The Phillies, With Grace And Grit, Give The World More Than A Championship

LOS ANGELES, CA — Let another image define this era of Phillies baseball.

An eternity of seconds have passed since Orion Kerkering's errant throw home soared over J.T. Realmuto's head, allowing the winning run to score and clinching the Dodgers series win.

A violet sky is arced by fireworks. A sea of white and blue washes over the field. Towering stadium lights flash like a disco. The stands are shaking. Kerkering falls into a crouch, unmoving, his head down, the furious hopes of millions that had been suspended on the spin of his four seam fastball now shattered in an unthinkable way. Red October has gone out with the tide.

You'll hear about it forever. That's not the image.

The image is this: JT, mask tilted up, heading straight for his pitcher as though he'd broken a bone or tore a muscle. Nick Castellanos sprinting in from the outfield straight toward them, thinking, I can't let him be alone. Against the backdrop of hats and gloves tossed into the purpling twilight, the trio walk off the field together, Kerkering breaking into tears.

When they reach the head of the dugout, Rob Thomson is waiting for them. He puts his arms around Kerkering and speaks close in his ear for a few moments over the tumult.

The callous and the blind will dismiss this moment, this image, as sentimental. The insecure will call it weak. The wise see in it the meaning of it all, a meaning lost and forgotten in the haze of tragedy and the squalor surrounding professional sports.

Unlike a championship ring, what was displayed by the Phillies Thursday night had meaning not just for Phillies fans. And not just for baseball fans.

Meaning in sports, many will say declaratively, is only in winning. It's the thrill of it, others will say. But when pressed, they can rarely elaborate.

Worst of all is the notion that sports are just fun. Honest fans and certainly athletes will tell you how absurd that is. A common refrain goes "it's just a game." That's a cop out. It's really not. Time, money, spirits, lives are fully exhausted in this pursuit. It carries tremendous meaning, from youth sports through high school and college and on to the professional stage. Belittling it misses the point.

Of course, sports are about winning. But just as they transcend the somewhat silly connotation of being merely "fun," and the simplistic adrenaline rush of a "thrill," they also transcend the reductive binary of winning and losing.

Sports are our answer to war. Our replacement for it. This is true dating back to the ancient Greek Olympics. All athletics sate some innate human wiring to soar and triumph physically, to assert ourselves as dominant, but most importantly and most fundamentally, to be the best we can possibly be. It's close kin to an evolutionary drive to survive in the wild.

While these associations may call up images of gladiatorial violence and feats purely of the human body, athletics at their best also embody the fire of our souls. So rarely in a neutered society do we have a chance to test the essence of everything we are against some indomitable crucible. The word loyalty, for instance, has become almost archaic in our modern world, so removed are we from the fundamental stuff of existence. The meaning of loyalty is not tested in so grand and demonstrative a manner as perhaps it once was, or as it is in other parts of the world that better touch the marrow of life.

Athletics let us see, when the crowd quiets, the dust settles, the lights go on, who we truly are.

"We win as a team and we lose as a team," Thomson said in a postgame press conference a few minutes after hugging Kerkering, who was shouldering the entirety of the blame.

After moving into the dugout past Thomson, Kerking slumped onto the bench, visibly emotional and defeated. He was instantly surrounded by teammates, several putting their arms around him and patting his back.

"That tells you what they're made of," Thomson said.

But it was more than just picking up Kerkering. It was also the type of baseball they played this week, their backs against the wall, down in a series 2-0, in enemy territory, against a defending champion LA superteam that possibly has more raw talent than any roster in baseball history.

How you lose tells as much about who you are as how you win.

While Philly fans and media were ready to give up after game one, the Phillies gave a lesson in resilience, something universally noticed by fans and analysts around the nation outside of Philadelphia. Philly pitchers absolutely decimated the Dodgers lineup, which features three recent MVPs. Several players made stunning, otherworldly plays on defense. While much has been made of how the offense went cold, the Phillies actually outhit and outscored the Dodgers over the length of the series. And for nearly four hours of 11-inning baseball on Thursday night, they stood toe to toe with the defending champions and came mere inches short of victory.

On display on the most dramatic stage, the Phillies gave a class in loyalty, camaraderie, ferocity, grace, grit. Humanity. Much more than just fun. And so much more than winning and losing.

The Dodgers swung hard and hit Philly twice in the mouth. Philly fans and media were sent reeling to the mat, bleeding, surrendering, booing, cursing their players they'd claimed to love days before.

Quietly, a team the city of Rocky does not deserve embodied the exact opposite.