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The Honolulu Advertiser
Updated at 1:41 a.m., Friday, November 14, 2008

MLB: Fans still hungry for Phillies' stories

By Sam Donnellon
Philadelphia Daily News

The Web hits just keep coming. The stores just keep getting hit. Two weeks have come and gone since the Phillies paraded down Broad Street and still we are not saturated, still we want more, more, more.

"What do you have for me?" the editor asks.

"I could write about Westbrook's injuries," I say. "I could write about the Flyers and John Stevens and all that stuff about sitting Scottie Hartnell the other day. The Sixers had a big win in Toronto . . ."

"Got any more Phillies?" he asks.

"I have a few anecdotes left," I say.

"Bring 'em on," the editor says.

HAWAIIAN FLYIN' SOLO

Three hours before the resumption of Game 5, Shane Victorino was the lone Phillie in the dugout, practically bouncing off its walls.

"Couple knocks, couple runs, and we end this," he said.

"I am not getting on a plane tonight."

At the time I thought it was the idle chatter of an anxious athlete. But it was more. With Victorino it is always more.

"He didn't pack," a clubhouse guy says a few minutes later. "Not one thing. He just came to the park in the clothes he had on."

Joe Namath guarantees championships. Mark Messier, too. Victorino did them one better. He bet his clothes, right down to clean underwear.

CELESTIAL MAGIC FROM TUG

Robert Griffin, 50, an attorney from Marlton, N.J., took his youngest daughter Patricia to Game 3 of the World Series. That's the game in which Tug McGraw's son, country singer Tim, subtly sprinkled his father's ashes on the pitcher's mound before the game.

When the rain-delayed game began, Tim and his half-brother Mark sat directly behind Griffin in seats behind home plate. For Griffin, a former Mets fan before his three children saved his soul, this was the ultimate.

McGraw was a huge part of his childhood.

Now he would be a part of his daughter's as well.

But wait ... It gets better. In the eighth inning, Chase Utley fouled a ball off the facade directly above them. The ball ricocheted back into the hands of Mark McGraw, Tug's 32-year-old son.

McGraw handed the ball to 11-year-old Patricia Griffin. "He said that's what his father would have wanted him to do," Robert Griffin said. "You have to believe that ball meant a lot to him."

Signed by Mark, the ball now sits in a prominent shrine at the Griffin household. "She slept with it that first night," said Griffin.

"God bless Mark for reacting that way."

SECTION 307

One positive aspect of the rain-extended World Series games is that it bonded entire sections of Citizens Bank Park. People waited out the rain underneath their seating sections, conversed, even traded e-mail addresses by the time Wednesday rolled around.

Section 307, high and just to the right of the rightfield foul pole was one such place. Over the four days of baseball, people switched seats with each other, sat with each other, and above all, urged each other on.

"How many outs left?" one fan screamed as the last two innings unfolded Wednesday night, and the entire section shouted right back the number.

My 17-year-old was up there with three friends. On their way to the game, they spoke of making their way down near the Phillies dugout when the Phillies won.

They never did.

"It would have felt like we were abandoning everybody," he said. "We got to know each other so well, it was more fun to be up there."

A PHILADELPHIA STORY

This one comes from Lancaster. On the morning of the parade, a father and son boarded an Amtrak train bound for Philadelphia. Like every other train that day, it filled immediately. Like every other train, an announcement was made that no more stops would be made until Philadelphia. There, arrangements would be made to return those who needed to get off sooner.

Four businessmen who would otherwise have missed a key meeting convinced Amtrak to make one exception, a quick stop in Paoli. There, a door was opened, the men squeezed out, and a platform full of people were waved away from the departing train.

As it slowly pulled from the station, many on the platform expressed their displeasure by aiming middle fingers toward the passengers already on the train.

Many inside the train returned the gesture in kind, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Warm and fuzzy? Well, no.

But definitely Philly.

LIDGE'S 49TH SAVE

Here is yet another reason to like Brad Lidge. As Game 4 of the National League Championship Series reached the later innings in Los Angeles, the wireless capabilities in Dodger Stadium shut down. Filing via alternate methods, I made it down to the Phillies locker room after Lidge had spoken to the media.

I started to explain. He cut me off. "Sure, no problem," he said, and stood, still in uniform, as I asked my two questions. A crowd developed behind me almost immediately however, and by the time I headed back upstairs to update the column, he was immersed again.

I apologized again when I saw him next. And again, he said, "No problem."

I'd like to clone the guy except for one thing:

The Mets are in need of a closer.