PHILADELPHIA — The tee times and the family trips would come late for Nick Castellanos and his teammates last fall, just as they had the autumn before. Certainly, however, they didn’t come late enough. The Phillies had a 3-2 series lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Championship Series and would have two chances to finish them off at Citizens Bank Park.
But the pennant victory party would never come. It would be a seemingly outmanned Arizona team heading to the World Series. Flash forward to this May 23 afternoon at Citizens Bank Park, and appropriately, all those memories of that sudden NLCS failure are still with the Phillies.
As they should be. With that firmly in place Thursday, Zack Wheeler and a team full of happy hitters produced a 5-2 victory to complete a sweep of the Texas Rangers ..
. yes, the very team that ended Arizona’s run some seven months ago in the World Series. So for now, it’s all good.
The Phillies won yet another series, finished off a 7-1 homestand, have won six straight games and nine of their last 10 to fashion an essentially historic 37-14 record. The South Philly stats staff would duly note that this club just finished its best 35-game stretch (29-6) since that oh-so familiar Phillies team of ..
. 1892. And yet those 29-6 streakers of long ago would only finish that season at 87-66, fourth-place in the National League, and some 161⁄2 games behind those awesome Boston Beaneaters.
Let history record that was a real team n.
