Why we love the Phillies.

They are not only the best team in baseball, they are just plain good guys.

WASHINGTON - One by one, they trickled out of the infield and down the concrete steps before disappearing into visitors' clubhouse of a mostly empty stadium. There was plenty of hugging and hand-shaking and on-the-back patting. But for a few precious seconds, there was no champagne popping. That, they had decided, would wait.

So they filed inside and they gathered around the dark green bottles that sat in the center of the carpeted room. And when the last of them finally arrived, they pointed to three men who had spent the better part of their adult lives waiting to feel that sweet, stickyspray.

Roy Halladay, Mike Sweeney and Brian Schneider: your honors.

"All the guys came around us," Schneider said later as he stood amid the mayhem of the Phillies' latest division title celebration. "I'll never forget that. They know we've never been able to experience this. It was awesome for them to think of us."