The Phillies are the World Champs and if nothing else, it feels good to know that we were beaten by the team that won it all. Congratulations to the entire Phillies organization, including our Communications counterparts Larry Shenk, Bonnie Clark, Scott Palmer, Leigh Tobin, Greg Casterioto, and Kevin Gregg among others. This means that since front-office blogging began with Scott Reifert (Inside the White Sox in 2005…when they won it all) and now Phillies Insider, it’s destined to be our year in 2009, right? (Even the Red Sox have apparently started an anonymous front office blog earlier this year, though they didn’t have it for last year’s World Championship).

Actually, while I wish that really had a bearing on what goes on down on the field, I have to say that as I drove home today from our departmental offsite team building trip to Danny’s Farm, I was listening to the last inning of the World Series and then the postgame interviews and a few things jumped out at me. The first voice (albeit almost completely gone) to come on was Jayson Werth, who was a really good person who never really was healthy enough in Los Angeles to show his ability and I’m very happy for him and his family.

He said something in the postgame that was echoed by Charlie Manuel, Pat Gillick and almost everyone else when they were asked what the difference was between this year’s team and last year’s, which reached the postseason but lost in the NLDS. All of them said that it was the experience gained in last year’s playoffs that helped them win it all this year and that’s a very reassuring for our team, which gained some much-needed experience. We have a very busy offseason ahead of us but regardless of how it turns out, we’re going to have nearly a dozen players at the bare minimum who experienced the NLCS this year and will be better off for it.

Anyway, tonight is the official end to the 2008 season and the beginning of 2009. Free agents start filing tomorrow and decisions have to be made on players’ options, trade proposals and much more. Next week is the GM meetings, which don’t make as much news as the Winter Meetings, but a lot of the groundwork gets laid during that period of time.

So congrats again to the Phillies…here’s hoping they’re congratulating us a year from now.

P.S. Spoke with Andre yesterday and he said a new Arizona restaurant review is coming soon…