blanton had a good night on the mound, too, allowing two runs in six innings. The bullpen took it home from there.

The victory moved the Phillies within one win of their second world championship, and they would have their ace, Hamels, toeing the rubber in Game 5.

The moment Philadelphia sports fans had waited 25 years for was at hand — and then they had to wait even longer.

Game 5 started, but wind and rain forced a delay in the middle of the sixth inning with the score tied, 2-2. Under MLB rules at the time, the game should have been restarted entirely, but commissioner Bud Selig ruled the teams would resume in the bottom of the sixth inning whenever the weather would allow, even “if we have to celebrate Thanksgiving here.” It didn’t last that long, but it would be two days before the teams would take the field again.

On a chilly October night two days later, the Phillies ended the city’s championship drought.

When the game resumed in the bottom of the sixth, a Werth single drove home a run to give the Phils a lead, but the Rays tied it up in the top of the seventh. The game- and series-clinching run scored in the bottom of the seventh on a Ruiz single that drove home Bruntlett. J.C. Romero and Lidge took it home from there, with Lidge striking out Eric Hinske with the tying run on second base before being swarmed by his teammates and setting off a citywide celebration.

Hamels earned MVP honors, pitching 13 innings to a 2.77 ERA.

Two days later, the Phils were feted by the city during a parade down Broad Street that culminated at Citizens Bank Park. The Phanatic danced. The city reveled. Chase Utley cursed.

It was, as Inquirer columnist Bill Lyon put it, “Well worth the wait, and no matter that the wait had felt like forever and a day.”

The Phillies tried their best to cash in on the moment. They acquired Cleveland ace Cliff Lee at the trade deadline in 2009 and went back to the World Series thanks in part to his stellar pitching, but they fell to the New York Yankees in six games.

A year later, the Phils got Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt to go with Hamels and Lee to form the “Four Aces,” one of the best starting pitching rotations in recent baseball memory. They provided fantastic moments — Halladay threw a perfect game and then added a postseason no-hitter in 2010 — but never got back to the Fall Classic.

Perhaps the greatest stretch of success in the Phillies’ history came to an end in 2011. They were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs when Ryan Howard hit a ground ball and blew out his Achilles tendon for the last out of a deciding Game 5 against the St. Louis Cardinals. The final score was 1-0.

This season is the first time the Phils have made the playoffs since that loss to St. Louis, and now they are once again four wins from a world championship.