Written by David Murphy at Philly.com
They began trickling into the business district more than three hours before the parade. They were walking across intersections, standing in lines, sitting in cubicles inside offices: jerseys, T-shirts, caps, everybody dressed in all-Reds everything. Turns out Opening Day is a bit of a thing here in the Queen City, and as Joey Votto stepped into the box in the bottom of the eighth inning with the bases loaded, the home crowd finally had somewhere to channel all of that energy.
The Phillies? Well, you probably know how this one ended. If not, you can probably guess. But let’s start with the positive, because we have the rest of the season to wallow in the wreckage of squandered leads. For seven innings, the Phillies looked a lot like the kind of team that could end up surprising people who are picking them as the worst team in the majors. They got six solid innings out of their starter – Jeremy Hellickson struck out six, walked none, and allowed one unearned run in six innings – and a two-run home run from Freddy Galvis to take a 2-1 lead that lasted until David Hernandez took the mound in the eighth.
That’s when things took a turn in a direction that many feared was inevitable. The best you can say is that nobody got hurt; no batters, that is, because none of the pitchers the Phillies trotted out there seemed to have much of an idea where the ball might end up once they released it. The most concerning performance came from Hernandez, a hard-throwing 30-year-old entering his second season off Tommy John surgery on whom the Phillies are counting to fill the late-inning void left by the departure of Ken Giles.
To continue reading this article, click here.
