They were introduced up one by one and before the last Phillies player had received his National League Championship ring, the line stretched from home plate at Citizens Bank to first base and beyond.
Of course it did. The biggest cheers, the standing ovations, were reserved for manager Rob Thomson and Silver Slugger/Gold Glove catcher J.T. Realmuto and home run leader Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, who was serenaded by the usual "M-V-P! M-V-P!” chants and first baseman Rhys Hoskins, on crutches after suffering a season-ending knee injury during spring training.
Those weren’t the players Thomson referenced before Sunday’s series finale against the Reds, a game that capped the celebration of their 2022 World Series run.
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“So many people contributed. As I said in my initial meeting with the players, Michael Plassmeyer comes in the last day of the regular season. Gives us six innings and saves our bullpen for the playoffs,” the manager said. “If he doesn’t do that, do we beat St. Louis? I don’t know.
“Chris Sanchez gave us 46 innings out of the bullpen last year. Bailey Falter, who’s here right now. But when (Zack Wheeler) went down really held our rotation together and pitched great. There are so many things that happened during the course of the year that all those guys, it doesn’t matter how much they played or how well they played, they contributed in some way and they need to be here. They earned it.
“It took us 56 players last year to do it. It takes an entire organization to do something like that. It’s important.”
Demonstrating that that’s not just lip service, the Phillies arranged for Triple-A Lehigh Valley to play a doubleheader Saturday so the IronPigs players who were on the roster last season, including Plassmeyer, could be honored Sunday in Philadelphia.
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One cool touch: A small circle of leather from a game-used clinching Game 5 baseball was inlaid into the ring under a replica of the NL championship trophy. “That’s the part that really grabbed me,” said owner John Middleton. “Unbelievable. That’s very special.”
The Phillies logo is in red, superimposed over a blue Liberty Bell, set off against a silver background.
The most striking things about the rings, which are made up of a total of 668 diamonds, red rubies and blue sapphires, is their size. They’re about twice the size of the team’s 2008 World Series rings and make the 1980 world championship rings look like a high school graduation ring.
But Middleton has already thought about what an even bigger future World Series ring would look like. “Ring inflation has continued,” he said with a shrug. “We were looking at it and I said this (2022 ring) is a significant moment. It’s our eighth (pennant). So this is not something that happens all the time. So we wanted to to be special.
“But I said to (the ring designer) you’ve got to look at this and tell me that if we win the World Series, we can have an even better ring. We’ve still got room to grow.”