This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki¡¯s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Phillies woke up in Washington on June 3 with a 25-32 record and tied with the Nationals for last place in the NL East.

It felt like forever since Red October 2022.

Red October 2023 seemed to be impossibly far away, too.

Before that late-afternoon game at Nationals Park, a few Phillies discussed the good times they had last season as they played their way to the World Series.

Calum Scott¡¯s ¡°Dancing On My Own¡± came up. The Phillies played the song following every victory down the stretch, including the postseason. It became a Philly anthem in the fall. But the players said this spring they had retired the song because they felt it should be a 2022 thing. Besides ...

¡°It¡¯s a second-place song,¡± Kyle Schwarber said in February.

But following a 4-2 victory over the Nationals on June 3, Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long marched into the clubhouse with a request.

¡°Playing the [flipping] song!¡±

The Phillies blasted ¡°Dancing On My Own¡± again. It has played following every victory since then, including a recent six-game winning streak and Tuesday night¡¯s 15-3 victory over the D-backs.

Coincidence or not, Philadelphia is 8-2 since it started spinning the oldies.

¡°Hey, man, when the vibes are high, good things can happen,¡± Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs said.

So why did they decide to play the song on June 3, which just so happened to kick-start the winning streak?

¡°Because we were sucking,¡± said Stubbs, who is the team¡¯s DJ and whose postgame playlist is on Spotify. ¡°We started saying it was a second-place song, but then we started sucking. We were like, ¡®Second place is a whole lot better than what the [heck] we¡¯ve been doing.¡¯ We might as well bring it back.¡±

Curmudgeons out there might roll their eyes at this (Fun? Bah!), but these things play well over a 162-game season.

Baseball is supposed to be fun, isn¡¯t it?

¡°People were jacked,¡± Stubbs said of the reaction that night in the visitors¡¯ clubhouse. ¡°Because we were playing the same exact playlist.¡±

¡°You keep the vibes high and bring back something that¡¯s fun,¡± Schwarber said.

Feel good, play good. Right?

¡°It¡¯s back,¡± Stubbs said. ¡°It¡¯s got a lot of wins in it.¡±