I’d always run with the underdog team. Rooting for the team that the national commentators seemed to root against. In the Fall of 2023, I got to feel for a brief moment in time what it must have been like to root for the Detroit Red Wings of my childhood.

After beating out the Marlins in the wild card series, for the second year in a row, the Phillies had beat the Braves in the NLDS. The best team in baseball. I was at Citizens Bank Park in 2022 with my two sons when we had clinched then. And in 2023, for the second year in a row, I was there to see it happen again.

Next up: the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was a different feeling heading into this series. The Phillies seemed unstoppable. We couldn’t seem to hit a ball without it flying past the outfield into the stands. We had scrapped and played smart baseball to advance but suddenly the bats were absolutely on fire and the bell was ringing non-stop. They were breaking records every time they played.

If you were a fan, you weren’t just imagining it. Suddenly the national news coverage began a new phase of coverage of the Philadelphia Phillies. I started opening emails from MLB that had links to multiple articles praising the record-breaking Phillies. All of the major sports news coverage had jumped on the bandwagon too – the Phillies were on fire.

This series with the Diamondbacks had taken on a life of its own. The Phillies had emerged as an absolutely dominant team. There was no question that the team deserved to be there. Our leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber started the series with a homerun. The “any team but the Phillies” press had no choice but to acknowledge it. The Phillies were making magic.

As a fan, it felt different watching the Phillies rise to dominance during Red October in 2023. The Phillies were not the underdog. In no shape nor form.

And then, the series that had taken on a life of its own, headed into the second Act. The bats went cold. The Phillies stopped circling the bases with homeruns and started leaving base hits stranded at the end of innings. The scrapping that had happened earlier in the post-season had long been forgotten. The series that had begun as a sure thing, with fans feeling on top of the world, was ending with bewilderment and a sinking feeling in the gut.

A series that should have ended in four for the Phillies had been stretched out to a Game 7 and there I was back at the Bank, desperately hoping that the Phillies would wake up. The fans reported for duty, truly believing that their presence in the stadium could will the team to win the NLCS. I felt a sort of desperation to be there – present for it. And there I was, with a stadium filled with people that I have to imagine were feeling the same things – willing to spend several hundreds of dollars, even thousands, to bear witness to it.

Its all history now. The Phillies lost that night. They lost the game and the series. They wouldn’t be moving on to the World Series. Worse yet, they had lost to the Diamondbacks. Our bats had not only gone cold, they’d started swinging at every pitch. If the Diamondbacks threw a ball, we’d opt for a strike. My god, how could a series that had begun the way it had, end with thousands somberly leaving the Bank?

My winning streak from the stands had ended. The next morning my inbox resumed its regularly scheduled emails, littered with news about the absolute stars that would be playing in the World Series.

The thing of it is though, the world may have moved on, but there was something brewing in Philadelphia. The Phillies had gotten a taste of absolute domination. There was no going back to underdog now.