The 1969 Mets played .767 ball in September and then upset the Orioles in the World Series. The 2003 wild-card Marlins had a .692 winning percentage the final month, then rode the wave all the way to a world championship. The 2007 Rockies were so hot that it actually ended up hurting them. They dispatched their opponents so easily in the division and championship series that they endured a layoff of more than a week between games that mattered and couldn't recapture the magic when play resumed against the Red Sox.
So every bit of agita Phillies fans are experiencing while watching their favorite team stagger around like a bunch of revelers at last call is completely justified.
The thing is, though, that there are also a multitude of examples of teams shrugging off September swoons as if they were bad dreams.
The 2000 New York Yankees, for one, seem to offer some interesting parallels.
Like this year's Phillies, those Bronx Bombers were coming off successful seasons. They'd won the World Series each of the previous two Octobers. Like this year's Phillies, they had some older players. Like this year's Phillies, they appeared to be on cruise control.
But after winning on Sept. 2, they went 11-18 the rest of the way. They were outscored 111-177 in that span. And it got worse. Accompanied by screaming tabloid headlines, they dropped 13 of their final 15 including closing out the regular season being swept by the division's last-place and next-to-last-place teams, Tampa Bay and Baltimore.
Then, of course, they marched through the A's, Mariners and Mets to win another World Series.
