PHILADELPHIA _ The 1993 Phillies' listening tastes leaned toward hard-rock Whitesnake so it's doubtful many were familiar with a classic Broadway musical whose plot, perhaps better than more-logical rationales, explains the wildly implausible summer when they delighted a city that recognized itself in them.
In Damn Yankees, Joe Boyd, a long-suffering Washington Senators fan, makes a deal with the devil, surrendering his soul to guarantee a pennant for the perennial American League doormats.
A quarter-century later, the improbable National League title won by the '93 Phillies, a collection of mulleted misfits who finished last in 1992 and would revert to sub-.500 existence in 1994, seems no less a Faustian bargain.
Whatever the reason, their magic expired with heartless abruptness at precisely 11:37 p.m. on Oct. 23, 1993, as Joe Carter's World Series-winning home run cleared the Skydome's left-field wall. If that was the start of some cruel Satanic payback, its balance remains outstanding.
The slew of troubles that subsequently befell those blue-collar Phillies commenced while Carter was still being mobbed by victorious Blue Jays teammates. Exiting the field, Lenny Dykstra paused to insult Mitch Williams, the erratic closer who surrendered the historic homer. Curt Schilling soon joined the intramural sniping.
Later, countless hardships would be piled atop those hard feelings. The best of the '93 Phillies would be tainted by legal, personal, financial or drug problems. And death would prematurely claim the team's core of leaders.
A look back at the 1993 Phillies on this 25th anniversary of their wondrous journey summons more than nostalgia for their late-inning comebacks, their game-saving defensive miracles, their chip-on-the-shoulder intensity and screwball antics. It also offers a sobering lesson on the ruthlessness of time, the transience of popularity, the frailty of heroes.
"The '93 team was a lot like the colorful A's teams of ... 1929-31," said Bill Kashatus, a local historian who has written books on both, the most recent 2017's Macho Row: The '93 Phillies and Baseball's Unwritten Code. "The colorfulness was a reflection of the protracted adolescence from which all those players suffered. They never grew up and when they retired it caught up with them."
The wild and wooly '93 Phillies' trouble-marred postscript contrasts so starkly with the lighthearted atmosphere that surrounded them that it's as if a Marx Brothers movie suddenly morphed into an Ingmar Bergman film. Because of that, it probably wasn't surprising that their recent 25th-anniversary reunion weekend turned out to be a letdown.
Only a small portion of the announced 31,175 Citizens Bank Park spectators were in their seats at the start of the June 10 ceremony honoring the team that once set Philadelphia attendance records. As enthusiastic public-address announcer Dan Baker tried to animate the small gathering, the aging '93 Phillies emerged one-by-one from a tunnel, glanced into broad swaths of empty blue seats and lined up along the third-base line.
The cheers were polite, but not what anyone who remembered the clamor of 1993 might have expected.
"It was disappointing," said Larry Bowa, the '93 team's third-base coach. "I thought (fans) related to that team a lot more. I don't think the guys were annoyed, but they definitely felt like it should have been a better turnout."
Afterward, the old Phillies retreated to a ballpark suite where, amid beer-fueled reminiscing, they tried to sort it all out. Some of the 20 returning players and assorted team personnel wondered what had changed. Where were the fans? Where was the love?
There were practical reasons, of course, for their lukewarm reception. Attendance is down throughout baseball. The Super Bowl-champion Eagles sucked most of the air out of the city's sports atmosphere. And many of the '93 Phillies' best-known figures were either absent or deceased _ manager Jim Fregosi, bench coach John Vukovich, pitching coach Johnny Podres, first-base coach Mel Roberts, Darren Daulton, Juan Bell, Dykstra, Williams, Pete Incaviglia, Mariano Duncan, Terry Mulholland.
"That's the bittersweet part," Bowa said. "You get to see the guys and that's sweet. But what's bitter is that so many of the guys that were instrumental in this weren't there to celebrate."
Kashatus also pointed out that, perhaps because of things like Dykstra's subsequent criminal troubles and Schilling's outspoken political incorrectness, the Phillies didn't promote the '93 celebration nearly as vigorously as August's commemoration of the 2008 world champions, an assemblage of Boy Scouts by comparison.
"The fact that we were missing guys like Dutch and Fregosi probably made it less special for the fans," said Mickey Morandini, the team's second baseman.
In the end, it was as if Doug Pederson, Nick Foles, Fletcher Cox and Malcolm Jenkins were missing from a 2018 Eagles reunion in 2043.
"Sometimes when you get together like that after a long time," right fielder Jim Eisenreich said, "you forget that reality happens in the interim."
