{"id":668123,"date":"2026-04-07T10:17:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/668123\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T10:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:17:02","slug":"phillies-world-series-legend-recognized-for-surprising-religious-career-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/668123\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillies World Series Legend Recognized For Surprising \u2018Religious\u2019 Career Turn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Philadelphia Phillies are facing some pressure as they embark on their 18th straight season without a World Series championship.<\/p>\n

Though many other major league franchises face longer droughts, the Phillies have been close to winning another title in recent seasons and could be facing a closing contention window behind superstar slugger Bryce Harper.<\/p>\n

But as the team looks to make some new championship history, a member of its most recent title team has announced an intriguing new chapter.<\/p>\n

\u201cFormer Major League Baseball (MLB) player Brad Lidge, who threw the final pitch to win the Philadelphia Phillies the 2008 World Series, is now an archaeologist researching the Etruscan civilization,\u201d Quinn Russel Brown wrote for the Penn Museum<\/a>, which has partnered with Lidge as he develops his archaeology career.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Philadelphia Phillies All-Star Brad Lidge Details \u2018Religious\u2019 Inclination After Baseball Career<\/p>\n

Phillies fans will remember Lidge as a key player on that World Series championship team. He earned an All-Star nod, Cy Young Award votes and Most Valuable Player Award votes for a stellar 2008 campaign that included three strikeouts, one hit and no earned runs in the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.<\/p>\n

\u201cLidge was 41 for 41 in the regular season and 7 for 7 in the postseason when the Phillies won the second World Series title in franchise history,\u201d the Associated Press noted when he retired<\/a>. \u201cThe 36-year-old righty was a two-time All-Star during 11 seasons with Houston, Philadelphia and Washington. He had 225 career saves and 18 more in the postseason.\u201d<\/p>\n

But following his baseball career, which ended after a final season with the Washington Nationals in 2012, Lidge was inspired to pursue his interest in ancient civilizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was first trying to figure out what I was going to do after baseball, I had a strong inclination toward religious archaeology,\u201d Lidge explained to Brown. \u201cMy bachelor\u2019s degree was in religious studies, so I thought about going to the Holy Land to excavate. But by then my kids weren\u2019t as little, and for the first time, we had a summer available to us as a family. I thought it might make more sense to look at Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Philadelphia Phillies World Series Hero Brad Lidge Holds Master\u2019s Degree In Ancient Studies<\/p>\n

That led Lidge to research the Roman Empire, serving as a volunteer student for an excavation project of an ancient Roman city. He earned his master\u2019s degree in ancient Roman studies and has since published research papers and has been working on a book about Etruscan symbols.<\/p>\n

Now, Lidge is focused on finding more clues about how the ancient Etruscans, an Italian culture that persisted from 900 to 27 BC, communicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been fortunate to play in the MLB with an incredible team, and now I get to pursue the other thing I\u2019ve always wanted to do,\u201d Lidge told Brown. \u201cI don\u2019t want to squander that.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on Forbes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Philadelphia Phillies are facing some pressure as they embark on their 18th straight season without a World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,29191,1207,139,1600,4,144,25,4216,40,85001,68,71,1039],"class_list":{"0":"post-668123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-phillies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brad-lidge","10":"tag-bryce-harper","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-major-league","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","16":"tag-philadelphiaphillies","17":"tag-phillies","18":"tag-russel-brown","19":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","20":"tag-washington-nationals","21":"tag-world-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116362914017757548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}