Thursday, October 7, 2010

Life goes on

It's been a week since we said goodbye.  Each day gets a little easier but sometimes the thoughts are overwhelming and I still get sad.  That's okay. 

To make life a little easier on us the Phillies started their 4th post season run last night.  And start it they, or should I say Roy 'Doc" Halladay, did.  We witness something last night that has only ever been done once before.  It was a clinic on how to pitch, it was a performance for the ages - it was priceless.

I can't justify what we watched with my own words so I am stealing an article by Lee Russakoff and posting parts of it here:


The line: 104 pitches, 27 outs, no hits, one walk.
The second no-hitter in postseason history. Second. Ever.
My generation has never seen anything like this. We will almost certainly never see anything like this again. Roy Halladay just gave us all the best pitching performance we will ever see.
Whether we were one of the 46,411 at Citizens Bank or one of the millions watching on television, we knew we were watching something special from the outset.
How did we know? We knew because Roy’s stuff – all four pitches – looked nasty. We knew because his location was as close to perfect as any human being can ever get. And we knew by the look on the Reds’ faces as they walked back to their dugout.
Those faces … every one of them … were broken
The Reds knew what they were facing. They saw what we all saw. They knew their resistance was futile.

Doc threw 25 balls all night. 25 balls in nine innings. Edison Volquez threw 24 in 1.2. Of the 28 Reds batters that came to the plate, 25 saw first-pitch strikes.
There was only one hard hit ball all night. One. Pitcher Travis Wood of all people, hit Halladay hard the other way. Jayson Werth made a nice play. That was it.
There was one walk. One. Jay Bruce took an 0-1 pitch that could have been called a strike but was called a ball. Halladay lost a couple of pitches after that and walked Bruce. Nearly one-sixth of all the balls he threw all night he threw in that at-bat.
"It's surreal, it really is,'' Halladay said after the game. "I just wanted to pitch here, to pitch in the postseason. To go out and have a game like that, it's a dream come true."
"It was a lot of fun. It’s just one of those special things you’ll always remember."
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly the point.
For Halladay, for his teammates and for every baseball fan who witnessed it, this is a game we will all always remember. It sounds corny, but Halladay gave us a gift Wednesday night. These iconic moments in sports come around once in a generation. We all owe Roy for this moment. We owe him for a memory we will be telling our children’s children about.





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