Top 25 of the Last 25 - Part 1, #16-25

 Well we're done with the first quarter of this century. If this was the Daytona 500, we'd be approaching Lap 126. If we were in a football game, the Eagles wouldn't have any points yet. If this century was a Kit-Kat bar, we'd still have three delicious chocolate-covered wafer cookies remaining (unless you bite directly into them and in that case please see this link).

That said, you're gonna see a lot of Buzzfeed-style lists over the next few weeks. And 95% of them are gonna be corny and lame, 4.9% of them will be nostalgic, and 0.1% will be entirely subjective and slightly personal but fully accurate. That 0.1% will be this list.

The Top 25 Movies of the Last 25 Years is corny. The Top 25 Cheeses I've Tasted in the Last 25 Years is lame (1. Seaside English Cheddar 2. Marin French Triple Créme Brie, etc.).

So why not just the Top 25 of the Last 25. People? Yeah. Things? Sure. Experiences? You bet. Knick knacks and tchotchkes? Well maybe, just maybe.

25. Tadahito Iguchi

Chase Utley started the 2007 season hotter than a shetland sheepdog in the Gobi desert. In the first 100 games of that year, he hit .336 with 41 doubles and was voted to his second straight All-Star Game. Then on July 26th, Utley was hit with a pitch that broke a bone in his hand, seemingly ending his potential MVP campaign while prolonging the Phillies' postseason drought.

In steps Tadahito Iguchi the very next day. Acquired from the White Sox in exchange for Michael Dubee, the son of at-the-time pitching coach Rich Dubee, Iguchi was able to fill the void left by Utley in beyond formidable fashion. Across 45 games, Taddy hit .304 for the Phils without making a single error and played a pivotal role in the Fightin's overtaking of the Mets for a miracle NL East divisional crown.

So Cheers to Tadahito Iguchi for far exceeding all expectations and being a key cog in the machine that took the Phils back to playoff prominence.

24. Dorian Thompson-Robinson

Dorian Thompson-Robinson, or DTR as his friends know him, is objectively a very, very bad NFL quarterback. At the moment.

I've never seen a quarterback with a higher ceiling than DTR and the coach that unlocks his superpowers will reap nothing but fruits from his labor.

DTR was my favorite college player to watch. Some days he was better than '05 Vince Young, some days he was worse than '17 Nathan Peterman. Ya just never knew until you flipped on the UCLA game. From 2018-2022 DTR threw for over 10k yards and ran for another 1800. He accounted for 116 rushing + passing touchdowns, but, most importantly, he won the first two annual Weisman Award Trophies, my very personal and subjective college football MVP.

23. Sheldon Brown's Tackle on Reggie Bush

Here comes the BOOM here comes the BOOM the Saints don't really want it noooowww

Man, the amount of times my buddies and I tried to replicate this hit when we were 12 year olds. We're lucky that none of us had to get stretchered out of the basement.

I remember exactly where I was when this hit happened. Devin McMearty's birthday party, sitting on their living room couch, seat closest to the left arm rest. And boy did we go wild. Sheldon Brown, setting the tone right off the bat baby.

This hit (yes I linked it five times) still gets played in highlight reels and I'm flooded with nostalgia every time I see it. Get wrecked Reggie Kardashian.

22. The Snackstand at Cheltenham Athletic Association circa 2002-07

My Little League's cheese fries were better than your Little League's. Plain and simple. Crinkle cut, perfectly fried and salted. Cheese whiz pre-warmed and flowing like the Nile during wet season.

My Little League's chicken fingers were better than your Little League's. Plain and simple. High quality poultry, breaded with enough crisp to build some texture but not too much to out-ratio the meat. Served with a side of the finest Ken's Steakhouse Honey Mustard packet.

Somehow my Little League's pizza rolls were even better than your Little League's. They came out with an internal temp comparable only to Mount Vesuvius, but they were better than all the pizza rolls I've ever had before. Even if you were like Billy Romano and drowned them in cracked pepper, still the best.

21. When Vladimir Guerrero's Translator Got Me and My Friends An Autograph

June 21, 2008 - FDR Park in South Philadelphia.

My dad got a call one morning from the president of our Little League asking if couple friends and I would wanna go down to FDR Park to be in a Powerade commercial shoot (it was a brutally bad commercial). Uhh yeah! Ryan Howard and Vlad Guerrero are gonna be there?? Hell yeah!

Next thing my dad and I did was hop in the car, head over to the Modell's in Cedarbrook Plaza, and purchase a brand spankin' new Ryan Howard #6 Sunday alternate cream Phillies jersey. A little big so I could have it for a few years. Of course my plan was to get it signed.

The big day comes, I head on down to FDR with my buddies Huey, Anthony, and David, and we watch Vladdy and Ryno smash long balls into the deepest depths of the driving range. Then shooting concluded and we wanted some ink. That's when we'd come to learn that Mr. Howard had contingencies in his agency's contract that stipulated he could only sign autographs for "charity events" or if he was financially compensated. Douchebag.

Vladdy went back into his dressing room and sent his translator back out into the clubhouse lobby to take the baseballs my buddies and I were holding. Mr. Guerrero's translator emerged with three freshly signed baseballs by the one and only Vladimir Guerrero Sr.

What's more? Vlad went out and hammered two homers into left field of Citizens Bank Park that night, clearly getting a nice warm up at the commercial shoot. I ended up exchanging that Ryan Howard jersey for a Chase Utley one. Howard's "fine" by me now, but I was also as tall as him when I was in 7th grade so his roster heights are all a lie, a sham, a bamboozle.
 

20. The Obama/McCain Election

Idk, felt like this one was just evenly fought. Nothin' but a little friendly competition. No slander, no libel, no felonies, no Russian bots. I was also 13 and couldn't vote so I didn't get any texts claiming that one of the candidates committed some far-fetched atrocity.

19. My 2018 Summer Baseball Season with the Northampton Orioles

Was I a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, freshly-graduated-from-college kid playing baseball against 35 year old plumbers and pipe-fitters all summer? Sure. But Babe Ruth played against cobblers and blacksmiths and he's still revered by baseball writers globally.

No matter how you twist it, 20 scoreless innings is damn impressive. 15 baserunners in 20 innings, damn impressive. I'm not gonna act humble about this one, for that summer I was a straight-up buzzsaw and I made blue-collar union workers swing at sliders in the other batters box like they were toddlers with butterfly nets in a field of wasp nets. That was fun.

18. Wii Sports

Wii Sports was soooo sick. It wasn't really the best video game but it was the most communal. Everyone could play without having to learn different button combinations and cheat codes like the Fortnite youth of today. Your whole family could spend an evening around the living room TV playing bowling and baseball because all your parents had to day was wave the wand at the right time.

Making Mii's was also great. It was always a guessing game who would pop up in the nine hole of your batting order. Would it be your buddy who came over and made his Mii last week or would it be your rendition of Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone's hypothetical lovechild?

17. When Pop Fell on the SEPTA Subway

This was the hardest I've laughed in the last 25 years. Nick Pop, Phil, my sister, her friends, and I went down to tailgate an Eagles game then headed back to Center City on the ole subway.

We break out into a little song, the Cha Cha Slide (Casper Slide Part 2). We get to the line "Reverse, Reverse" which Pop hits in the train aisle almost seamlessly. Almost. As he's hitting the second 'reverse,' the train accelerates. Freshman physics taught me about how objects work in relative motion and I don't need to explain all that to you, but when a person is mid-air, they don't accelerate with the rate of the object surrounding them.

So my guy hit the ground and then next thing to hit was the entirety of his back flat against the door that separates train cars. Guy flew into that door like he was a SWAT battering ram invading a kingpin's estate. It was a painful laugh, it was so funny that everything hurt, but sure enough he bounced back and we caught a few tunes at McGillin's karaoke that night.

16. Brown Bear Sweater from Old Navy I Just Got

I've worn this sweater maybe 5 times so far in the month and a half that I've owned it. Every single time I get at least one compliment. I'm averaging somewhere in the range of 3-4 compliments per wear, far and away the highest CPW of any clothing I've ever owned. It's mad comfy as well, I couldn't recommend it enough.