Phillies prove you actually can win for losing

PHILADELPHIA -- To win, they first had to lose.

Of course they did. This is Philadelphia.

These are the Phillies, still the only franchise in sports with 10,000 losses. Losses matter here. Losses are remembered, right along with the wins.

So when you ask when the Phillies became the Phillies, when they went from being the franchise that never wins to one that is a win away from a second straight World Series, naturally they mention the losses.

It was 2007, and the three straight playoff losses to the Rockies, some Phillies players say.

Or it was 2006, when the Phillies made a run at the National League wild-card spot, only to be eliminated (by the Dodgers) on the next-to-last day of the season.

"I've never been in our clubhouse where our team was that pissed off," general manager Ruben Amaro said this week. "They grew up a lot that year."

The core of the Phillies team we would come to know as champions was already in place then. Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins all played regularly in 2006. Shane Victorino did, too. Cole Hamels became a member of the rotation at age 22.

Pat Gillick was already the general manager. Charlie Manuel was the manager.

But the Phillies weren't yet the Phillies. Not the Phillies we know now, anyway.

It took the disappointment of missing the playoffs in '06. It took the disappointment of getting there but leaving so quickly in '07.

"We were shaking hands after we got beat by Colorado," Jayson Werth said. "Ryan Howard went around the room saying, 'Remember how this feels.' I think that stuck in all our minds. It did in mine.

"There was an empty feeling, and we didn't want to have that again."

Gillick had always believed that 2008 would be the year that the Phillies broke through, because he thought that would be the time that Rollins, Howard, Utley and Co. would be mature and experienced enough as major leaguers to be ready to win.

Even now, Gillick admits that the Phillies wouldn't have made the 2007 playoffs if not for the Mets' epic collapse. The '07 Phillies, remember, trailed the Mets by seven games with 17 to play.

The Phillies went an impressive 13-4 from that point on, but the Mets would only have had to go 7-10 to beat them. The Mets went 5-12, and went into the history books as chokers.

The Phillies lost to the Rockies, but used the lesson from that loss to become champions.

"We had unfinished business," Howard said, repeating the slogan that the Phillies carried through 2008.

It sounded good, but if "unfinished business" explains how the Phillies won last October, how do you explain what they're doing now?

Jimmy Rollins was there for the losses and now he plays a big role in the wins. (AP)

"It's just go in and handle your business -- and do it again," Howard said.

It obviously takes a special kind of team to win even once. But recent history tells you it takes even more to get back and do it again the next year.

Since the Yankees won the World Series three straight times from 1998-2000, then returned in 2001 and lost to the Diamondbacks, no team has even played in the World Series in consecutive years.

No team has repeated as National League champion since the 1995-96 Braves.

The Phillies are a win away from matching the Braves, five wins away from at least starting to approach what the Yankees did.

There's something special here, something that we started to understand last October, something we gained appreciation for over the course of this season, something we saw again with the comeback win over the Dodgers and the magic of Rollins' ninth-inning double off Jonathan Broxton in Game 4 of the NLCS on Monday night.

It's something the Dodgers haven't yet shown, something they either don't have or haven't yet discovered. It's more than just talent, more than just the ability to throw a ball or hit one.

"When I started out, I thought it was 80 percent physical and 20 percent mental," Gillick said. "Now, I think it's more like 40 or 45 percent mental."

Gillick became the Phillies' GM in November 2005. Howard and Utley and Rollins were already in the big leagues when he got here. But he saw quickly that changes needed to be made.

"I didn't like the energy level on this club," he said. "I thought we had to change the energy level. ... We needed a little more intensity, a little more get up and go."

Gillick won't say it, but they also needed to make sure that Rollins and Howard and Utley were the voices that mattered in the clubhouse. Bobby Abreu has gone on to be a very useful player on good teams with the Yankees and Angels, but because of his stature and his tenure, he was the dominant personality in 2005 with the Phils.

Trading Abreu to the Yankees in '06 allowed the young core to emerge as leaders. But it still took more to make the Phillies into champions.

It took losses, first at the end of the '06 season, and then in the playoffs in '07.

The losses will always be remembered.

Of course they will. This is Philadelphia.