Several, like Romero, remain stuck there.
And yet there is this overriding feeling of unfulfilled promise, expressed by every fan poll, expressed even by the manager when prompted. Too much was left on the table this season, or so goes the thought. This team, so often ripped for lacking urgency before winning the World Series last year, was back to its old bad habits again.
"I like to see us beat them to where we scare them," Charlie Manuel said last week - and that was after a victory.
The Phillies should be better than this, or so goes the thought. It was last season's thought, truth be told, and the thought the season before that and the season before that.
It's a grand illusion, a big lie bought and sold every spring when Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins show up to take their hacks.
Two MVPs, one who still might be. Pedro Feliz was supposed to add punch last year, Raul Ibanez did for the first few months of this year, and lately as well.
You are what your record says you are. Bill Parcells said it first, said it about football teams that play 16 games before the postseason begins. If it is true in the NFL, it is only more so in this 162-game ironman competition.
I heard Tim McCarver say the other day that the Phillies bludgeon you, but that's not really true either. Bludgeoning is 6-0 after two innings. It's working out walks like the Yankees of the late 1990s, or even that Phillies team of 1993, watching your opponents tire in front of you, watching them shift the weight on their feet as they wait out long innings.
