Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 8.15.10 AMThat was the best game of the year, and it isn’t really even close. The Underlying Subplot Game. Those things abounded: Will Dom Brown hit a home run? Will he get a fastball to the neck? Will he slap Ricky Nolasco with his dick just cause he can? Will Bob Davidson make it out of CBP alive? Will the booing ever stop? Will turkey bacon die as a result of Charlie’s strange managing that forced him to sprint in from the bullpen without having enough time to take so much as a warmup swing? Will the most generic baseball player on Earth tie it in the 10th and win it in the 11th with an improbable walk-off slam?!

No. No. He would have if he could have. Not sure. No. No. YES.

I offer you now the calls of Scott Franzke, Rickie Ricardo and TOM MCCARTHY I GO AUTOMATICALLY INTO SCREAM MODE ON WALK-OFF GRAND SLAMS WHEN SOMEONE WINS IT… for the Phillies:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/95529686″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Winners.

But this game became a winner – win or lose – in the eighth, when Ben Revere was called for interference on a double-play ball. Here:

Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 8.34.19 AM

Yeah no. Michael Young, who had been safe at first, became the second out of the inning.

The reactions from Revere and Charlie Manuel were awesome (annnnd might lead to a fine for Charlie): [Phillies.com]

“What did I do?” Revere asked Davidson.

“You grabbed his leg,” Davidson replied.

“How?”

“You grabbed it?”

“Are you serious?”

Revere could shake his head and laugh afterward. The Phillies won.

“It’s ridiculous, but I enjoyed the fans,” Revere said. “I never heard that. Some of the coaches said they never heard an umpire get it like that. It was funny. I’m glad we won the game, because if that was the reason we lost, I’d be so mad. It was clear I didn’t grab his leg. I know he was standing right there and he said he did see it, so I was like, ‘You may need some glasses or something.'”

Said Manuel, who is nearly 10 years older than Davidson: “I don’t know what he was seeing. Bob’s kind of getting a little old.”

[Video of those comments is after the jump.]

For the next two full innings, fans booed Davidson relentlessly. [You may know Bob– he’s the guy who tossed Charlie last year, and he’s also a douchebag.] Before every pitch. After every at-bat. Between innings. It didn’t stop. And that’s the reason Philly fans are the best. It won’t get written about by the national media (they’d rather talk about the time we booed Santa Claus or when we will boo Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb this September), but it’s exactly the sort of thing that sets us apart. Nowhere else would fans be able to spontaneously organize that sort of impromptu and unprompted response. It was reminiscent of the Burt Hooten chants in 1977, and the Brett Myers-CC Sabathia at-bat and Eva chants in 2008. No one swarms around a common enemy like Philly folks. Like Peter Griffin in Family Guy when he explained the thing that goes off inside every guy when someone touches their thermostat— that’s Philly folks with the boo. We just know what to do. Hell, I was sitting on my couch and my thing was going off. I just started booing shit– the walls, the sticky door frame, the dog (from Missouri – a Cardinals fan – so she just sat there panting and applauding politely). Everyone knew what to do. No one had to tell us, nature just took over. You won’t find that elsewhere– not in New York or Chicago or LA or Boston.

Thankfully, Dom Brown didn’t hit a walk-off homer in the ninth, because given the collective temperature in the ballpark at that point, the whole place may have burned to the ground if he did. Instead, the stage was set John Mayberry Jr. Like a plain-faced, able-bodied free agent signee in year seven of your MLB: The Show dynasty, Mr. Generic was able to leverage his 78 power rating to deposit a hanger into the seats in left-center to tie the game in the 10th. An inning later? He jerked a fastball over the fence in left. Game over. Pies and mermaids for everyone:

Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 8.11.49 AM

 Pretty sure this is the greatest moment of Gregg Murphy’s life

Video of Revere and Manuel talking about Davidson after the jump.

H/T to (@DC0LLINS)