They were all there, with his parents, with his sister, watching Jamie push back the clock one more time, or perhaps more appropriately, trick it with a late-breaking offspeed pitch. And they were all there afterward, soaking in the clubhouse atmosphere as he soaked up errant spray from his extended family, the ones wearing soppy uniforms.
"For them to be here, to be a part of this,'' Moyer said as he pulled 4-year-old son McCabe into his arms, "I mean, it's awesome. This is something we'll talk about forever.''
Well, maybe not McCabe. Then again, Dillon was 6 when his father helped the Mariners make the playoffs in 1997.
"I can still picture it,'' Moyer's eldest said amid the clubhouse craziness. "It was just like this, but I understand it a lot more now. How hard they work just to get to this place.''
It's a message Moyer tried repeatedly to convey yesterday as media swarms came at him after his 5 1/3 innings of near-shutout pitching helped the Phillies to their first division title since 1993. It's a message he has tried to convey to his teammates as well, ever since he joined them in a 2006 trade-deadline deal that has to go down as one of Pat Gillick's best ever.
Not just because of yesterday. Not just because of the injury-free season Moyer completed with such a flourish, holding the Washington Nationals to five hits and one unearned run as his teammates squeezed out a single run in the first and two more in the third.
But because of what he has been to this team when he isn't pitching, cajoling calm out of young arms like Kyle Kendrick, painting the picture to his kid's-stuff teammates of what this town looked like when he was a teenager and the Phillies won the whole enchilada in 1980.
