1950 Redux

The Home Team against the Evil Empire. One has lost 10,000 games in franchise history, the other has won 26 World Championships. Both are ranked #1 and #2 in both home runs this year and runs scored.

One team is one year removed from a stadium full of history and mystic into a faux traditional Taj Majal. The other is a few years removed from a dump and into a decent ballpark that Phillies fans always deserved.

There is a genuine dislike between New York and Philadelphia. Mostly the angst is directed towards the Eagles and Giants, Flyers and Rangers and Phillies and Mets. It's still New York.

Philadelphia is a much more concentrated sports fanatic town. There may be more Yankees fans in numbers in the New York metro area but there are millions of NY residents who do not even speak English and have no idea what the NY or American customs are. Plus New York is divided between the Mets and Yanks.

If you are a Mets diehard, today must suck. Much like your past decade.
No longer living in my hometown of Philadelphia or working in NY, it is difficult to be watching this from the outside. There is satellite TV here with MSG and SNY. Philadelphia has no local feeds on satellite.

Streaming is available for WFAN in NY and 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia. Last year was tougher being a Phillies fan as the local sports station was 610 WIP, which is a very difficult, if not impossible listen.

Tonight is a dream pitching match up. Two mashing teams playing in a bandbox of a new stadium. The Yanks tend to drag a good ballgame to over 3 1/2 hours. This pitching matchup may speed the usual Yankees snoozefest into something close to a 2 hour 15 minutes gem

It's Almost Time

City of Fake Brotherly Outrage

The Philadelphia Eagles announced the signing of Micheal Vick
last night to a 2 year deal that could be worth $6.8M.
It didn't take long for the fake outrage to pour out.

Early on 610 WIP-AM, wacky morning DJ Angelo Cataldi tried to steer up the mind numbed masses of idiots who haven't figured out the Cataldi/Rhea Hughes Show is one of the worst sports shows in America. He went right into ripping management for signing Vick with every stereotype and loose fact he could conjure up.

Cataldi had on as a guest holier than thou sports writer from the Obama friendly Philadelphia Inquirer Ray Dittinger. Dittinger could not help but to turn the topic of Vick into the topic of Ray Dittnger. Dittegen had to tell everyone how "involved" he and his wife are with animal causes (no specifics). That's like saying "I have plenty of black friends" in the politically correct sect.

He went on to recap his evening of coming home last night to his wife to find her in front of the computer with images of Michael Vicks dogs. Cataldi let out a huge, fake "ahhhhhhh" as if he just witnessed the Twin Towers collaspes.
How does he explain this signing to his wife, Dittiger asks? And Catadi willing agrees. Is his wife 8 years old? Does he feel he has to "explain" anything sports related to his wife except maybe what constitutes an offsides in hockey?

It wasn't until wacky Catadli brought a former teammate of Micheal Vick's on until some rational one way discussion was offered. Reese explained how the Eagles are an organization who have always been a few steps ahead of other teams. It was a closely calculated move and something that probably will bring Vick to Philadelphia for only 10 months or so.

Reese went one to say there will be little protests as Vick has already reached out to the animal agitators and has volunteered time for their causes. He also stated the Eagles brand is not hurt in anyway whatsoever and how no season ticket holders will actually drop their ticket plans (althought some will threaten).

Philadelphia is a very closed market when it comes to sports information. Very little sports outside of the Eagles, Phillies and Flyers are ever discussed on 24 hour sports radio. College sports information is next to non-existant outside of Big 5 basketball.

When a contraversial sports story breaks the masses who are unable to fomulate their own opinion look to WIP and the fish wrap Inquirer/Daily News to have their opinions formulated for them.

And some consider Philadelphia fans to be the most knowledgeable sports fans in the entire country.

Hoos in the Bigs

Mark Reynolds hit his 35th home run of the season for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He is one HR back from Albert Pujols in the National League race. On a 3-2 pitchcount, Reynold hit a high fly HR at the left field pole at the 336' mark against the Nats, while his former teammate looked on.

Reynolds was the shortstop for the University of Virginia Cavaliers. A young shortstop by the name of Ryan Zimmerman came to Charlottesville from Virginia Beach a year later. Zimmerman wasn't going to supplant Reynolds at short, so Zim was converted into a third baseman.

Both are enjoying decent Major League careers now. Reynolds is hitting .288 in 107 games this year. Zimmerman is in his 5th full season for Washington. He is currently hitting .300 in 106 games this season..

Snooze Fest Weekend

The New York Yankees versus the Boston Red Sox. Rivalry? Passion? Hype? Flat out boredom.

Two teams who do not seem to know how to play a decent paced ballgame. Last night's contest in the Bronx lasted 3:52 minutes. That is 8 minutes less than 4 hours. A 7:30 PM east coast game ends just as the late night news ends. And we don't even have starry eyed kids collecting baseball cards trying to stay up late to watch the completion of any given game on any given night.

No longer do players respect the game. They need to step out of the batters box after every pitch to adjust a glove. A sweat band. A helmet. The umpires have no control anymore.

In the last few decades the average length of a Major League game jumped from 2 1/2 hours to over 3 hours. There is an inverse relationship between the length of games to the shrinking attention span of adult Americans. Not to mention the kids, the next generation of potential fans.

Couple that with the fact the "best" game on a lazy Sunday afternoon is now moved to ESPN's 8PM EST slot. First pitch is nearly at 8:20pm. Who can watch this?

So this series will be hyped beyond belief. I suspect it will be the Fox Saturday game of the week and the ESPN Sunday night game. How much more compelling would the series be if games could be completed in 2 1/2 hours as opposed to 3:52?

Front Runners?

It's no secret some of the best Philadelphia sports reporters are from the suburban papers.
The writers from the dying Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News tend to be pompous know it alls.

Jack McCaffery from the Delaware Country Daily Times has this piece today:

Eagles camp has lost some luster

The Eagles will begin reporting to training camp today. That mesmerizes photographers. Not long ago, it did the same for casual Philadelphia sports fans.

Complete with a countdown that so many kept — 20 days until camp, 10 days until camp, nine, eight, a week until camp — the Eagles’ arrival at Lehigh was considered the end to the silence. The Flyers and Sixers off season, and the Phillies rarely competitive, the Eagles always did their heaviest trafficking in mid-summer hope.

Rarely atrocious, often competitive and typically quite good ever since Dick Vermeil injected professionalism into the organization at the end of the 1970s, the Eagles benefited the most from that 100-season gap between major-league Philadelphia championships.

Not that the Eagles were ever successful at providing a parade, but they sure knew how to wear the grand marshal hat and spin the flaming baton. Whether it was Buddy Ryan promising championships, Ray Rhodes promising a fight or Jeffrey Lurie promising golden standards, the Eagles had a fan base brainwashed. And by the time Terrell Owens arrived for the 2004 season, the masses were following — up to 25,000 a day flooding the Lehigh Valley to watch practice, not games, not games, not games, but practice.

Soon after, the franchise felt strong enough to roll out the most unfortunate, insulting and incorrect Philadelphia sports marketing slogan since Julius Erving stared into a camera and announced, “We owe you one.” The pitch: One team, one town, one dream. With it, the Birds offered some cockeyed explanation, but the message was unscrambled: In Philadelphia, only the Eagles matter.

One team ... one dream ...

They nearly pulled it off, the Eagles did. They were leading at halftime in Super Bowl XXXIX, only to lose when Andy Reid lost grip of the time and the situation and Bill Belichick was filmed on the opposite sideline shaking his head at his own good fortune. Had that 2004 team won the Super Bowl and ended Philadelphia’s championship famine, the rest of the sports arenas dotting East Pattison Ave. might have been shuttered and abandoned.

The Eagles even had a parade route picked out. (And though Belichick used that to his motivational advantage, the pre-parade planning was a safety and logistical necessity). Who knows how many would have attended? Two million? Three million? More?

But the Patriots won that championship and the Eagles — a 13-1 team in meaningful regular-season games — were never that good again. Few teams were that good, actually. But the Eagles were never that good again. And that’s when the rumble began — the rumble across the street, the one the Eagles had to hear and tried to ignore ... yet which eventually succeeded in muffling the football thunder. With a new playing palace of their own and multiple young superstars rolling into their prime, the Phillies — of all left-for-dead franchises — were back.

And once that happened, it was RIP for summertime football hype.

Pennsylvania is not any less a football state than it was before National League MVP Jimmy Rollins led the 2007 Phillies to a first-place finish, or that an autumn Sunday in the Linc will be any less entertaining, meaningful or watched. It’s not to suggest that there will be one fewer Eagle drafted in a fantasy league, or one ratings point shaved from their in-season TV ratings. The Eagles might even win something this season. It’s up to them. They have enough good players. Have at it.

It’s just that once the Phillies began to stir and then won a world championship, the Eagles no longer had a 12-month option on Philadelphia fan passion. The summer now belongs to the Phillies, who, by the way, have horned in on a little bit of the winter, too.

No matter what happens now, the Phillies will be highly relevant into the earliest October hours, and then beyond. That means that instead of talk-show callers and over-analytical columnists obsessing over who will be the Birds’ fourth receiver and who will be their fifth, the prevailing sports topics for the next few weeks will be baseball-related: What’s going to happen at the trade deadline? Does Cole Hamels have postseason MVP stuff? Is Brad Lidge OK? How many homers will Ryan Howard club?

Truth told, save for the marketing branch of the Birds’ operation, the club probably feels that is just as well at this point. The on-field staff — the players, coaches, assistants — know that training camp is an obsolete media stunt, used any more to bolster the economy of Bethlehem as it is to improve the Birds’ offensive attack. The players need training, of course. But if the coaches had their way they’d run the whole thing behind the locked gates of the NewsControl Compound.

Nonetheless, the Eagles rookies will parade into 300-year-old college dorms today, and the cameras will click, capturing the identical images that they did last year — large men schlepping window fans from impossibly expensive vehicles into their rooms.

Once, it was fascinating.

Not anymore.

That’s because Philadelphia summers belong to baseball again.

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/07/26/sports/doc4a6bc8fd77571796429137.txt

PERFECT

It doesn't happen often. 19 times in MLB history. Randy Johnson being the last.

Much more difficult then a "no hitter". 27 up. 27 down. Not that easy to do.

Mark Buehrle of the Chicago Cubs did just that today during an afternoon getaway day game against the defending American League champions, Tampa Bay Rays.

As amazing as Mark Buehrle's effort on the mound was, how incredible was Dewayne Wise's home run rob in the top of the 9th? I can't count the number of game I have seen live, on TV or listened to on the radio involving a pitcher deep into a no-hit game deep only to have the opportunity snatched right out underneath of him.

It's either a squibber over the 3rd baseman's head or Doug Glanville reacting deep on a blooper to short center field. Many have come close. Most don't finish the job.

So when Mark Buehrle stepped on the mound against Gabe "Welcome Back" Kapler in the top of the 9th, anything could happen. The Sox just inserted a cold Dewayne Wise into center field for "defensive purposes".

Flashback to 2004 when the Phillies Eric Milton was holding onto a no hitter deep in the game against the Cubs at Veterans Stadium. Then manager Larry Bowa inserted Doug Glanville in center in the 8th to replace Ricky Ledee for "defensive purposes". Philadelphia led 2-0 when Michael Barrett was jammed by an 0-1 fastball leading off the ninth, Milton's 98th pitch of the game. Glanville at first broke back on the ball, then charged in and just missed an attempt for a diving catch. The ball hits the turf. No hit bid over. "I think I froze," said Glanville, who was booed by the sellout crowd of 44,539 as he came off the field in the ninth and when he batted in the bottom of the inning.

Kapler sent a shot deep into center past a cold Dewayne Wise. Shame a perfect game would end on a home run in the 9th. But Wise leap up over the fence to rob Kapler of not only a home run, but the opportunity to break up a perfect game.

What is more amazing is the fact a paid sports writer knows the game enough to report on "the catch". Mark Gonzalez wrote an entire article in today's Chicago Tribune about, not the incredible pitching effort, but the unbelievable catch.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/chi-24-white-sox-dewayne-wise-jul24,0,4068077.story

The weaselly lawyers at MLB keep having posts of the catch removed from Youtube.
Let one of those rat bastards try to remove this one.