By Kirsten Swanson

The old saying goes, there is no “I” in team.   In the normal sense, this means that an individual player shouldn’t be focused on his own accomplishments over his team's.  Or that a player shouldn’t be worried about beating his own teammates.  But as we all know, the Phillies don’t do anything the normal way.

Some may call it being self centered, but I see it as being competitive to be the best, the best for your team.

It all started in Spring Training. There was so much buzz surrounding Roy Halladay.  How he is always the first one to arrive in the morning, how much he trains and conditions himself, and how much he studies the game.  It wasn’t long until the other players started following in his footsteps, joining him on his jogs up and down the Citizens Bank Park steps, sometimes even beating him to the park in the morning.

Then the season began, and start after start Roy Halladay just dazzled on the mound.  Slowly but surely Cole Hamels started to perform better and better, lowering his ERA of a high 5.28 to a low 3.01 with each start. Just when you think number one and number two couldn’t perform any better, enter Roy Oswalt. Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt are now 16-6 in 25 starts since Oswalt joined the team on July 30^th, allowing only 48 runs, with Oswalt accounting for 6 of those 16 wins.

Not that these stats should surprise anyone considering how well these guys have performed in the past. But it does show just a little bit of competiveness can go a long way.

“We bring out the competiveness in each other,” Oswalt said after Sunday’s complete game shutout.

Hamels couldn’t let one bad year define who he was as a pitcher and just let Halladay come in and take the number one spot from him, same goes with Oswalt. We are now in September, and all three are pitching some of their best baseball of their careers.

Most teams have difficulty dealing with players that are competitive with each other, but the biggest problem the Phillies have on their hand is who is going to start game one of the NLDS.

There may not be an “I” in team, but there sure is an “I” in win.