Halladay on ice
Roy Halladay retires from baseball.
It's wasn't especially painful -- or surprising -- to learn while in the car earlier this afternoon that esrtwhile Phillies ace Roy Halladay is retiring from baseball, But I did wince when KYW's top-of-the-hour newscaster said that Halladay was calling it quits "after winning a World Series championship with the Phillies." Ouch! The whole "plotline" of Halladay was that he came here, after 12 years in frozen playoff exile in Toronto, to finally play in a World Series and it didn't happen. That was the fauilt of his non-hitting teammates in 2010 -- when Halladay won the Cy Young Award and pitched a perfect game as well as only the second post-season no-hitter in baseball history -- and then his aging body after that.
Halladay retired with the same class that he played the game with over 16 seasons. Will the fact that he never reached the World Series cloud his many other accomplishments? I don't think so. In a sport like baseball with 25 men on a team, even the great ones can only do so much. Is the ultimate goal to win, or to compete? All I know is that Roy Halladay was one of the greatest, fiercest competitors I've ever seen. This April, he will be sorely missed.