The fate of the free world depends on the Phillies

I've quite enjoyed the 2001 through 2008 baseball seasons. Aside from three SoxandPhils World Championships, the era marked the end of the drug- and money-tainted Yankees dynasty. {I'm not so sure you should be throwing around team drug accusations, Greg, but continue.}

I remember the end vividly. Christine and I were watching Shrek in my apartment. I didn't want to watch the game, figuring the Yankees were going to win. She convinced me to turn on the 9th inning, just in time to see Mariano Rivera blow it. There would be different Yankee killers every year - Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, CC Sabathia, to name a few - but the results were the same.

The Yankees, once fueled by mystique and aura, were now nothing but chokers.

This year, it appears as if M&A have returned. But the Phillies have their own mojo, and it will be up to them to make sure the Yankees championship drought continues. I believe they are up to the mission. The fate of the free world depends on it.

Meanwhile, here's the SoxandPhils primer on the PhilsandYanks World Series.

A year ago, I compiled a roster of players who appeared for both the Rays and Phillies. The Rays had just completed their 11th season and didn't have much of a pool of players, so I had guys playing out of position and couldn't fill out a bench.

The Yankees have a slightly longer history book, so I had a deeper roster to work with, but there were surprisingly not too many clear-cut examples. Here's a quick roster I compiled with help from baseball-reference.com. I didn't exhaustively research it, so I'm sure you'll be able to pick apart my choices (there's a few names I never heard of before - I tried to find players with significant time on each team) {basically, he picked people I heard of or those with fun names, like Chicken Hawk}:

C-Bobby Estalella
1B-Babe Dahlgren
2B-Mariano Duncan
3B-Charlie Hayes
SS-Dale Sveum
OF-Ruben Amaro Sr.
OF-Johnny Callison
OF-Bobby Abreu
DH-Oscar Gamble
C-Deacon McGuire
IF-Nick Etten
IF-Bill Keister
OF-Ricky Ledee
OF-Hersh Martin
SP-Al Orth
SP-Jon Lieber
SP-Shane Rawley
SP-Cory Lidle
SP-Terry Muholland
RP-Tom Gordon
RP-Jim Konstanty
RP-Sparky Lyle
RP-Paul Qunatrill
RP-Felix Rodriguez
RP-Jason Grimsley
Announcer-Jay Johnstone

Other notables: Miguel Cairo, David Dellucci, Mike Easler, Kevin Elster, Sal Fasano, Chicken Hawk, Rex Hudler Pete Incaviglia, Travis Lee, Kenny Lofton, Danny Tartabull, Mark Whiten, Todd Zeile, Marty Bystrom, Joe Cowley, Al Holland, Charles Hudson, Jeff Juden, Jim Kaat, Mark Leiter and Matt Smith.

Everyone knows this is a rematch of the 1950 World Series and that the Phillies are trying to avenge that sweep. I have no memories of that, but I do remember the first time they hooked up in the regular season.

It was September 1997 - a time before I knew Christine, and Curt Schilling was just a player the Red Sox once traded for Mike Boddicker. The Yankees were cruising toward the playoffs and the Phillies were headed for last place. I expected a drubbing but watched anyway. Curt struck out 16 in eight innings to start a three-game sweep.

Since then, it's been relatively even, and the Yankees hold an 11-10 edge in the 21 regular season matchups the teams have played. This year, the Phillies took two of three despite two blown saves from Brad Lidge. Brett Myers won the first game; Lidge lost the second while Fox dubbed a random fan John Mayberry Sr.; and the Phillies won the finale 4-3 in the 11th, but it felt like a loss because Lidge blew a strong performance by Cole Hamels.

I think I'm done with the history lessons. I only have one unanswered question for the future: Who will be more irrational this week, Christine in her bias for the Phillies or me in my bias against the Yankees?

Go Phils!

Look back at 2008: Oops, almost forgot about this little feature, so there's one more history lesson today. On this date, Christine pretty much predicted Joe Blanton's home run in Game 4, and it was starting to sink in that the Phillies were probably going to win the World Series with us in attendance.