PHILADELPHIA -- For $85 million, Jim Thome ought to do more than just show up every day in South Philadelphia with a first baseman's mitt.

He ought to jog up the Art Museum steps like Rocky Balboa. He ought to power-wash William Penn's statue. He ought to grill a few cheese steaks at Pat's and Geno's. Heck, he ought to play quarterback for the Eagles for a series or two. (Everyone else has.)

	Jim Thome First Base Philadelphia Phillies Profile
	2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM HR RBI R SB AVG 147 52 118 101 1 .304

After all, there has never been an $85 million Phillie before. Ever.

Scott Rolen could have been. Wasn't interested. Pat Burrell might be some day. But not yet. Pete Rose was the Phillies' biggest free agent in history before this, and his total deal was $3.2 million -- for four years. Thome will make that every five weeks.

So for this kind of money, the Phillies weren't just looking for a guy who was an upgrade on Travis Lee. Or for a guy who would make their lineup look more photogenic.

They were looking for a guy who could change the face of the franchise. And that was a challenge, seeing as how before he could change it, he had to find that face and surgically reattach it.

This, remember, is a franchise that has seen 19,000 fans a game literally disappear since the strike hit in 1994. This is a franchise that has had three winning seasons in the 19 years since Rose left town. This is a franchise that has taken one of the great baseball towns in America and convinced it that football season really could last 12 months a year.

So there isn't much -- aside from a wildcat NFL strike -- that could have changed all that overnight. But Thome already has.

I can attest to that firsthand, your honor.

I live in the Philadelphia area, you see. And Monday morning, before all this broke, I attempted to make a quick run to the grocery store. I should have just worn a billboard that said: "No, he hasn't signed yet."

First, a guy yelled at me from across the parking lot: "Any news on Thome yet?" Then the cell phone rang. Then, in the milk aisle, a store employee caught my eye and asked, "Hear anything?" In the produce section, the cell phone rang again. Between the checkout line and the door, That Name came up again.

I've lived in my house a long time. I don't remember this kind of buzz over Terry Adams or Rheal Cormier. It could be my memory, but I don't think so.

Jim Thome changes everything about the Phillies.

Changes the lineup. Changes the payroll. Changes the clubhouse. Changes the number of people interested in seeing a Phillies-Brewers game. Changes everything.

Thome puts the Phillies back on the radar screen. So if it took an extra year and $26 million more than the Indians offered, that's a price the Phillies felt they had to pay. The franchise was drowning. And only Thome was sitting in the lifeguard stand.

"He's a great fit for them," said one American League scout Monday, "because of his personality and, obviously, because of his talent. With his personality, all the stuff that happens in Philly won't affect him. He can handle it if anybody can."

Yeah, he'll be almost as big as A.J. Feeley -- until his first strikeout with a runner on third. Then he figures to hear a few sounds that don't resemble, "Yay." But unless everybody who knows him is wrong, he'll get over it.

"This won't be a Rolen-type situation," said one baseball man. "This guy wants to come to Philadelphia. He isn't somebody who got traded there in the middle of a contract. He had the option to go back to Cleveland and he went to Philly. He's coming in there with David Bell to be the pieces of the puzzle to turn things around. The way people ought to look at is: These guys are coming there to win."

Thome and Bell give the Phillies their deepest lineup since Joe Carter's homer wrecked their most recent World Series dream. With Bell at third and Placido Polanco at second, the early line of scouts we've surveyed is that the Phillies could have the best defensive infield in the league, even though Thome isn't quite Travis Lee at first.

Meanwhile, they seem now to be in position to add either Tom Glavine or Jamie Moyer as veteran stabilizers for a rotation oozing potential. And they're already working on dealing Lee and Marlon Anderson for set-up help -- or else nontendering them and using those dollars to sign a reliever or two.

"You go up and down that club," said another scout, "and the only guy you'd have a question about is the center fielder (mega-touted rookie Marlon Byrd). And he looks like he can be a pretty good player himself. So if you've only got a question about one guy out of eight, that's pretty damn good."

But does that mean there aren't doubts about this deal? Heck no. There are plenty.

For one thing, how serious is Thome's cranky back? The Indians were clearly concerned about it. We know that.

"That's my only hesitation on this thing -- the back," said one scout. "There's no DH in the National League. So you have to wonder if this guy's going to be able to play 155 games a year in the field."

Well, Thome did have two week-long stretches in July where he missed time with a sore back. But he has never been on the disabled list because of his back. His condition is not as severe as Rolen's was, according to one source who has seen the medical reports. And if that back was bothering Thome so much, how'd he manage to hit .338, with 26 homers and a .773 slugging percentage, after it first flared up on him?

Nevertheless, one AL executive says: "He's less of a risk in the American League than he is for them, with no DH. I have no doubt the guy will still be productive. What you've got to watch is where he is in a year, year and a half."

True. No matter what kind of short-term pop the Phillies get from this contract, there will be a lot of baseball skeptics warning that it will be trouble in the long term.

Thome will play most of those last three seasons at ages 35, 36 and 37 -- and he'll turn 38 in August of the sixth season. The Indians had their doubts about whether Thome could still be the bopper at age 35-plus that he is now. And that's a legitimate question. So we looked into it.

We wondered how many players in the division-play era have had more than one season of at least 30 homers and a .900 OPS at age 35 and beyond. We expected there would be just one or two. We discovered there were more than one might think.

In fact, there were seven. Hank Aaron did it four straight years, at age 35, 36, 37 and 38. Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Schmidt and Andres Galarraga all did it at age 35, 36 and 37. Fred McGriff and Mark McGwire did it twice.

And the list of players who reached those plateaus once at that age includes Edgar Martinez, Steve Finley, Ellis Burks, Willie Stargell, Dwight Evans and even Norm Cash. So there's no law that says that by the fifth year of the contract, Thome is required to turn into Vinny Castilla.

It's logical to think that somewhere down the line, Thome will start sliding down the other side of the slope. The Phillies concede that. But they were willing to take that risk, too.

In their position, they had just about no choice. They recognized they had to put a compelling product on the field next season, or there was a good chance they would open their new park in 2004 and half the city wouldn't even notice.

So even if this contract ties their hands down the road -- and it might -- it was either go full-bore to win now or watch a once-golden franchise shrivel into Brewers East. If you owned this team and those were your options, what would you do?

We can think of a lot worse ideas than signing a guy who has hit 30 homers seven years in a row, who has driven in 100 runs four years in a row and who has just become the first 50-homer man in history to change teams as a free agent.

Even if Jim Thome won't agree to fry us up a couple of pizza steaks to go.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.