It wasn’t the cruelest month, but it wasn’t great either
You can watch the Phillies’ 2015 Opening Day game, if you’d like. It’s on YouTube, uploaded by the official MLB account, where it has 2000 views. The video was uploaded on Halloween 2015, a day before the season ended in glory for the City of Fountains and her Royals, so none of those views came from people who were trying to catch up in the days after the game. Most of those views probably came from people reminiscing about spring and summer days full of baseball in the long offseason. Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby famously remarked that his response to winter’s lack of baseball was to “stare out the window and wait for spring”; the modern day Hornsby can instead opt for replays of games from seasons long gone and lost (though they might be better advised to try some LIDOM).
The inauguration of the 2015 campaign saw the Phillies take on the Red Sox, their 28th opener against a club from Boston, though their first against the Bosox (the previous 27 were against the National League club now based in Atlanta, variously known as the Beaneaters, Doves, and Braves). Watch the replay, and you’ll see that Opening Day from a decade ago looks much like it did just a few weeks ago. The stadium is the same, the uniforms are the same, the festive bunting is the same. The video quality, if not spectacular through YouTube’s 720p filter, looks roughly up to date as well. Until the lineups appear on screen, it seems as if no time has passed at all. But then the lineups do appear, and we see a vast chasm opening up. On one side are the current Phillies, those who made bedlam at the Bank. On the other are the World Champions of 2008. In the middle is something liminal, something no longer what they were and not yet something else: here are the 2015 Phillies.
Watch the replay on YouTube (or read Smarty’s recap), and you can join the 45,549 fans in attendance for an 8-0 drubbing. Cole Hamels, the last member of the Legion of Arms who once graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, lasted 5 innings and allowed 4 runs. The bullpen threw 4 scoreless innings while waiting fruitlessly for the offense to blossom, and reliever Jake Diekman allowed 4 runs in the ninth to provide a sour note for the die-hards who had stayed to drink up whatever dregs of opening day baseball remained. The Philadelphias suffered through another scoreless 5 innings the next time out, finally putting up their first scores of the season in their 15th inning of play. The three runs in that inning were exactly as many as they needed that day thanks to some excellent work from Aaron Harang and a save from Jonathan Papelbon, though they added one more in the 6th for good measure.
They dropped the third and final game of the series to Boston, then began their play within the Senior Circuit, winning the first of a 3 game set against Washington. In the second, the Phillies and Nationals found themselves unable to pull away from each other, going into extras with 2 apiece. The Phillies held the visitors from the capital off the board in the top of the 10th, then put Carlos Ruiz on base with a sharp grounder that bounced off the diving 3rd baseman’s glove. He advanced to second on a fly out, bringing rookie Odubel Herrera to the plate. He smacked one that stayed just on the good side of the first base line, scoring Ruiz and recording his first MLB hit. The team streamed onto the field, piling on top of him. Jeff Francoeur, with a thoughtfulness befitting his veteran status, made sure to acquire the winning ball to give to Herrera. Cheers rose into the night from a small but delighted Philadelphian crowd. In the moment, you could see a happy future unfolding— the rookie taking his first steps, with savvy vets on hand to show him the way.
But visions are often fleeting and uncertain. The next day saw the Nats get their revenge, taking the game to extras again and this time coming out on top. The Phillies would lose 8 of their next 10, taking to the road for the first time only to be swept out of Queens. A 5-3 victory in a Saturday matinee in the subsequent series against Washington was the only thing separating them from suffering two consecutive sweeps. The subsequent homestand provided only limited respite, sandwiching a tight series victory against Atlanta (both victories came by a single run) between series losses to the Marlins and Cardinals. As April drew to a close (with a 9-3 defeat to the Redbirds), the Phillies found themselves nearly doubling up their wins with losses at 8-15, 7 games back of the division-leading Mets.
Baseball is the sport of the long season, and teams have made endless transformations within the lassitude of the spring, summer, and fall. There was, however, no guarantee that the 2015 Fightins would become something other than what they were when April and the new season dawned. If you think back to your biology classes, you’ll remember that if you chemically block the metamorphosis of a tadpole, it just grows, getting bigger and bigger but not becoming a frog. It remains itself, just weightier.