November 6, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Hillers witness history with Phillies
by Jennifer Katz

Rob Lamb of Germantown (left) clutches his son Willy during a 7th inning stretch dance with the Phillie Phanatic. The Lambs were at both “halves” of the rain-delayed game five of the World Series.

When the city erupted last Wednesday night after the Phillies won the World Series for the first time since 1980 — the last championship any Philadelphia sports team has won (Sorry, Soul) — 21-month-old Willie Lamb was there celebrating. Willie and a very timely Halloween costume his paternal grandmother, Weetzie Soens, made him, turned the toddler into a local celeb, garnering a fair share of media attention and even scoring his family tickets to the World Series.

Soens had always made her five children Halloween costumes.

“Whatever they wanted, I would make and leave them at the bottom of the stairs on Halloween morning,” Soens said.

The family lived on Chestnut Hill Avenue for 21 years and the children attended Norwood-Fontbonne Academy. Her son, Rob Lamb, now lives in Germantown with wife and three children, Esse, Maren and Willie.

“I had an Elvis Presley costume all ready,” Soens said. “But I decided at the last minute to change it.”

It was a decision that turned out to be fateful for her son and his family.

“I went to the 1980 World Series when I was 7,” Rob said. “And ever since they started making this run, I was wanting to take my kids so badly.”

Rob said he and his wife watched Stub Hub, an Internet site for purchasing event tickets, as the Phillies advanced in the playoffs.

“It was too expensive,” Rob said of the escalating ticket prices.

At one point, he thought just he and his wife would go. Then his wife told him, it would just be him. They couldn’t afford it.

Soens, having finished the costume and anxious for her young grandson to wear it, put it on the toddler for an outing to the zoo.

“He got so much attention she started thinking,” Rob said.

Soens wondered what would happen if she took the toddler to Citizens Bank Park — would they somehow get tickets?

“’We’ll just go to the game and see what happens,’” Rob remembered his mother saying.

So Rob, his mother and Willie, dressed as the Phanatic, headed down to the ballpark. Rob knew that radio station 610 WIP was holding a contest, giving away tickets to the World Series.

“We were running late that morning,” he said. “So as we arrive, they give away the tickets. At the same time we heard that the Rays were releasing tickets at the box office.”

The trio decided to get into line, even though people had been camped out overnight, to see if they could perhaps purchase tickets to the game.

“As we are walking to the line, two women, who were dressed professionally, stop us to see the baby,” Rob said. “As we are walking away they tell us they work for Phillies ticket sales and to call them at 10:30 a.m.”

Rob said he called the number the women gave him for a half an hour before he got an answer. Then, they spoke to one of the women and were offered five tickets at face value. They had to sneak around the box office and into a lobby where they met the women and purchased the tickets.

The trio then had to go back outside to face the throngs of fans waiting in line.

“We’re standing there doing interviews with the TV stations, who are there talking to people about trying to get tickets,” he said. “And I have these tickets burning a hole in my pocket, and I couldn’t say anything because they had told us to keep it under wraps.”

After spending practically the whole day at the ballpark, the family returned home to figure out how to divvy up the tickets.

Soens wanted a ticket for herself and her daughter who helped make the costume, leaving just three tickets for Rob, his wife and their three kids.

It was not a hard decision. A plan was hatched. Children under two get in free at the ballpark, which took Willie out of the equation. So the night of the game Rob and his wife put their five year old in the Phanatic costume and carried her through the gates. No one noticed the switcheroo.

The seats were in the 400 level, the very top row behind home plate.

“It ended up being lucky,” Rob said. “Because the top row is covered so when the Noreaster moved in the kids were covered. But the fans were so nice they gave us blankets.”

Part of the original plan when the Phillies representatives offered the tickets, was to have the Phanatic dance with and take a picture with Willie in his costume. The rain sort of spoiled that the first night of Game 5, so on Wednesday, the continuation, Willie and his dad got to dance on the dugout with the Phanatic.

“They had arranged for the baby to dance with him, but I knew what would happen,” Rob said. “He danced on the dugout for two seconds, looked up at the Phanatic and started to bawl.”

So his dad went up there, scooped him up and danced away.

For Game 4 of the World Series, relative newcomer to the Hill Daniel Mueller and his wife, Wendy Lewis, were unlikely suspects to end up with a home run ball from the bat of Ryan Howard.

Born in Boothwyn, Delaware County, Mueller lived there until he was 10 before moving to South Carolina.

“One of my fondest memories is of my older brother taking me to my first professional baseball game at the old Vet,” he said.

Mueller and his wife moved to Chestnut Hill three years ago from Seattle. He also opened a law practice, Ironmark Law Group, on West Evergreen.

“We’d been to several games during the season,” said Mueller, a self-proclaimed huge baseball and Phillies fan.

“I always get tickets to the last game of the season,” he said. “Except last year I could only get tickets to the second to last game, and this year — even though I did get tickets to the last game — they ended up clinching it at the second to last game.”

This year, as the Phillies went all the way, Mueller and his wife got tickets to Game 4 of the World Series. Seated in the 100 level, section 103, row 15 to be exact, it turned out to be quite a night. It wasn’t the final game, but it was a key game. With the Phillies and the Rays having traded wins to start the series, the Phils were up 2-1 by Game 4 and many thought it would go to the Rays to keep the series even.

But that night was the night the Phillies bats came alive, especially Ryan Howard’s.

Howard broke a 13-game homerless streak with a solo homerun in the second inning before hitting an eighth inning 4-run homer that put the Phils ahead 5-1. They would win that night 10-2, but not before Mueller came up with Howard’s four-run winning ball.

“The ball bounced around and went by a little out of reach,” he said. “Then it got lost and no one could find it.”

Finally, Mueller’s wife suggested it could have rolled under his seat. So he stood up, lifted his seat and out rolled the ball.

“I acted like any other idiot who just caught a World Series ball,” he said. “I jumped around, threw it in the air. I was so excited.”

For now the ball is safe at his house, where he said he would get a case for it. He hopes to get it signed by Howard.

“I’ve been going to games since I was 5 and I never even caught a foul ball,” he said. “This was very special.”