The 300th Phillies Diary Post!

4/22: Flyers 3, Caps 2 (OT)
4/22: Phillies 8, Rockies 6

Tremendously exciting night for the Flyers, winning their first playoff series since beating Toronto in 2004. (That feels like 4 million years ago.) This year, I rediscovered how gutwrenching playoff hockey is and how super-gutwrenching overtime playoff hockey is and how unbelievably ultra-super-gutwrenching an overtime Game 7 is. Actually, I've never seen one: the only other time it happened in Flyers history was against the Caps in 1988. I'm not sure what I was doing in spring 1988, but it probably involved Legos, and it wasn't following hockey.

Anyway, I was pretty amped about the win, as you might imagine. (I like it when the Flyers win.) Bring on the Habs! I'm hoping for an appearance of Youppi.

Meanwhile, the endless trash talk and anti-Philly bias continues in various sources re: the win over the Pistons that I didn't even see. On the ESPN message boards Pistons fans are calling it a "fluke" and promising the utter destruction of the Sixers any minute now. (Never mind the fact that the Sixers have now won three in a row over DET.) Now, granted, it's a mistake to put any stock in anything that's said on the ESPN message boards, they being the absolute nadir of human interaction. That said, this sort of stuff always annoys me, and I won't go into detail about the levels of depravity I would sink to in exchange for seeing the Pistons get increasingly mauled and humilated as the series goes on. (Well, I wouldn't do anything.)

Also meanwhile: I didn't see much of the Phils/Rockies game but I was pleased by the news. Just to play devil's advocate: were I a Rockies fan (which I am most assuredly not) I would be livid about how they walked Ryan Howard (currently hitting like .032 (I just made that number up)) to get to Pat Burrell (arguably the NL's hottest hitter right now). That doesn't make any damn sense. Fortunately, the Phils were the beneficiary of this nonsense, and we're over .500 for the first time in what feels like, oh, many months. The Phils are in Milwaukee ("The Good Land", as Alice Cooper reminds us) tonight... keep it up, boys.

GO SIXERS!!!