Book chronicles memorable Phillies season in poetry and prose

There’s just something about baseball that lends itself to the written word.

Its pace allows – even encourages – the observer to reflect on what just happened and what may come next. Its heroes – Babe Ruth and Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson – are not remembered as great ball players, but as giants of history, as much a part of American lore as pioneers or even presidents.

Indeed, entire volumes have been dedicated to single ball clubs – the ’78 Yankees, the ’56 Dodgers, the 1919 “Black Sox” – witnessed decades, even generations before, but able to be relived by anyone who bothers to turn the pages.

Now, thanks to author Steve Potter and a ball club comprised of equal parts steel resolve, burgeoning talent and a happy-go-lucky skipper who could do no wrong when the games meant the most – there’s such a book about our beloved Philadelphia Phillies.

Make no mistake, this is not the behind-the-scenes tell-all of Roger Kahn’s “October Men” – which chronicles the powder-keg that was that '78 Yankees clubhouse and how the club of aging superstars and a manager-gone-mad were able to win anyway.

Far from it.

“The 2008 Philadelphia Phillies: A Poetic Season” (AuthorHouse) is Potter’s ode to the ball club he lived, but mostly died with, throughout his 49 years as a baseball fan in Chester County, Pa.

It’s a page-by-page, game-by-game catalog of the astounding season where the Phillies went from being baseball’s laughing stock to its champions. From a team that just a year earlier made headlines for eclipsing 10,000 losses – more than any other professional sports franchise in North America – to the squad who ended Philadelphia’s 25-year-championship drought in convincing fashion.

It's by a fan, for the fan.

“I just had a really good feeling going into the season,” Potter said, explaining what compelled him to start capturing each game in verse. “When they went three-and-out in the playoffs to Colorado [the year before], [manager] Charlie Manuel had this confidence about him that things were going to be different the next year. And then when they went out and got [closer] Brad Lidge, I really got excited.”

Initially Potter, a Kennett Square native who lives in Downingtown, Pa., planned to keep the writings to himself, but was later encouraged to publish them after sharing them with longtime Philadelphia baseball writers Paul Hagen and Bill Conlin. Then, at mid-season, Potter began to maintain a real-time Phillies blog. Soon he realized that those blog entries, coupled with the poems, could collectively make for quite an artifact.

At times it was tricky keeping things fresh, since Potter was using the same players’ names time-and-time again.

And, he concedes, he never attempted to rhyme anything with Victorino.

“That was too hard,” he said, laughing. “I went with first names, or nicknames usually.”

An accountant by trade, Potter has no formal training as a writer, though he has written two books of poetry – one a personal reflection on family, faith and country, the other from the perspective of a ballplayer (he pitches in a 48-plus men’s league).

Potter boasts that he caught every inning of every Phillies game last year, recording games when he couldn’t watch live. During a business trip to Shanghai in October during the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers, Potter watched the games on his computer, using a device that allowed him to synch up to his television at home.

“During a presentation I was giving I had one of the games on and I kept getting more and more excited,” he recalled. “Some people in the room thought I was really into accounting terminology.”

Now, as opening day is upon us, Potter is writing again.

He doesn’t know what’s going to come of the 2009 season – repeating is no easy feat – but he’s planning to chronicle it just the same. And even if another title isn’t in the cards, he’ll never forget 2008.

“There are so many teams and so many professional athletes that are hard to root for,” he said. “But this team had such a good group of guys. It’s like I almost felt as good for them as people that they accomplished this as I did for fans like myself.”