Philadelphia Sports: Top 10 athletes from last decade (2010-19)

No. 4: Roy Halladay

Much has already been said about the late, great Phillies pitcher, but I’ll try to stick to the particulars that garner him a spot in the top half of this list.

Roy Halladay‘s Phillies career actually began in earnest, as he came to the team in a trade from the Toronto Blue Jays on the same exact day that GM Ruben Amaro Jr. shipped Cliff Lee to the Seattle Mariners. It was seen as a “one ace in, one ace out” even trade-off, but little did we know the lofty heights which Halladay would reach in a Phillies uniform.

In 2010, he posted a league-leading 21 wins, which also made him the first Phillies pitcher to crack the 20-win mark since Steve Carlton in 1982. Oh, and he also tossed a perfect game. You know the one. It all added up to a very deserved Cy Young Award.

Philadelphia Phillies

His legacy was cemented forever that October as he no-hit the Cincinnati Reds in his first career postseason start. It seemed destined that Halladay would be the driving force behind a World Series win that year, but it was not meant to be.

In many ways, Halladay’s 2011 season was even better than his 2010, although he would finish second in Cy Young balloting that year. But that didn’t matter as much as the playoffs, which the Phillies entered as odds-on favorites.

That’s why it was utterly heart-breaking that Halladay’s final career postseason start would be a Game 5 loss to his former teammate Chris Carpenter, a game in which Halladay absolutely gutted through eight innings but lost 1-0.

The final two seasons of his career showed that Halladay was human after all, and he ultimately hung up his cleats after the 2013 season.

His untimely death in a plane crash four years later, as tragic as it was, somehow adds to his legend in the hearts and minds of not just Phillies fans, but those who love the game of baseball.

Halladay was the personification of what an athlete should be. He was, and is, a Hall of Famer in every way.