There’s a line from the film Hell or Highwater, the 2016 neo-western starring Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges, that feels pertinent ahead of tonight’s pivotal matchup between the Phillies and the Houston Astros. The monologue occurs at the end of the film, when Pine’s character, Toby has successfully evaded Bridge’s character, a Texas Ranger named Marcus, in a series of bank robberies that he did with his brother Tanner in order to provide a better life for his family. In the final scene, Marcus confronts Tobey – they both know that Tobey is guilty, but Marcus is unable to prove it. Tobey defends the robberies, which have costed both the life of his brother, Tanner, and Marcus’s partner, Alberto, with this: “I been poor my whole life. So were my parents, and their parents before ‘em…like a disease passed from generation to generation. And that’s what it becomes, a sickness…Infecting every person you know. But not my boys. Not anymore.”
While to some the Phillies inability to make it into the postseason may not seem as dire as breaking the pattern of generational poverty in an Oscar-nominated screenplay, to me and every other actual fan out there, it is. It absolutely is. Because for anyone who cares, who has sat through 11 years of postseason posterity, who can remember in the back of their mind what this team once was and what this team can mean to this city, it does not get any bigger than tonight.
For tonight, the Philadelphia Phillies are but one game away from absolution. A Phillies win or a Milwaukee Brewers loss, means the end of the second-longest playoff drought in all of baseball. It means the end of brutal September collapses, the end of being the doormat of the National League and the end of this wretched curse that has pervaded over this team for over a decade. For the past 11 years, the nostalgic memory of the glory days have hung over the Phillies like a storm cloud – everything they’ve ever done, every win, every loss, every record set has been held in comparison to once was. Now, tonight against the Houston Astros, they have the chance to lift the storm clouds from above their heads once and for all.
It’s why I have to believe that Phillies fans across the country must all be thinking the same thing: that tonight, come hell or high water, the Phillies will make the playoffs.
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