Pedro Feliz: World Series Hero Fights for a Comeback

As anyone who has visited Philadelphia will realize, Camden, New Jersey is right across the river.

For former Phillies third baseman Pedro Feliz, it must feel like he is a million miles away.

Feliz came to the Phillies before the 2008 season after playing parts of eight seasons with the San Francisco Giants. He came to Philadelphia after hitting over 20 home runs in each of the previous four years and seeming like a more than capable replacement for the under-performing Wes Helms.

Watching Feliz, it was hard to miss his powerful arm and sparkling defense at third base. As a matter of fact, he currently has the 35th highest career fielding percentage by a third baseman in Major League Baseball history according to Baseball Reference.

In his first season with the Phillies, he was coming off a year in which he led National League third baseman in fielding percentage, so it was obvious that the Phillies were not going to have any defensive problems while he was at the hot corner.

At the plate, his 2008 performance did fall a little bit short of his earlier numbers in San Francisco (.249, 14 HR), but he came up big when the Phillies needed him. In the bottom of the seventh in Game Five of the World Series, he drove in Eric Bruntlett with a clutch base hit to put the Phillies ahead for good 4-3 and secure the World Series championship.

He batted .333 throughout the World Series and did not commit a single error as usual.

After another year with the Phillies and a split year between Houston and St. Louis, Feliz failed to make the Kansas City Royals out of spring training in 2011. With his major-league career seemingly on the decline, Feliz joined the Camden Riversharks of the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.

Despite the fact that the independent leagues get a bad reputation as grounds for the desperate to try to return to professional baseball, Feliz is joined on the Riversharks by former major leaguers Toby Hall and Mike Lamb as well as others.

Currently, he is batting .261 through 25 games with a pair of home runs and nine RBIs.

Who knows what the baseball future will be for Feliz? At 36 years old, he is seemingly nearing the end of a solid career, but he has been quoted as saying that he wants to return to the major leagues.

Perhaps he will make it one more time, perhaps he will not, but Phillies fans should remember his big hit that brought a title back to Philadelphia.

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com