Great roundup, the only thing I want to add concerns the back-to-back knuckleballers the Phils faced in was it June? It really did at the time seem like that sent them into a six-week slump. Also, a personal anecdote: The Phils’ greatest deficit in the NL East came in July, when they were in St. Louis, @ 7 (7.5?) games. I happened to be in St. Louis for one of those games. It had been a hellish trip, my a/c had broken fifty miles in, and I was insane with sweat when we arrive, prompting a run to the bar so epic that at the ballpark I turned our entire section against me before the game even started (by ordering a Miller Lite from the beer guy, even though I used to live there, but, again, I was already stinking drunk) and I nearly walked in front of a moving SUV on the way back to the hotel. That next morning, hungover out of my mind and facing nine hours in an a/c-less car, the ESPN guys, who on a certain level played the harmonium of the gods to me, because I don’t have a TV, concluded, with last night’s loss, which I saw in person but barely remember, that the Phils were done. And I agreed. But they weren’t. They got hot. And that was that. That was so much that that even the three games in Atlanta everyone had so anticipated for months turned out to be meaningless, and yet watching them stomp those motherfucking Braves to the tune of a three-game lead transmogrified into six was one of the great memories of the year.

Go Phils. Nothing more to say. This hurts much less because we have ’08. And I still love you. Even Chase Utley. OK, not you, Chase Utley.