Phils Coverage Making You Cynical, Montco? Tuesday Win Restored Magic

Tony Cingrani’s face wrinkled through the mist and the rain. Fog was almost visible on the field, drifting over the dugouts and into the lower level of the stands, where but a few fans remained for the bottom of the ninth inning. Darin Ruf, in red and white, gently wagged his bat just over his shoulder like an axe primed to split wood.

Cingrani, a lanky lefthander, settled into the stretch position and looked down for a brief moment. Then he reared up and fired.

It was a moment made for the few fans who tuned to the game, bent an ear to the radio, turned the television on at the last second, a moment made for the fewer still who shivered in the rain amidst the cold, wet, empty plastic seats of Citizens Bank Park.

It was a moment in the making since the Phillies began riding a wave of inertia in the bottom of the eighth inning, when Ryan Howard doubled and Maikel Franco smacked a two run homer to tie the game, 4-4. Jonathan Papelbon retired one of the best hitters in the National League in Todd Frazier to shut down the Reds in the ninth. Then Odubel Herrera doubled to start off the bottom half of the inning, and Carlos Ruiz bunted him over to third.

It was a moment made for the fan because it put the fan in the wood cord of Ruf’s bat, in the yellow mud of third base which Herrera’s left spike trailed just off of, in the leaping heart of Ben Revere, awaiting his turn in the on-deck circle.

The pitch was up and inside. Ruf’s swing was inside out, and the ball almost came off his hands. Normally a power hitter who does not hit for a high average or a high contact rate, Ruf did something that Derek Jeter would do: he took a tough pitch and almost seemed to aim his swing, loping it just over the first baseman’s head to land in the damp grass in right field.

Herrera jogged home easily to score and seal the victory for the Phillies. The team erupted from the dugout and tackled Ruf as he rounded first base, hats and gloves flying, the quiet stadium roaring in their minds, a moment of sheer mania, a moment for the fans, and a moment in which the relentless cynicism of the media never seemed more irrelevant.