By Gina Morrone ’14

Cole Hamels said not to count the Phillies out; they weren’t going to give up. He just pitched his second consecutive shutout, leading his team to a 4-0 victory over the Marlins. It was August 13, and the Phils were 11 games back in the wild card race.

MLB announced a second wild card slot back in March, and to be honest, I really didn’t care. My team never had to worry about it. We were coming into this season with 102 regular season wins, five straight NL East titles, a couple of NL pennants, and a bunch of guys with World Series rings. We were a lock for the NL East flag. So a few of our guys were injured and we didn’t exactly start off 2012 with a lot of wins, but I stayed hopeful.

Now that we are closing in on the end of the season, baseball fans alike are thankful for the second wild-card – another life of sorts for their respective teams. And there’s a sliver of a chance that their teams will get hot at the right time. The two wild card winners in each league will square off in a do-or-die Game 163. The winner gets the dubious reward of playing the top seeded team in a five-game Division Series.

Contradictory to my nonchalant opinion 6 months ago, I am now praising all that is holy for this reformat. I am thankful now, while the Phillies are real contenders, even after a dismal start to the season. Remember last year when the Cardinals came out of the wild card slot to stun the Phillies and go on to win it all? That could be the Phillies! Or, it could be another franchise. It’d be pretty disappointing to me, but it could be any team at this point. The Pirates, Brewers, Cardinals and LA Dodgers are all wild card hopefuls.

Every team will be presented with new challenges each game, but we know one thing for sure: September baseball has never been more exciting.