For 25 years, this is as close as Philly's been to championship

IN THE 25 YEARS since the Sixers paraded down Broad Street to a stadium that no longer exists, two Philadelphia teams have been in a single game where victory meant a championship - the Flyers in the 1987 Stanley Cup finals against Edmonton and the Eagles in the Super Bowl against New England in February 2005.

And you know how those games turned out. You know how the 1993 World Series ended. And the 2001 NBA Finals. And the 1997 Stanley Cup finals. Those teams never got to a deciding game.

Now, these Phillies, a team searching for an identity on Sept. 11, a team their own manager admitted seemed to missing some essential ingredient, have a chance to win one game tonight to deliver this city's elusive championship.

Not that anybody wants to think beyond tonight, but the Phils actually have three chances to win one game. Which is one more chance than all those Philly teams have had since Moses, Doc and Mo completed their sweep of the Lakers in the Forum.

And none of those teams had anything like the hottest pitcher in baseball going for the hottest team in baseball. Cole Hamels has been great. The Phils have been great since they swept the Brewers in that series starting Sept. 11, going 13-3 down the stretch and, after beating the Rays, 10-2, last night, are 10-3 in the postseason - 3-1 vs. Milwaukee, 4-1 vs. Los Angeles and now 3-1 vs. Tampa Bay.

They probably could have saved last night's eighth-inning four-spot for tonight, but maybe it just means the hitters are getting hot just in time for the biggest moment of their baseball lives.

Could it be? Could it finally be?

Look, Joe Blanton is now hitting home runs, the first by a pitcher in the World Series since 1974. The eighth- and ninth-inning exacta of Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge is just about unhittable. And when Ryan Howard took Andy Sonnanstine's 84th pitch high into the night air - as the ball kept rising and heading to the leftfield seats, as the game was broken wide open - it was hard not to think back through all those years, the few close calls, the championships deferred, the waiting and the wondering.

Nobody in this town should be overconfident, but the stage is set like it has not been set before. Beyond all that, there is this. Even though the Rays were slight favorites to win the World Series, the Phils have been the better team. Despite what you may believe, there are no teams of destiny. There are just teams that play better than other teams. And when they do, they win. They even win the last game.

Jamie Moyer has the perspective to make no assumptions. He does not look beyond the next pitch.

"It's just about the next game, the next inning, the next pitch," Moyer said when asked about the anticipation of what could be.

Moyer does not allow himself to think of what could be, not while his team is in the middle of all this. Are there ever moments when he thinks about it?

Not during this run, he said.

But, Jamie Moyer said, there have been a few times in his life when he has allowed himself to dream about how it might feel to win that last game.

The Rays hit an American League Championship Series record 16 home runs against the Red Sox. They have hit three against the Phils, all solo. As good as the Rays were against the mighty AL and as wonderful and surprising as their come-from-nowhere season has been, the Phils, playing with supreme confidence, look like a team that has met its time.

But they don't give away championships. Not in any town, but especially not in this town. Twenty-five years ago, Barack Obama graduated from Columbia, Ronald Reagan was midway through his first term as president and this city was not far removed from two Stanley Cups, a World Series victory and that Sixers championship.

Back then, championships seemed more a civic right than a privilege. Now, they just seem like something that happens somewhere else. Really, Boston has had nearly as many championships (six) this decade as Philly teams have had championship-round appearances (seven, three Flyers, two Phils, one each Sixers and Eagles) since 1983.

If you are guided by fates and believe in sporting gods, you might think the Philly teams have been somehow cheated out of what was rightfully theirs. If, however, you are a sporting realist, you know the deal. None of the teams over the last quarter century has been good enough. In the end, you are what your record says you are. You get what you deserve. You get to the final round; you never have an easy opponent.

The Rays won the American League East, the most stacked (by cash) division in sports. They beat a good White Sox team in the division round. They survived a fifth-game meltdown against Boston to beat a really good Red Sox team in the ALCS. The Rays are definitely not an easy opponent.

"They Rays are a really good team," Moyer said. "I don't know if we have seen the best of the Rays yet."

This time, however, it does not appear to be about the other team. It very strongly appears as if it is about the team from Philadelphia, the team, like those Flyers and those Eagles, that needs one more win for a championship. Those Philly teams were not favored. This Philly team was not favored. But it is now. And it should be.

The kid pitcher with all that promise has been unbeatable in the postseason, taking the big moments he has always wanted and making them his own. Tonight, Cole Hamels will pitch for a team that engendered little but apathy just a decade ago while playing before acres of empty blue seats in what is now a parking lot and a city that can hardly remember what this feels like and desperately wants to find out. *