PHILADELPHIA — Trea Turner owned the stage, but the venue belonged to the man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a brown blazer with elbow patches. John Middleton went out of his way to make this something other than his day. But that’s what it was.
“It’s clear,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said on Thursday evening as his boss stood a few feet behind him with a broad smile on his face. “We want to win, and we want to win for a long time.”
Some people put their money where their mouth is. For the fourth straight offseason, Middleton is putting his where his heart is. The path that the Phillies have blazed over the last decade on their majority owner’s watch hasn’t always been the straightest or the most sensible. But the one thing that has become abundantly clear is that Middleton has blazed it with his best intentions. For years, he watched from the shadows of the Phillies’ arcane ownership structure as the organization plodded along without an identity or voice. Now, they are indisputably his. And days like Thursday reflect the pride in ownership.
