For the last 6 months, we've watched a mediocre Mets team have their ups and downs throughout the course of the 2011 major league baseball season. They're better off due to this past year's events than they were before in my opinion, but that's really a topic for another day. Now by comparison, the Phillies really just had their ups and more ups throughout the course of the season. They won their 5th consecutive NL East division title with a 102-60 record, best in the majors. They had the most dominant starting pitching in the game by a large margin. It's hard to go on long losing streaks when you can throw Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels out there on consecutive days. This was painful for Mets fans to watch no doubt.
Last night, on the other hand, was pure jubilation. We saw two extremely competitive games, in decisive Game 5's no less. The Brewers and Diamondbacks game was exciting (though completely secondary in the grand scheme of things last night from my perspective), and then there were the Cardinals and Phillies. The Cardinals got off to an early lead, scoring a run on a Skip Schumaker double in the first inning off of Roy Halladay. Normally, the Phillies would find a way to strike back. But they never did. That run was the only one scored in the game. Halladay followed that first inning up with 7 scoreless, striking out 7 while walking just 1 over the course of his outing. On the other side, Carpenter was flawless, and I loved every minute of it. Well, maybe not Ryan Howard potentially tearing his Achilles. I may hate the guy as a player, but I don't want to see anyone hurt like that.
Sports is really the one place in life where I feel comfortable reveling in the misfortune of others (barring injury). And I tend to take advantage. The Patriots being beat by the Giants in the Super Bowl, pushing their season record to 18-1? Awesome. The Celtics losing a tough Game 7 against the Lakers in which Kobe played like crap and their best player was Ron Artest, who went on to thank, among others though in my opinion most prominently, his psychiatrist in his post game interview? Fantastic. Even to a lesser extent the Yankees losing Game 5 to an inferior Detroit Tigers squad capped off by an inevitable Alex Rodriguez strikeout? Stellar. Despite the fact that my favorite teams suffered through mediocre, awful, and borderline historically awful seasons during these events, I didn't enjoy them any less. While having my favorite team cause these enormous failures for said hated franchises is 10 times better, I still love watching them lose to other franchises. I've seen the Jets knock the Patriots out of the playoffs. I've seen the Nets knock the Celtics and Knicks out of the playoffs, but I'll take these moments any way I can get them. So naturally when the Phillies fail to meet even the most reasonable of expectations, I'm over the moon with joy. Phillies fans can say whatever they want to me about how the Mets are no where near as good as their team, and they would of course be right. It doesn't mean I can't thoroughly enjoy their loss.
