Jim Thome hasn't played a game in Philadelphia in nearly 2 years. He was traded to the White Sox at the end of the 2005 season after back and elbow problems opened the door for Ryan Howard to win the NL Rookie of the Year Award. In that sense, things didn't work out the way either player or team had envisioned.
As Thome returns tonight for a three-game interleague series, then, it's natural to wonder. Was the 6-years-plus-an-option, $85 million contract that convinced him to leave Cleveland worth it?
"The reality is: It sure was in November 2002," Phillies president Dave Montgomery says. "And what I mean by that is we were still trying to establish an identity as a franchise. And in my mind, that moved us up several notches."
It's easy to forget, now that the Phillies have an average attendance approaching 40,000 per home game, what it was like back then.
In 2002, the Phillies had a losing record for the eighth time in 9 years. Attendance at Veterans Stadium was just more than 1.6 million, barely half what it was when they went to the World Series in 1993. They were well on their way to becoming an afterthought in the region.
That began to change when former general manager Ed Wade persuaded Thome, an Indians icon, to leave Cleveland.
When the book is finally closed on this transaction, the Phillies will have paid Thome $61 million; the White Sox are obligated for $24 million of the $46 million he was owed at the time of the deal.
In return, the Phillies got:
* Two superb years. In his first two seasons wearing red pinstripes, Thome hit 89 homers (including the milestone 400th of his career) and drove in 236 runs.
* Aaron Rowand, Gio Gonzalez and Daniel Haigwood.
* Instant credibility, both in the community and the clubhouse.
