Looking back: 10 years ago today, the Phillies won the World Series
Relive the moment — and the days after — the team won its first championship in 28 years.
SEND IN THE CROWN! the cover of the Daily News read on Oct. 30, 2008.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Phillies' beating the Tampa Bay Rays in five games — the last of which started on Oct. 27 and ended on Oct. 29 — to win the World Series.
"It felt like a dream, but it wasn't. You are wide awake and the Phillies really are World Series champions. They beat the weather and the Tampa Bay Rays, 4-3, to earn just the second title in franchise history," the story that ran in the Inquirer the next morning reminds us.
"Wow," Jamie Moyer said. "World championship. That's the first time I've ever used those words. It sounds great."
What do you remember most about that moment? Was it the person you watched the game with? Where were you when it happened? Whom did you call as soon as Brad Lidge fell to his knees on the mound?
"Where were you?" is the question Moyer asks everyone who brings it up. He gets it. Growing up in Montgomery County, he skipped school to watch Steve Carlton and those '80 Phillies celebrate their title.
We asked you where you were, and dozens of you wrote in and told us — overseas in the military, with your parents, with your children, with your friends partying on Broad Street. Matt Breen collected all your responses, and picked the most poignant to share here.
"On my way home from high school, my father (a cop at the time) called to say he was working security detail inside the ballpark that night, and that he was taking me with him," Skip, from Northeast Philadelphia, wrote to tell us. "I entered the ballpark with the group of police, remained adequately inconspicuous until the gates opened, then parked myself behind a lower-level section near home plate for about three hours before the game resumed. I watched and celebrated with people I'd never seen before, or since, but in the moment we were all best friends. When Manuel took to the mic after the game, the roar of 'CHAR-LEE! CHAR-LEE!' is the loudest ovation I've ever heard. Ten years later, it's still unbelievable."
Maybe you were in the streets.
"They waited 25 long years, and then they waited three more soggy, windswept, frigid nights for a sports-crazed city to finally end a losing streak that had been the stuff of legend," the story about the city on Oct. 29 begins. Relive the night that began with joyous crowds and ended with rowdy ones.
Maybe you were at Game 5 — the first night, or the second? Or maybe both? — sitting through the seemingly endless rain, that rain that delayed the Phillies' reign. Remember it?
"It had to be one of the coldest games I ever played in," Ryan Howard told us earlier this year. "The wind went right through you. In that sixth inning, Cole tried to pick off B.J. Upton, and when I went to throw the ball back to him, I couldn't feel my hands. I didn't know how Cole [Hamels] was doing it."
Hamels, the eventual series MVP, called the two-day-long delay an experience no one else will ever have.
"Since we were home, the excitement and the buzz was there … I don't think there will ever be a delay like that ever again. The whole city was still hyped up. I remember going out to dinner and you could tell everybody was hyped up. It was probably one of the most unique, greatest sports moments that you could ever experience because you're never going to start a game in the bottom of the sixth inning."
But they did, and they finished it, too.
>> READ MORE: The reason the dirt stayed so dry in the 2008 World Series
Maybe you were at the parade.
"They climbed fences, streetlights and newsstands. They lined the windows of high-rises and parking garages. They turned rooftops and fire escapes into party zones for hours after the parade," the story reads. "Down toward the sports complex, they stood along a Schuylkill Expressway overpass and swarmed over its embankments like disturbed Phanatic ants claiming a hill."
Ten years doesn't feel like too long, until you take a look at the technology in these photos.
What about the players? Where are they now?
Shane Victorino — he's done, retired this year, when he came back for one more celebration with Phillies fans at Citizens Bank Park. Jayson Werth — he's done this year, too, and finally earned his 'beloved Phillie' status back after making a lot of money to go play for a division rival. Ryan Howard — he hung 'em up, too.
And of course there's Chase Utley, whose 16-year career ended Sunday night at the hands of the Red Sox. He will always be "The Man" around here.
>> READ MORE: Chase Utley's ride finally comes to an end