It all comes down to this. The hopes for a world championship, and the season, rest upon the shoulders of one man tonight. An entire city, an entire fanbase’s dreams are depending on Cliff Lee tonight.
Lee will get the start tonight, at the last game of the 2009 season at Citizens Bank Park, in hopes of keeping the Phillies alive to fight one more day. He’ll have to face AJ Burnett and a Yankees team that can almost taste the champagne. The Phillies must win in order to send this game back to New York for a game 6.
The offense needs to wake up and get on the board early, and Lee needs to just continue exactly what he’s done all postseason: dominate. This is a team that has shown us we should never give up on them, never count them out, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep faith in them. Down 3-1 in a best of 7 series is difficult to overcome, especially when 2 of the final 3 games will be played in New York. But, this Phillies team has shown they can come back from seemingly insurmountable deficits. Remember September of 2007 and 2008…Remember some individual games this season. This team has that “never say die” attitude, but can they keep it up to fight another day? Time will tell, in less than 6 hours, actually.
I just don’t have it in me to write a recap of last nights game. That 8th inning got me so pumped up, and I just knew we were gonna come back and tie this series at 2 games. Then, as quickly as we tied it up, the wheels fell off and suddenly we were down by 3 runs facing Mariano Rivera with 3 outs left.
I don’t wanna get in to the talk about Brad Lidge or Cole Hamels right now. Once the season ends, I’ll get in to that. But this season isn’t over. We’ve still got 3 games to win, or 1 game to lose…we’ll know which one it is shortly.
Defend Broad Street 