Observations, insinuations, ruminations and unvarnished opinions . . .
TWENTY GAMES in 20 days, the final 10 in the hostile venues of Colorado, San Francisco and Los Angeles . . . Historically, that is "go home 5-5 with a big smile on your face" territory.
There ain't a smile big enough this side of Dave Montgomery to reflect the swagger (and a little amazement, I'll wager) the Phillies brought home after turning the road trip into a 9-1 tour de force.
Only the best road trip of that length in the cockeyed, 128-year history of the franchise. And it ended with the Phillies extracting themselves from a 6-0 hole in Chavez Ravine and pulling off a Houdini escape in a getaway, 9-8 victory climaxed by Ryan Howard's extremely sliced oppo-boppo.
Just as Howard's gamer was settling into the eighth row, some deep thinker sent me an email that began, "Howard needs to be sat down for 2-3 days . . . " Great call.
During a beat man's run of 21 years, I never missed a Coast trip. I finally checked out after the 1986 season, having covered 413 games in San Francisco, LA and San Diego - actually 420, counting seven games of pinch-hit duty in 1965 that ended with the Watts riots. Tack on another 7 weeks for winter meetings in LA, SF and SD, plus open dates, LCS and World Series duty, that's about 66 weeks of my life spent on U.S. 101, the 405 and the Pacific Coast Highway, checking in and out of the Ambassador in LA, where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, then the Wilshire Hyatt, where Paul Owens set a major league general manager record of two fistfights in 1 night with Phils farm director Jim Baumer. First the ubiquitous Jack Tar hotel in San Francisco, then the Union Square Hyatt, where Harry Kalas met second wife Eileen. It was the sprawling Town and Country in San Diego's Mission Valley where Phils TV producer Steve Silverman met his second wife, thanks to Randy Jones and Jim Kaat. Jones shut out the Phillies in a Saturday-night game that began at 7:05 sunset and ended in 8:32 twilight.
The swift-working lefthanders unleashed a lot of baseball folk on Mission Valley hours earlier than usual . . . with life-altering results in some cases.
Hey, it was tough work, but somebody had to do it.
The Phillies swept the Rockies in three, went 3-1 in AT & T Park, then took three from the Dodgers. But the 6-1 in LA and SF was not the Phils' best-ever Coast trip.
