Philadelphia Phillies: Top-10 moments from 2008 World Championship run

Utley gets Phillies on board in World Series game one

The Phillies went into Tampa Bay as underdogs to start the 2008 World Series. As game one got underway, the crowd at Tropicana Field was as raucous as could be, and the Phillies needed something early on to quiet down the crowd.

Well, who else to do that, then the Phillies most consistent player in Utley. In the first inning of game one, Jayson Werth worked a walk off of Scott Kazmir, then Utley stepped to the plate to face Kazmir.

With Werth on first, Utley worked the count to 2-2, then Utley took a 92 mile per hour fastball right down the middle and crushed it well into the right-field seats. It couldn’t have been a better start for the Phillies, and as Joe Buck put it, “it’s a good start of the Phillies.”

The Phillies added one more run later in the game, and that was enough support for Hamels, who threw a gem, earning the win in game one. Utley’s home run was the difference in game one and set the tone for not just that game, but for the entire series.

That was Utley’s first of seven career home runs in the World Series. He had two in 2008, and then remarkably added five in the Phillies World Series appearance in 2009.