Dennis Alessi remembers it as if it were yesterday. He was 15 years old, growing up on Long Beach Island in South Jersey, and he was nuts about baseball.

"You know what it's like being a kid and being in love with baseball," Alessi, a lawyer in York, said.

There's nothing like it. He hung on baseball in those days, still does, but when you're a kid, the whole world revolves around the game. Well, at least his did.

He played baseball when he was a kid. He couldn't play football, but baseball, anybody could play. To this day, he prefers baseball to football. He still loves baseball.

"It's probably some kind of deep problem," he said.

He lived, and died, with the Philadelphia teams -- the Athletics and the Phillies. He's been a Phillies fan since 1946 -- the late  '40s being a strange time to be a Phillies fan. The team's owner was banned from baseball for gambling -- in his defense, he bet on the Phillies -- and the new owner, a scion of the Delaware Du Pont family, tried to change the team's name to the Blue Jays, which went over as well as putting used motor oil on a cheesesteak. (Actually, I think they use used motor oil to cook cheesesteaks at Genos in South Philly.)

The team, though, steadily improved and, in 1950, led by the Whiz Kids, the Phillies got to the World Series.

"Dick Sisler," Alessi said.

Sisler, a journeyman first baseman and left fielder, hit a three-run homer in the top of the tenth to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers.

"That

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it happened in Ebbets Field made it even better," Alessi said.

It was the first time the Phillies won a pennant since 1915. In 1915, Alessi said he wasn't around for that, but the Phils lost to the Red Sox and Boston's then-star Babe Ruth. The Sox would then sell Ruth to New York and wander in the wilderness for more than eight decades.

The Phils making the World Series was a highlight in his life. Going to law school and establishing a practice and raising a family and all of that, that was good, mind you, but that feeling of being 15 years old and watching your team make it to the series, there's something to be said for that.

It was a good team. The Whiz Kids -- Ritchie Ashburn, Robin Roberts and the rest of the young team -- was pretty good. The Yankees, though, were in their prime -- a team with DiMaggio, Yogi, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, Hank Bauer, Ed Lopat.

"The Phillies were missing Curt Simmons, a right-hander, because he was called up to the military," Alessi said. "They couldn't start Roberts in Game One because he had pitched three of the last five games of the season."

The Phillies lost the series in four straight games.

Alessi was crushed, as only a boy who loves baseball and loves his team can be. He figured the Phillies would be back. It was a great team, and their best players were young, and it was certainly just the start of a run of championships. Next year -- they'd get them next year.

It didn't happen the following year. Nor the one after that. Nor the one after that.

Years passed. Some of them were pretty bad, Alessi said. The Phillies returned to their mediocre ways. Two years stick out to Alessi -- 1961 and 1964.

In 1961, the Phillies lost 23 games in a row, a record that still stands. And then there's 1964.

"The less said about 1964, the better," Alessi said.

Well then, briefly, the Phillies lost 10 games in a row at the end of the season to blow a 61/2-game lead in the standings -- a historical collapse, rivaled only by the Yankees' monumental choke against the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series in 2004.

Over the years, he watched as the Phillies had their ups and downs. The World Championship in 1980 was followed by loses in the World Series in 1983, to the Orioles, and 1993, to the Toronto Blue Jays.

Alessi can rattle off this history effortlessly. It is his history.

Last year was one of the greatest years to be a Phillies fan. Once again, the Phils were world champions, beating the Tampa Bay Rays in five games.

And this year, it's time for some payback.

The Phils are going against the Yankees.

Just like 59 years ago.

When Alessi was a kid and baseball was just about the most important thing in his life.


Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.inyork.com/ydr -- click on the opinion section -- or visit his blog at www.mikeargento.com.