I don’t pay much — well, all right, any — attention to baseball. In practice, this means for example that in the photograph at the left, if you masked the team names and logos, for all I knew I’d be looking at… gee, what are those other teams with red in their uniforms? Cardinals? (I hear they’re not in St. Louis anymore, right?) Red Sox? Braves? (Uh… Milwaukee? Atlanta? When did that happen?)

They are, of course, none of those other teams. They are the Philadelphia Phillies, 2008 last-game-of-World-Series edition.

Not only the city of Philadelphia itself, but within a wide circle around William Penn’s statue atop City Hall — into other areas of Pennsylvania, probably Delaware and Maryland — there is much rejoicing. Including South Jersey, my ancestral (and until 1990 or so, my real) home.

As of several weeks ago, I had a vague sense that the team was involved in something-or-other in the postseason. So I’m pretty embarrassed. (Well, not really. Just help me out here wouldja, I’m trying to save face.)

Here’s what a message from one of my siblings said, at 10:42 last night. (I myself had been asleep for an hour by then.)

THE PHILLIES WON!!!! OH MY GOD! Mom’s probably havin’ to have her heart checked! Can you believe it!!!

(I didn’t even know our mother ever even watched baseball, let alone to the point of rooting for someone. Football, heck yeah. But baseball?)

And then we have the following. This is from a nephew, recently transplanted from the East Coast to the West. The title over this blog post (time-stamped 12:40 this morning, presumably Pacific time and not Eastern) is, “And Nearly Three Decades Later…”:

BAM! The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions! Neither rain nor snow nor Bud Selig nor Joe Buck could stop the most efficient and charismatic team in baseball from claiming what was rightfully theirs. 28 years in the making, goddamn… CONGRATULATIONS, PHILLIES!!

More to come in the sober – but still glorious, because THE PHILLIES WON THE WORLD SERIES – morning. See you then!

I don’t know. Maybe I — or they — have some sort of rare mutant recessive gene.