Yeah, I remember that 2006 season. The Phillies were dead in the water in July, seemingly blew things up and were sellers at the deadline (traded away Fasano, Bell, Abreu, Lidle, Cormier and Franklin), then got hot and became buyers in August (picked up Moyer, Jose Hernandez and Conine). After being tormented by the Astros for two seasons, won a big game against them on Labor Day with an Utley walk off and a sweep down in Houston in the middle of the month.
Unfortunately, Phillies only went 3-4 over the last week of the season including a loss to those Astros again and finished three games out of the wildcard. With one week left in the season, the Phillies, Padres and Dodgers were for all practical purposes in a three way race for the wild card, though the Dodgers and Padres also competed for the NL West title. Phillies were in second, one game behind the Padres and 1/2 game ahead of the Dodgers. Padres would go 5-2 which was good enough to clinch the NL West tiebreaker but the Dodgers would win out in their last six to claim the wildcard. Going 3-4 certainly didn't help the Phillies but even if they went went 5-2 in those final seven games, it would not have been enough thanks to the Dodgers getting white-hot all of the sudden. The Phillies were eliminated on the penultimate day of the season. For the fourth time in six years, the Phillies came up agonizingly short of a postseason berth after contending well into the final week of the season. To me, that puts into perspective that the golden age didn't just begin in 2007. They had good teams since 2001 (aside from '02 and '04) but just barely couldn't push that boulder over the mountaintop. That made finally breaking through and pushing that boulder over on the last day in 2007 all the more special!
