Philadelphia Phillies Retro Scorecard Recap: August 27, 2001

On this date 19 years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks.

I’m digging into my bin of old Philadelphia Phillies scorecards for the final time this year, to bring you a look at a game between the Phils and the Diamondbacks played at Veterans Stadium on August 27, 2001.

Aside from my normal musings, this particular game sticks in my mind because it would be the last Phillies game I attended before our world changed forever just 15 days later on September 11, a day that none of us will ever forget.

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On this Monday night however, the Phils are concluding a 4-game series with the D-Backs after dropping two of the first three games. So far, the highlight of the series has been Tomas Perez and the most painful strikeout ever in the Phils’ lone win. To this point, 2001 has been a revival of a season for the Phillies, with the team sitting just two games back in the NL East and very much in the thick of the playoff race. Given that, the fact that only 18,303 people bothered to turn up at the Vet on this night is pretty sad.

Robert Person is taking the hill in an attempt to earn a series split for the Phils, squaring off against the very underwhelming Albie Lopez. Each team goes down meekly in the first, but they trade runs in the second courtesy of a Reggie Sanders home run for Arizona and an RBI double by Travis Lee for the Phils. Lee is having a pretty decent first full season in Philadelphia after coming over in the Schilling trade a year earlier. Maybe this deal won’t end up being so bad. (Spoiler: not really.)

Person and Lopez continue a surprising pitcher’s duel, and the game gets all the way to the bottom of the sixth, still tied at 1-1. Doug Glanville leads off the inning with a double, but it looks like he’ll stay at second after Bobby Abreu and Pat Burrell fail to advance him. Leave it up to Marlon Anderson, though, as he shoots one through the hole on the left side to score Glanville, then moves up to second on the throw home. Anderson then steals third base and comes around to score on an RBI single by Kevin Jordan, who’s in the lineup for Scott Rolen on this night. A real nice job by Anderson to create that extra run. Is there anything this guy can’t do. (Spoiler: Yes. Plenty.)

So we head to the seventh inning with the Phils up 3-1, and Robert Person is dealing. He works around a hit from future Phillie David Dellucci to strike out the side in that inning, and then gets through the eighth with relative ease. He’s done after 118 pitches. What a performance. I’m sure that “Person’s People” or whatever his dumb fan club in the upper deck was called is thrilled. At any rate, with a two-run lead headed to the ninth, you know what that means.

It’s Jose Mesa time.

Mesa allows a leadoff single to Mark Grace, of course. But he buckles down to get Sanders and Dellucci. The last hope for Arizona is this night’s requisite “guy who hung on forever”, pinch hitter Greg Colbrunn. It takes seven pitches, but Joe Table blows him away to end the ball game, securing a 3-1 win for the Phillies and bringing them to within a game of the Braves for first place. It’s going to be an exciting final few weeks.

The Phils would hang in the race until the end, but they would ultimately fall short of their playoff goal in 2001. The D-Backs, on the other hand, clearly used this loss as a motivator to power through the stretch and win the World Series a few months later on the strength of their two aces, as well as Luis Gonzalez’s completely legitimate 57-homer season and cheapest walkoff hit ever. Well, cheapest until 2008.

Come back next baseball season as I bring you even more journeys into semi-recent Phillies history. I know what you’re thinking; and yes, I still have more of these scorecards.