How the Phillies Can Win the World Series Without Algebra

It's October 1st, and with a wonderful sense of timing, playoff baseball has arrived in America. The weather's come along for the ride too, with forecasts calling for a temperature no higher than 60 degrees and perhaps a sprinkle of rain when Phillies star pitcher Roy Halladay takes to the mound at Citizen’s Bank Park at 5:00 p.m.

Our nation's pastime is back on its biggest stage, energized by a thrilling close to the regular season that saw the Phillies' first round opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals, roar through September to nip the Braves for the final playoff spot. And so the quest for the 107th World Series Championship begins, with the hometown Fightin' Phils carrying sizable pressure on their shoulders.

One bad thing about baseball in 2011? The absurd amount of speculation and analysis thrown around the sport's world, blogosphere, break room, and anywhere else someone is willing to chew on their gums and stare at the ceiling while their buddy spews out statistics.

Did you know the Cardinals are 6-3 against the Phillies this year? That in the 16 years since the wild card system was introduced, the team with the best record in baseball has only won the pennant twice? That no National League team has ever won the pennant when the country's yearly GDP growth is less than the batting average of the best player on the Florida Marlins? Well, I made the last one up, but you get the point.

Friday, former Inquirer writer and baseball guru Jayson Stark used 3,499 words and a semester’s worth of calculus classes to explain why the Rangers would beat the Phillies in the World Series. He prefaced the article by admitting he's usually wrong about this kind of stuff. Well it certainly isn't for a lack of trying.

On the other hand, Sports Illustrated writer Ben Reiter likes the Phillies' chances in their divisional series matchup with the Cardinals. Part of his reasoning? That the Cards have a 59 percent success rate at stealing bases, and the lack of small ball ability will kill them against the Phillies' superior pitching. A valid point I suppose, since baseball is, in fact, a game of numbers.

Wait a minute, no it's not. Baseball isn't a game of numbers. It's a game of inches! Baseball's main allure has always been its unpredictability. How a centimeter can make the difference between a pop fly that loses the World Series, and the homerun that wins it. That a baseball game is won by the players who play it, not the numbers they've compiled before it. You know what percent of players have pointed to the outfield, called their shot, and drove it over the fence? One hundred percent.

It's magic, not math, that brings pennants home.

The Phillies had that magic in 2008. Shane Victorino hammers a grand slam off of the vaunted CC Sabathia. Some guy named Matt Stairs launched a homerun so high into the atmosphere it damn near came down and hit him on the head during the championship parade on Broad Street. 78-year-old Jamie Moyer pitched six strong innings in a World Series game-- with a stomach bug that would have most people watching Monk reruns within 20 feet of the bathroom.

Baseball is about the players, and rewards those who emerge from the dugout, trot onto the field, take what's theirs, and walk off a champion.

To me, the 2011 Phillies have looked like a team full of those players since they took the field for the first game of the year, scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth, and walked off with a 1-0 record.

I don't think there's been a day when Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels haven't woken up hungry for eggs, with a side of World Series Championship.

So after about five hours of reading all of the speculation and mind-swirling numbers, fretting over one reporter's analysis of why the Phillies are doomed, and being lifted by another's magic bullet theory, I found this quote from Roy Halladay, and closed my laptop with a smile.

Said Doc:

"I heard a quote a long time ago, 'I came here to bury Caesar, not praise him.' I think it's true. We're all well aware of how good the team is. We obviously have a respect for what they've done and how they've played, but you have to be confident going in that you're going to be able to beat them."

Roy Halladay just quoted Shakespeare to describe his attitude heading into the playoffs.

Nothing is certain, and the Phillies aren't guaranteed of anything.

But one thing you can count on: if something stops this Philadelphia Phillies team from winning the World Series, it's most certainly not going to be an algorithm.