"They call it 'Red October', and yet again it looks like it’s gonna last less than one Scaramucci...."

There is nothing quite like October baseball. The dog days of summer have receded. What’s left is crisp fall days and nights that bring back more childhood memories than I can count (I still remember running home from school to watch the Bucky Fucking Dent single game playoff. 4pm start. Glorious blue skies. A perfect fall day. Boston stunned. Fenway cursed). Baseball is built for summer, but it’s the promise of spring, and the sprint towards Halloween, that makes these sometimes endless summers tolerable. A team can hide in July and August. It can flip the auto-pilot switch and get away with losing as many games as it wins. Ghastly slumps and sore arms and be buried in the lineup, or given short stints on the IL. Come October, the few left standing all have to stand naked.

So now the rest of you get to see the Phillies’ demons. Because why should I have all the fun?