Wheez Kids probably weren't really all that great, in hindsight a bunch of once-great washups going for a last hurrah (only Schmidt still had a lot left in the tank). Won only 90 games to take the division...by six games which says the division was very weak (the following season, the 5th and 6th place Cubs and Mets were 1st and second, respectively), then managed to outplay a Dodger team that they went 1-11 against during the regular season. That World Series was playing with house money. Orioles pitching was simply in the zone and had shut down a White Sox team with a powerful offense in the ALCS. But yes, aside from the clinching Game 5, every game in that WS was close. A break here, a break there and you never know. But, I didn't feel cheated like I did in 1993. And yes, the worst moment of the '93 WS was not Joe Carter, it was the 8th inning of Game 4. That is where we lost that series.
Funny how the '83 and pennants were ten years apart but those two WS were polar opposites--1983 was good pitching and no-so-good hitting on both sides while 1993 was a slugfest with poor pitching on both sides (notwithstanding Schilling's 2-0 gem in Game 5).
I was born in 1969 and came of age when the first golden age team was good. Winning Phillies baseball was all I knew and, after 1983, I was certain the Phillies would be back at it again and again and again. Oh well, the infinite wisdom of a 14 year old. Instead that was the exclamation mark at the end of the Phillies first golden age and a long 17 year drought--broken only by 1993--lay ahead. That World Series was also something of an exclamation mark for the Orioles at the end their long nearly two-decade run of success. I've heard from Orioles fans who bemoan how they thought that would be the first of many rings that Cal Ripken would win and how they've only enjoyed fleeting stretches of success since then.
