A Night Not to Remember: Inside Game 1 of the NLCS

A Guest Blog By Fanspeak Contributing Writer Corey Schwartz

Saturday morning when I woke up I was a tad giddy. Not because I defeated a hangover, not because I lived to see another day, but for the first time in my life, I was going to see a playoff baseball game. This wasn’t just any game, but game one of the National League Championship Series between the San Francisco Giants and my favorite team – the Philadelphia Phillies.

I’ve been to hundreds of games at Citizen Bank Park. Many of which took place in the not-so-hay-days of the Philadelphia Phillies in the early to mid 00’s. I’ve also been at games that were so loud that my hearing was muffled for the next few days. What I endured last night, however, is nothing I could have imagined. And not in a good way…

Over the last several years Philadelphia Phillies fans have been very passionate about their team in red. Understandably so, with four straight years in the playoffs, three straight NLDS titles, three straight NLCS appearances, two NLCS titles, two consecutive world series appearances, and one world championship. They Phillies may or may not be on the cusp of a baseball dynasty, but they are sure as hell making a case for one.

The pitching matchup for the game had the potential to be one for the ages. Roy Halladay – Mr. Incredible himself; faced off with Tim Lincecum – a guy if met on the streets would never take the appearance of a 2-time Cy Young award winner with a fastball in the mid 90’s. These two stallions were more or less mustangs than anything else last night.

Although the game ended with a relatively low score, I think the world, especially Philadelphia fans, did not witness the perfection they expected. I think this concept goes well beyond the pitching matchup of elite.

I found it quite frustrating to witness such a lack of emotion and intensity from a set of fans that I’ve come to love and expect to be pretty damn annoying. Throughout several innings I found my friend and I standing, yelling, and cheering while surrounded by a sea of relatively quite sitting phanatics. In fact, there were a couple of instances in which we were even asked to take a sit by surrounding “fans.”

I don’t know about you but when I pay good money to be part of something very few people through support of very few teams get to achieve, I want to give my team my all in return. Philadelphia fans, except for a handful of outbursts, were uncharacteristically quiet last night. In all honesty, quietly sitting during a semi-final playoff game is like doing the wave at a funereal. There’s no place for it, and to be quite frankly, it is incredibly embarrassing for everyone.

Phillies fans, you disappointed me last night.

Anyone can look-up the box score from last night’s game and get a pretty good understanding of the underlining pulse of baseball played. What you can’t receive from the box score is the borderline flat line felt throughout the stadium last night. Phillies fans, you are better than this. I whole-heartily believe that the success of a team leans heavily on the support it receives from its fans. Last night we let down our men in red.

Wake up Philadelphia, the Phillies need you. Let’s get in gear, let’s get into our notorious obnoxiousness, and let’s beat those Giants. We want another freezing parade down Broad Street, we want another World Phucking Champions by Chase Utley, and we want our title back.

Stand up Philadelphia, pound that beer, inhale that cheesesteak, be obnoxious, and be loud. For a city that has never had an issue with speaking up, now is not the time to be quiet.