Above, you see closer Jonathan Papelbon celebrating the Red Sox’ 2007 World Series title. If he does that next year, it’ll be in a different uniform: reports indicate that today, the Phillies and Papelbon reached an agreement on a four-year contract worth upwards of $50 million, pending a physical.

You couldn’t blame any Philadelphia sports fan who’s experienced some dark days in the last week. The Eagles are 1-4. The Sixers can’t actually play basketball until the lockout ends, and who knows when that will be. The Flyers are off to a good start, but it’s just that: a start. They’ve played two games, far too soon to come to any conclusions about the team’s direction.

Watch Tony LaRussa enlighten us on the Busch Stadium squirrel’s love life.

No matter who wins tonight’s NLDS Game 5 between the Phillies and Cardinals, this seems destined to go down as the Series of Squirrels. They ran loose on the field at Busch Stadium in St. Louis two games in a row, and as you’ll see after the jump, even traveling halfway across the country wasn’t enough to keep Family Sciuridae down.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous now. Just yesterday, everyone was talking about the squirrel that ran onto the field at Busch Stadium the night before, comically interrupting what turned out to be a 3-2 win for the Phillies over the Cardinals. And today, we’re talking about…the same thing, because last night it happened again.

A close playoff baseball game as tension-filled as anything in sports. Suddenly the breaks and pauses that move us to create running gags like “Baseball is a Slow Game” become almost unbearably filled with anticipation and/or nervousness at what might happen. There are some things, though, that can break through the drama and leave onlookers in hysterics.

Yesterday’s 3-2 Phillies win over the Cardinals was a tense affair, the type of game that knots fans’ stomachs, induces wild mood swings, and generally does its best to destroy the mental health of those with a rooting interest. None of that, though, means a thing to squirrels. After the jump, watch one disrupt the proceedings at Busch Stadium yesterday.

A bit ago, Twitter exploded with news from The New York Times‘ Tyler Kepner that Phillies ace Roy Halladay, in his pre-playoffs press conference, said something that seemed so good, it made us long for audio and/or visual evidence so we could hear it for ourselves. Check out the video after the jump to do just that.

Not that context would make this scene any more sensical, but here’s the Phillie Phanatic dancing with monkeys during Sunday night’s Philadelphia-St. Louis game.