Recession? What recession? Someone needs to change all of the online passwords for my bank accounts to protect me from myself. I can’t help but pick up souvenirs and publications devoted to the Phillies World Series victory.

This is totally justifiable. There is no telling when this will happen again. Next year? Perhaps. But a World Series win would hold different meaning next year. This year was about getting a huge monkey off the franchise’s, and this city’s, back.

Anyway, in my endless search for all things Phillies, I bought Sports Illustrated’s 2008 Commemorative Issue. It chronicles the entire season, has some great photos, and digs deep into all 3 of the playoff series this year. There’s also a list of who SI thinks are the Greatest Phillies of All Time based on position. We’ll dig into that one in a later post.

The first article is written by Michael Bamberger and is entitled “A Tribute: A Team Even Philadelphia Can Love”. I suppose Bamberger is a Philadelphian since he refers to Philly fans in his opening sentence as “Us”.

I don’t know much about Bamberger other than the fact that he created a bit of controversy a few years back when he injected himself into a sports story by narcing on Michelle Wie for a rules violation that got her DQ’ed from an LPGA event.

What I know about him now, though, after reading his article on Phils, is that he is either a completely lazy writer, or just has the most jacked up memory of the 1980 Phillies.

All because of 1 sentence in this article. And it annoyed me. Enough to dig into the facts to see how wrong he was.

We know what the out-of-town columnists do not. They’re stuck in 1993 (when a down-and-dirty Phils club won the National League pennant), in ’80 (when an arrogant team loaded with high-priced and imported talent won the World Series) and in ’71 (when the Vet opened, cracked and leaky from it’s first day).

emphasis added.

The 1980, by all accounts, had some personality issues, and there were plenty of egos on that team. Calling them arrogant? No complaints there. But to call them “imported talent”, is not even remotely close to reality. It’s so far off base, I wonder if Bamberger even knew which team he was referring to.

Let’s breakdown how completely mental this statement was.

Below is a breakdown of 27 Phillies that played significant time on the 1980 team. I looked at the number of consecutive years the player was on the team prior to the 1980 season.

The average years for the starting 8 was 5.8. On the 2008 Phillies, the starting 8 had an average of 3.9 years. Not including rookies, the 1980 Phillies starters averaged 4.6 years with the Phils. In 2008? 2 years.

Tug McGraw was in his 6th year as a Phillie in 1980. This year, Brad Lidge was in year 1.

The 1980 and 2008 teams are special in their own rights. The 2008 team was a great mix of homegrown talent blended with solid players obtained via trade and free agency over the last few years. The 1980 team was comprised of 9 players who were playing their 6th season or more for the Phils, along with several younger players who came up in the system in the late 70′s.

Certainly, the acquisition of Manny Trillo and the signing of Pete Rose for the 1979 season made a big impact on the team. But the notion that the 1980 team was full of high priced imports for the 1980 season is a complete fallacy, and makes it sound like we “bought” that World Series. Bullshit.

I couldn’t find any data online to support or refute Bamberger’s notion that the Phillies were “high-priced” in 1980. Most of the salary figures aren’t available prior to the mid to late ’80s.

Bamberger’s characterization of the 1980 Phillies sounds more like that of the 1983 “Wheeze Kids”, which included Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Gary Matthews, Bill Robinson and more.

Research done on baseball-reference.com.