Rich Hofmann: Rollins' moment is one for the ages

THIS IS WHY people get into my business, to witness history, to write about things that people will talk about forever. It is what happened late Monday night at Citizens Bank Park, beyond deadline, beyond easy comprehension.

Sports writers root for very few things, truth be told: fast games, exit-row aisles and late-closing restaurant kitchens being three of the more prominent. We also root for stories.

If you are fortunate, you will write about a handful of them that match what Jimmy Rollins did when he hit that ball into the gap in right-center. Anybody in this town who has watched the Eagles tiptoe to the edge before failing, time after time, knows just how rare this kind of thing is. The Phillies have "it," whatever "it" is. Impossible to define, the whole thing falls under the same standard set by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when he wrote in a famous opinion in a case about pornography: "I know it when I see it."

That is, I know the Phillies have it and I know the Eagles have not had it - which is less an indictment of the Eagles than an expression of amazement at what the Phillies have been doing.

Think about it: Ryan Howard and then Jayson Werth knocking in the ninth-inning, series-winning runs in Game 4 at Colorado on Oct. 12, and then Rollins bringing home Eric Bruntlett and Carlos Ruiz with two outs in the ninth inning on Oct. 19. For the Phillies, for Philadelphia sports, it really has been 8 days that shook the world.

Phillies manager Charlie Manuel says, "We play 27 outs; we think we can win. We're never down and that's a tribute to those guys." And if that all sounds like pap to you, like unquantifiable nonsense, not measurable enough, not intellectually rigorous enough, well, all that means is that you were not here on Monday night.

It has now happened only five times in major league baseball history, five times when a player came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth as the potential final out of a postseason game and managed to drive in the game-winning run. While it must be devastating to be on the losing side, you also can kind of understand when Dodgers manager Joe Torre says, "I just feel very blessed to have had as many opportunities to suffer in a lot of these games, but it's something I wouldn't trade for anything."