Shallow Center

Change Everything

2004-11-04T21:07:00.000-05:00

After nearly a year-and-a-half with Blogger, this will be my last post here. Shallow Center is movin' on up, though not to a deluxe apartment in the sky. No, from here on out you can find my stuff here. And you can write to me at tom@shallowcenter.com. So stop on by and let me know what you think.

I've finally got a piece of the pie.

Coming Soon

2004-11-04T08:35:00.000-05:00

Expect a Major Announcement on the future of Shallow Center soon. (Relax, I'm not going into full-time political commentary. I'd like for all of my family and friends to continue speaking to me.) Stay tuned.

Manuel Labor

2004-11-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

The Inquirer is reporting tonight that Charlie Manuel will be introduced formally as the Phillies' next manager tomorrow:

Manuel's two seasons working for the Phillies afforded him the opportunity to gain knowledge of the roster he is taking over. The players also became familiar with him. Manuel has a more easy-going personality than Bowa and several players privately campaigned for him to get the job.

Manuel won out over Jim Leyland, who led the Florida Marlins to the 1997 World Series titles. Leyland badly wanted the job. He was the final candidate to interview, and he impressed club officials. But in the end, Manuel was the man they wanted.

Interesting note about the players' private campaign. My gut told me Leyland was the better choice, but I'm okay with Manuel. (And Tom Goodman should be really happy.) Much as the Flyers accommodated Keith Primeau & Co. in cashiering Bill Barber, Ed Wade now have given the Phillies players what they wanted. And much as the Flyers told Primeau and his mates that the onus was off Ken Hitchcock and on the guys on the ice, the Phils now must accept that it's put-up or shut-up time.

Again.

Accolades

2004-11-03T13:56:00.000-05:00

This is a bit late, but the first annual awards of the Internet Baseball Writers Association have been posted at All-Baseball.com. I'm flattered to have been asked to contribute; my ballot is below:

NATIONAL LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
1. Scott Rolen/Cardinals
2. Albert Pujols/Cardinals
3. Barry Bonds/Giants
4. Adrian Beltre/Dodgers
5. Bobby Abreu/Phillies
6. Carlos Beltran/Astros
7. Eric Gagne/Dodgers
8. Aramis Ramirez/Cubs
9. Jim Edmonds/Cardinals
10. Sean Casey/Reds

AMERICAN LEAGUE PLAYER OF THE YEAR
1. Vladimir Guerrero/Angels
2. Miguel Tejada/Orioles
3. Ichiro Suzuki/Mariners
4. Gary Sheffield/Yankees
5. Michael Young/Rangers
6. Manny Ramirez/Red Sox
7. Curt Schilling/Red Sox
8. Hank Blalock/Rangers
9. Travis Hafner/Indians
10. Johan Santana/Twins

NATIONAL LEAGUE PITCHER OF THE YEAR
1. Roger Clemens/Astros
2. Carl Pavano/Marlins
3. Jason Schmidt/Astros

AMERICAN LEAGUE PITCHER OF THE YEAR
1. Curt Schilling/Red Sox
2. Johan Santana/Twins
3. Jake Westbrook/Indians

NATIONAL LEAGUE DEBUT OF THE YEAR
1. Khalil Greene/Padres
2. Jason Bay/Pirates
3. Ryan Madson/Phillies

AMERICAN LEAGUE DEBUT OF THE YEAR
1. Bobby Crosby/Athletics
2. Daniel Cabrera/Orioles
3. Alex Rios/Blue Jays

NATIONAL LEAGUE MANAGER OF THE YEAR
1. Bobby Cox/Braves
2. Phil Garner/Astros
3. Jim Tracy/Dodgers

AMERICAN LEAGUE MANAGER OF THE YEAR
1. Ron Gardenhire/Twins
2. Mike Sciosia/Angels
3. Joe Torre/Yankees

NATIONAL LEAGUE EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
1. John Scheurhohlz/Braves
2. Gerry Hunsicker/Astros
3. Kevin Towers/Padres

AMERICAN LEAGUE EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
1. Terry Ryan/Twins
2. John Hart/Rangers
3. Chuck LaMar/Devil Rays

Electoral Collage

2004-11-03T13:36:00.000-05:00

We the people have just given four additional years to a president who misled the nation into an unnecessary and unjustified war that has fostered, not suppressed, greater terrorism around the globe; who bought off the electorate with a pandering and insignificant middle-class tax cut that served only to hide much larger givebacks to those who need them less; who impugned the valorous war record of his opponent despite using family connections to avoid combat; whose morally bankrupt fiscal policies have created a mammoth budget deficit that our children and grandchildren will be forced to contend with; who gutted essential and effective environmental legislation; who demonizes those who disagree with him rather than engage in dialogue; who ran on a record of compassion and unity, then governed as if his dictionary didn't include those words; who has pathetically little command of the English language; and who claims to be guided by God in his decision-making.

How the hell did this happen?

Will Saletan of Slate has as good an explanation as any:

I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't -- and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states -- Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire -- don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones.

This is what so many people like about Bush's approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he "gets it." They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don't hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him.

Now look at your candidate, John Kerry. What quality has he most lacked? Not courage -- he proved that in Vietnam. Not will -- he proved that in Iowa. Not brains -- he proved that in the debates. What Kerry lacked was simplicity. Bush had one message; Kerry had dozens. Bush had one issue; Kerry had scores. Bush ended his sentences when you expected him to say more; Kerry went on and on, adding one prepositional phrase after another, until nobody could remember what he was talking about. Now Bush has two big states that mean everything, and Kerry has a bunch of little ones that add up to nothing.

Understand, I'm no Kerry fan. He never stood for anything, changing positions more often than Paris Hilton in front of a videocamera. (Pause for rimshot.) My vote for him was far more a statement against President Bush than any endorsement of Kerry. For the second straight election now, and the fifth of the last seven, the Democrats have saddled the country with what appears to be the safe choice, the guy who looks great on paper but who doesn't understand that leadership -- real, effective leadership -- is intimately tied to human connections. It's not about who's smarter or whose resume is the most glittering; it's about who understands people and their problems. Bill Clinton knew that; Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry didn't.

The more I look, the more uneasy American politics makes me. The Republicans have been hijacked by a politically ruthless and deeply troubling secterian wing that has abandoned the party's core principles of fiscal responsibility and limited government. The Democrats, after a successul flirtation with the pragmatism of the Clinton years, can't get out of their own way; they seem unwilling or unable to adapt to political reality and adjust their messages, and their candidates, accordingly.

So what now for moderate centrists like me? I'm a registered independent perfectly willing to split my ticket -- did it yesterday, in fact -- but these days I fear I have no place to go. So -- do I join a party and try to work from within the system to improve things? If so, which one? Do I move beyond this little effort and become a more vocal advocate for change? Do I run for office myself?

What would you do?

That's the Chicago Way

2004-11-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

My 3-year-old daughter proved today that she has a wonderfully engaged civic future ahead of her.

Or a lifetime of rampant political corruption.

We had traveled to our polling place this morning to cast our ballot and remove the swing-state shackles of direct mail and recorded phone calls that had imprisoned us for the last two months. Inside the booth, I made my choices. I directed my daughter to press the orange button, the one which would record my vote. The machine made its happy voting noise, we stepped through the curtain, and I told her, "We did it! We voted! Way to go!" High-fives and happiness all around.

Then, she piped up with a very familiar word, the one she uses whenever she does something she really likes.

"Again."

"Well, sweetheart, next year. We'll come back next year and vote."

"No, I want to vote again! Again!"

I'll have to do some genealogy research to see if we're related to the Daleys of Chicago.

They Can't Handle the Truth!

2004-10-31T05:53:00.000-05:00

With yesterday's parade in Boston, baseball fans have closed the books on the 2004 season. Yes, there will be plenty of talk over the next few months about free agent signings and trades and managerial changes, but all of that is about next year. We're done with this season.

A final note about the World Series champs and their many supporters: As much as I wish I could believe Bill Simmons's frequent, fervent assertions that all Red Sox Nation wants is to be treated like all other baseball fans, Boston's ability to channel its own supposed victimhood in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary makes me skeptical. The Sox hadn't won a Series since 1918, but they were a hell of a lot more competitive in the intervening seasons than a lot of other teams -- including, say, our own hometown nine -- and meanwhile the Patriots were winning two Super Bowls in three years while the Celtics are the NBA's most storied franchise. Yet all you ever heard about was the woe that had befallen Fenway Park and the surrounding area since Babe Ruth was peddled to the Yankees.

My suspicion is that Red Sox Nation is going to need some expert therapy to deal with the sudden disconnect between perception and reality. Boston doesn't want admit it, but I think its fans find some sort of perverse comfort in the heartache they believe they've had to endure. As Col. Nathan Jessup barks in A Few Good Men:

You don't want the truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall -- you need me on that wall.

Dogs and Cats Living Together

2004-10-27T23:36:00.000-04:00

In the space of less than a week, the Boston Red Sox managed to do something no team had done, ever, in well over a century of Major League Baseball, then won the World Series for the first time in 86 years.

Now that the impossible apparently has become routine, I will be:

Submitting Shallow Center for a Pulitzer Prize

Awaiting Mia Hamm's impending divorce from Nomar Garciaparra so that I can ask her out, with my wife's okay

Entering the Mr. Universe competition

Barging into David Montgomery's office and demanding to replace Ed Wade

Subsisting entirely on a diet of sausage pizza and Stoudt's American Pale Ale, and not gaining an ounce or seeing my cholesterol levels rise

Acquiring the powers of X-ray vision, clairvoyance, and flight

and expecting it all to come true.

As gripping as the two League Championship Series were, the World Series had an air of inevitability about it. The Red Sox jumped out to the lead in every game, and while the Cardinals occasionally were able to draw close, this was clearly Boston's show.

And so the Sox have exorcised the most infamous of baseball demons, sent Babe Ruth's ghost careening west on the Mass Pike toward Albany. Theirs has been a truly remarkable performance -- a blistering close to the regular season, an easy divisional series win over the Angels, the historic vanquishing of the Yankees, and the ultimate triumph over St. Louis. They are due every congratulations which comes their way. Including mine.

Managed Care

2004-10-27T13:33:00.000-04:00

While the baseball world zeroes in the Red Sox' impending World Series victory -- man, is that a weird phrase to type -- intriguing things happened in Phillies City-State yesterday. Jim Fregosi was in South Philadelphia yesterday to interview for the Phils' vacant managerial post, and Ed Wade confirmed that Jim Leyland would be a candidate as well.

As Wade prepares for the most important decision of his career -- at some point doesn't his job have to be on the line for a nearly $100 million failure? -- he'd do well to heed these words from Phil Sheridan in today's Inquirer:

Watching the Sox buzz through the Cardinals is a breathtaking example of design in action. [Sox GM Theo] Epstein wanted a lineup of smart, aggressive hitters. He wanted players with asbestos-covered psyches who could endure the heat of playing in Boston. He wanted depth (the money really helps there). And he wanted a manager with the right temperament to keep it all together.

Also Sam Donnellon in the Daily News:

A year after watching Aaron Boone's home run send his hard work home early, Epstein is one game away from emancipating Red Sox Nation from an 86-year-old curse because he outworked and outthought George Steinbrenner's baseball people in the offseason and inseason, and because he spent more wisely than they.

While the Yankees added two big bats to a lineup already full of them in the offseason, Epstein added another ace in [Curt] Schilling and a reliable, two-inning closer in [Keith] Foulke. While the Yankees assembled a team of aloof professionals who came and went separate from each other, Epstein has, over the past two seasons, constructed a team lauded for its cohesiveness and chemistry.

It's ridiculously easy to point to a winning team and say, "Just do that." But it doesn't hurt to draw some parallels. The high-priced Phillies have spent the last two seasons punching in, playing a lifeless nine innings, and then punching out. Wade's disastrous hiring of Larry Bowa was both a poor baseball decision and a poor "people" decision -- as you watch the Red Sox romp joyfully through the postseason, sucking it up even when things are going badly, you realize that Bowa's Phillies would have imploded immediately when faced with even a fraction of the adversity with which Boston has had to contend. Then there's the Sox' amazing ability to work pitchers through every spot in the lineup (a hallmark of the Fregosi Era, by the way), something the hacking Philadelphians are brutally incapable of.

Yeah, a $125 million roster helps. But $93 should be enough to buy you a team that does better than a 10-GB second-place finish.

Ashlee to Ashes

2004-10-26T13:14:00.000-04:00

As much as I enjoy Ashlee Simpson's pleasant little pop tune "Pieces of Me" -- oh, c'mon, like you don't have any guilty pleasures -- I can't help but cringe at her glaringly inept attempts to control the damage of her disastrous appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend.

Most PR pros would advise owning up to bad news and speaking with one voice, especially when a national television broadcast reveals incontrovertible evidence of the screw-up. Yet patriarch-slash-freak Joe Simpson, removed from the journalistic security blanket that is MTV News, couldn't decide which lie to trot out and so decided to flood the market with as many as he could manufacture. First Team Simpson attempted to deny Ashlee's blatant lip-synching, blaming the band for playing the wrong song and then pointing to a computer glitch. A day later, the Simpsons relented and admitted the obvious, but still managed to trip over themselves in the process. First there was some nonsense about needing to lip-synch because of acid reflux, then a statement on Ashlee's Web site saying her overworked voice needed a break.

Understandably absent, perhaps, was the truth -- that Ashlee's voice when unassisted by a crack studio production team is too poor to be heard live in a small venue.

The news that a young pop singer lip-synchs is hardly earth-shattering. Simpson's problem is her vehement denouncing of the process in a recent magazine interview. Lying about it after being caught red-handed -- much as another Simpson, Bart, says "I didn't do it" despite being nabbed with a can of spray-paint in his mitt -- isn't helping any, either.

Or maybe the Simpsons are smarter than we all think. Perhaps Joe is angling for a reality series of his own. After all, playing dumb while counting her millions has worked for his other daughter, right?

Wan Helsing

2004-10-25T22:22:00.000-04:00

Talk about typecasting. As the dreary and too-long Van Helsing labors toward its conclusion, Hugh Jackman, whom you may recall played Wolverine in two X-Men movies, gets all hirsute and turns into, well, a werewolf.

At one point, Van Helsing actually howls at the moon. I think that was probably in the script, though Jackman may have been expressing his regret at agreeing to appear in this piece of crap. Few things are more frustrating than a big-budget, FX-laden thriller that plods dully along for two-plus hours; by the time VH ended, I was calculating what I could have done with the 132 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. Writer/director Stephen Sommers throws elements of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, religion, and camp into his blender, but instead of a smooth and delicious puree, the result is a chunky mess of badly contrasting flavors. Worse, it's wicked boring.

As the title character, Jackman gives it a game performance, but the uneven script allows his considerable charm to sneak through only occasionally. Sommers, who helmed The Mummy so ably, offers a confusing mishmash of a film here, and without someone as offbeat as Brendan Fraser to set the pace, the actors stumble their way along. Jackman and David Wehnam, his little sidekick, wink their way through the film, but Kate Beckinsale mistakenly plays it straight away, only with a weird Eastern European accent. As Dracula, Richard Roxburgh channels his inner cheese and delivers an out-of-place performance lifted straight from Adam West-era Batman.

And what on earth is the lovely and talented Beckinsale doing in this piece of crap? She went from promising Indie It Girl (Cold Comfort Farm, The Last Days of Disco) to Just Another Blockbuster Babe (Pearl Harbor, Serendipity) in about 30 seconds flat. In Van Helsing she doesn't even look like herself -- buried underneath layer after layer of makeup, she is completely and sadly generic.

Which is, perhaps, an apt description of the entire movie. A lot of folks cashed some very impressive checks in making it, a disquieting thought to anyone who ponied up nine bucks to watch Jackman go to the dogs.

A Nation Divided

2004-10-21T16:10:00.000-04:00

Why do the Red Sox get a "nation" rooting for them? Go to any big American city outside New England and you'll see at least as many New York caps than Boston ones -- so why no "Yankees Nation"? Surely there's a substantial Chicago diaspora spreading out across this great land, yet you never hear of "Cubs Nation." And God forbid such nonentities as the Royals' and Rockies' fan bases be granted nation status.

Indeed, there's something uncomfortably elitist, and a little un-American, about Boston's die-hards referring to themselves as Red Sox Nation. It's yet another way of setting themselves apart from the rest of us mere baseball fans, like the annoying and indefensible bemoaning of sporting woe simply because the Red Sox haven't won a World Series since, what, 1918, right? (You'd think I'd remember the year more clearly, what with Joe Buck having it scrawled in Sharpie across his forehead and all.)

Yes, I've fallen for the Sox, especially after that kidney punch to the Yankees last night, but the way their fans -- with an enormous assist from such writers as Bill Simmons and Peter Gammons -- set their suffering apart as something special and unique is annoying.

Philadelphians, of course, wouldn't know elitism if it walked up behind us and clobbered us with a Louisville Slugger; we're far too insecure to refer to ourselves in such noble and self-obsessed terms. And, well, we don't tend to go anywhere. No, we're notoriously parochial, and much more likely to remain close to home base.

"Phillies Nation"? I don't think so. More like the Phillies City-State.

Yankees Go Home

2004-10-21T01:15:00.000-04:00

They've been playing baseball for a long time -- well over a century -- so for a team to do something that's never been done in the history of the game is a supreme accomplishment.

It would be incredible enough for the Red Sox to have overcome a 3-0 series deficit. But to do it against the Yankees, with the final two games at the Stadium?

You gotta be kidding me.

Satan must have been dropping some serious coin throughout New England. I sure hope he kept receipts for all of those souls he bought. He'll need them if the Red Sox falter in the World Series.

But that's for later. For now, Boston and all of its fans rightly should revel in what's happened over the last week. Good luck to the Sox in the Series.

Is there anything happening in the National League?

A Leg Up

2004-10-20T13:17:00.000-04:00

He's got a mouth the size of Boston Harbor, and an ego to match, but, boy, Curt Schilling sure can back it up, can't he? Pitching on one leg and in obvious discomfort, he called upon all of his skills to shut down the Yankees for seven innings last night, and then the overworked Red Sox bullpen reached into its bag of magic tricks to conjure up two innings of relief that sealed the deal. Schilling's performance was a masterpiece forged of guts and sheer will; can you even imagine Kevin Millwood in a similar situation having the stones to make it through the first inning, let alone seven? Me, either.

Simply by forcing Game 7, the Sox have made baseball history. An even more historical achievement would be attained with a win tonight -- Terry Francona managing in the World Series. Think about that while the Phillies plow through managerial candidates.

My in-laws, residents of the Boston metro area, report living on adrenaline and little sleep. How I envy them.

Every Time I Try to Get Out ...

2004-10-19T13:49:00.000-04:00

How did this happen? How, after a second straight season of bitter disappointment by the hometown nine, am I again transfixed by playoff baseball? Two weeks after writing, "I actually am looking forward to the break," I find myself completely immersed in the league championship series. So much for time off until spring training.

Indeed, I couldn't tear myself away from the Red Sox-Yankees ordeal last night, and damn them, the Sox have me rooting for them yet again. And it's an honest cheering -- not my usual "Please, God, let Boston win for once so that all of the tiresome self-pity that enshrouds New England every autumn stops." And there's a hell of a series going on in the National League, too, and damn if I'm not pulling for the scrappy Astros and their Jesuit-educated GM to overcome "baseball genius" Tony La Russa and the Cardinals, whose coronation has been, thankfully, put on hold. As Paul Hagen notes, Gerry Hunsicker and Houston can thank our guys for that.

And then there's -- sigh -- the Phillies. If I think of them at all right now, it's with a wistful longing. The anger of this last lost season has been replaced by sadness at what might have been. When I see Fenway packed with yearning, pleading fans, bundled up in their scarves and gloves and faded Red Sox hats, I imagine, briefly, what it must be like. I was at the 15-14 game of the '93 World Series -- 11 years, a lifetime, ago. The memories are starting to recede. I want them back. Check that -- I want new memories.

Will Nearly Everybody Still Read?

2004-10-15T13:44:00.000-04:00

Considering the ubiquity -- and ratings -- of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, conservatives have some nerve whining about the "liberal" media. Even locally, right-leaning Michael Smerconish has becoming something of a civic presence thanks to gigs on a local talk radio station and as a Daily News columnist, and the Inquirer has made a point to run regular op-eds by conservative columnists. But there's no Philadelphia equivalent to the Washington Times, so former Main Line Times editor Kevin Williamson is stepping in to fill the void.

Williamson -- not to be confused with his more famous namesake -- appeared on Smerconish's show Wednesday, reported the Inky and the DN, and announced that he would begin publishing a new paper, the Evening Bulletin, Mondays through Fridays beginning next month. As for the paper's political bent? The Daily News's Dan Gross wrote:

On Smerconish's show, Williamson likened the paper to the Fox News Channel, which he called an alternative to mainstream media.

Williamson, 32, is a motorcycle-riding former Texan described by a former colleague as "scary"-looking, and also "Catholic, very conservative, very bright, very hard-hitting, with a shaved head, and leather pants."

On Smerconish's show, Williamson said Narberth-based investment banker Tom Rice would be the publisher and financier.

Rice is also said to be conservative. He could not be reached yesterday for comment.

In an era when many more newspapers close up shop than crack open a new printing press, the Bulletin's launch is welcome. (Love the name, too -- nice nod to Philly tradition.) Chances are there are a lot of its politics with which I'll disagree, but that's okay -- contrasting voices are a healthy and necessary component of democracy. Best of luck to Mr. Williamson and his partners.

Is Johnny Podres Available?

2004-10-14T23:06:00.000-04:00

While the blogosphere puts its money on Charlie Manuel as the Phillies' next manager, Bill Conlin chips in with some interesting perspective on Jim Fregosi, the skipper of the fabled and beloved '93 squad, who will interview in a couple of weeks.

If Larry Bowa perfected the art of reducing a team to something less than the sum of its parts, surely Fregosi accomplished the opposite, at least in 1993. Talk all you want about lightning in a bottle, but those Phillies possessed both a remarkable chemistry and a penchant for maximizing talent. Conlin suggests those traits didn't simply evolve on their own:

The thing was, [Fregosi] gave the appearance of letting the clubhouse police itself, and he knew he had a strong sergeant-at-arms out there, sitting in that rocking chair in front of his locker. At the same time, though, the clubhouse door was always open to anybody who needed to get something heavy off his chest.

Everybody on that club bought into the theme of taking pitches, working counts and making pitchers work from the stretch. For a team that didn't have a lot of home run hitters and lacked overall speed, it was an approach that led to a club record for walks and runs scored. It was no accident.

Look, Manuel probably would be a fine choice. He said all the right things in the papers today. But Fregosi -- who earned points by me with his frank, off-the-record, and fully accurate trashing of WIP and its serious listeners -- is a very intriguing figure. One shouldn't forget that all of the baggage with which he left Philadelphia included a National League championship trophy.

Plug and Play

2004-10-12T22:21:00.000-04:00

With interviews for the Phillies' managing vacancy beginning today, Phil Sheridan tucks his tongue firmly into his cheek and offers all of the candidates some unsolicited advice in this morning's Inquirer. Humor aside, the real reason for the perilous situation into which the next manager enters can be found in Don Steinberg's Sports Business column today.

Steinberg writes about Confidence, a new book by Harvard Business School faculty member Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who has an interesting take on one of Philadelphia's teams:

Kanter's book is about winning streaks, losing streaks and turnarounds, and she uses examples from the corporate and sports worlds to examine what makes them happen. ...

[S]he found the Eagles, whose tale opens her section on turnarounds.

The book would have you believe that the Eagles' salvation predates the 2004 arrival of Terrell Owens, and that this currently undefeated season has resulted from 10 years of planning. Kanter describes how [Jeffrey] Lurie bought a mediocre team in 1994 for $185 million -- then the most ever paid for an NFL franchise -- and was stunned by how bad it was behind the scenes.

When he first entered the team's Veterans Stadium facilities as the new owner, he thought: "This is an NFL franchise? ... I saw no windows, lighting that could put you to sleep, rats walking across offices, and a lot of unenergetic expressions."

Lurie and Banner set out to instill confidence, which Kanter defines as "positive expectations for a favorable outcome ... . Confidence influences willingness to invest -- to commit money, time, reputation, emotional energy."

They made employees and players feel appreciated with changes such as improving the salary-review process and spending more on player amenities. They hired Andy Reid, who, according to Banner in the book, "plans every minute of every practice" and "doesn't care how much anyone second-guesses him." Reid found player leaders at each position and began meeting with them regularly. ...

The Eagles also built Lincoln Financial Field and the NovaCare Complex, where, Kanter said, "the beauty of the place affects the spirit of winning."

Compare Kanter's rhapsodic description of the Eagles to the state of the Phillies these days and you begin to understand the last two years of vast underachievement. More than, say, a hard-ass manager and a failure to secure a true No. 1 starter, what besets the Phils -- what is their most significant obstacle to success -- is a systemic organizational dysfunction. It's as if they're hardwired to fail. And I don't think Don Baylor or Grady Little or Charlie Manuel is a sufficiently talented electrician to change that.

The Screen Door Slams

2004-10-11T14:41:00.000-04:00

The great WXPN and its listeners pride themselves, rightfully, on a cosmopolitan musical worldview that belies Philadelphia's often frustrating parochial mindset. Even if the station gets a bit too impressed with itself (especially at pledge time), the list of superb artists whose work can be found only on 'XPN is staggering, exhaustive, and very, very impressive.

Give 88.5 props, though, for acknowledging its Philly roots, as Terry Gross's Fresh Air does. That's why it was a surprise, but not an overly large one, when 'XPN's weeklong countdown of the 885 greatest songs of all times, as voted on by listeners, ended with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's "Thunder Road" claiming the top spot early Friday evening. Bruce and the boys edged out the song David Dye said many station insiders predicted would win, John Lennon's lovely "Imagine."

Quantifying the greatest songs of all time is impossible, of course, but you could do a lot worse than "Thunder Road." Classically old-school Bruce, the song delivers a typically direct Springsteenesque lyricism that meshes beautifully with the arrangement, which alternates perfectly between wistful and powerful. Less bombastic than "Born to Run" (No. 6), more substantial than "Rosalita" (No. 22), "Thunder Road" is early Springsteen at his best -- hungry, romantic, and tough. Kudos to WXPN's listeners for their nod to Jersey.

Destiny's Children

2004-10-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

What's the over-under on number of times Fox and ESPN will replay the shot of Pedro Martinez grasping Don Zimmer's head like a cantaloupe and flinging him to the grass? There's going to be an unbearable amount of newspaper ink, broadcast time, and bandwidth devoted to how the Red Sox and Yankees have been "destined" to meet since last year's bloodsport sent New York to the World Series and Boston home to fix its problems with Terry Francona. Whatever. Once again I'll be rooting for the Sox to take it all, in the hopes that a Series victory would finally shut up all of the townies who somehow overlook two Super Bowl championships in three years so that they can engage in a massive, woe-are-us, civic self-pity that has been annoying the rest of America for nearly nine decades now.

Lawrence R. Bowa, Will You Please Go Now?

2004-10-07T13:39:00.000-04:00

Well, so much for not burning any bridges. Larry Bowa never was any good at keeping his pie hole shut, and for the last few days he's been blubbering to any fool with a camera about his supposed mistreatment at the hands of his former employer, the Phillies. And then he does an about-face and admits that, yeah, he'd probably fire himself, too, if he were in Ed Wade's shoes. One wonders whether he employed this kind of consistent communication in his own clubhouse.

The WIP-type phans are completely correct that Wade needs to go -- but they are dead wrong when they think that Bowa will ever find success as a major league manager. Does it really matter whether he was a "fiery sparkplug on the franchise's only World Series winner" (as the wire reports of his firing surely noted)? Does that have anything at all to do with his ability to manage a team?

The Padres and the Phillies have discovered the answer to those questions the hard way.

Man Bites Man; Film at 9:40

2004-10-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

If you don't already have a brother-in-law, I highly recommend that you go out and get one. Among various other necessary duties (furniture moving, beer drinking, video-game playing, etc.), he will accompany you to devastatingly bad movies that your spouse doesn't want to see.

Like, oh, I don't know, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. We caught the late show last night, along with four other hardy patrons, and emerged into the chilly air stunned at the awfulness of the experience.

Look, we knew going in that we weren't exactly about to see Kurosawa. That's the point of our outings, to see bad movies. But there's bad-good, and then there's bad-bad. RE:A was bad-sucky, even by our abysmal standards.

Milla Jovovich is back as Alice, and she's stuck in the middle of a city full of flesh-eating zombies. Or undead. Or Dick Cheneys. Anyway, she and a small band of uninfected survivors pick their way through the city in an effort to locate this scientist's daughter, which will allow them to ... oh, hell, it doesn't matter. Nothing about the movie is worth seeing except for Milla's brief nude scene at the end; the plot is choppy, the writing is laughable, and the acting is sub-community theater. At the very least for a film like this, you hope for decent effects, but judging by all of the blurry camera shots, especially during the many fight scenes, the budget on that ran out about halfway through.

Then again, I didn't see the first Resident Evil, so maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental without having the requisite background to go on. Surely there was some critical nuance that I missed, some character shading that would have better illuminated my viewing, right?

Nah, I didn't think so, either.

Wait 'til Next Year. Please.

2004-10-05T13:13:00.000-04:00

Larry Bowa is gone, the Phillies have hunkered down to discuss his replacement, and the mainstream media and blogosphere alike have fingered everyone but Steve Bartman as the cause for yet another doomed season. It's all so ... numbing. Backward, clueless, and incapable of innovative thinking, the Phils squandered an absolutely golden opportunity to reintroduce baseball to Philadelphia. Most years I can overlook the futility, enjoy postseason action, and eagerly anticipate next year; now, though, I feel so beaten down by the drudgery of the season, after such high expectations, that I actually am looking forward to the break. I'll be back at Citizens Bank Park next year, of course, but with a much more guarded enthusiasm. I wore my heart on my sleeve this year -- new ballpark, new closer, returning stars, etc. -- only to get it broken like a high school sophomore's. Not next year, boyo. Next year I'm playing hard to get.

Bo Goes; Phils Fall; Suds Sought

2004-10-03T07:03:00.000-04:00

There, now, Ed Wade, that wasn't so hard, was it? After yesterday's reports that Larry Bowa would be jettisoned next week -- file under "No S---, Sherlock" -- Bowa stomped into Wade's office and demanded to know his status. This was hardly a new phenomenon during this lost season, but this time Wade finally found some stones and told Bowa what he should have told him this time last year -- take a hike.

Jayson Stark's piece on ESPN.com last night sums up the situation very nicely, though I continue to be perplexed by his and others' perception that Bowa maintains some sort of mystical aura of popularity that allowed him to hold on for as long as he did.

The Gary Varsho-led Phillies then went out and dropped a 4-3 game to the Marlins. I was among the 36,000 or so in attendance, and found the experience depressingly familiar. Had I closed my eyes and simply listened -- to the complacent boredom of the crowd, to the occasional Eagles cheers, to the booing when John Vukovich and Tomas Perez botched a play at the plate, helping to squelch a ninth-inning rally -- it would have felt like the Vet all over again, yet another meaningless late-season game in front of disinterested fans who were present simply because they had prepaid for their tickets.

Sadly, my final visit to Citizens Bank Park left me with a sour taste in my mouth. While Bob Ford delivered an assessment in yesterday's Inquirer that was hard to quibble with, I was stunned to find dozens of concession stands closed last night. Especially distressing was that so many of the shut-down counters were the wonderful Brewerytown stands, where several outstanding microbrews were sold during the course of the season. And this was on the main concourse -- upstairs, where my brother and I have our seats, the only open concessions were bunched around home plate. I know the Phils packed it in early this year, but the Park should have been an exception. But this is the Phillies, of course, a team that has elevated the concept of not getting it to an art form, both on and off the field.

Drinking from the Half-Empty Glass

2004-10-01T13:38:00.000-04:00

The Daily News yesterday asked its three baseball guys, Bill Conlin, Marcus Hayes, and Paul Hagen, how to fix the Phillies. Their respective responses left me wondering not how the team should be fixed, but whether it even can be.

Conlin, examining the front office, flat-out advises fans to "get used to the odor of serial failure." He notes that Ed Wade, who's failed thus far to get the job done, will not have the largesse of additional revenue streams to count on, as he did the last two off-seasons; the list of potential replacements for Larry Bowa is "underwhelming"; big boppers Jim Thome and Pat Burrell failed to deliver the huge seasons expected of them; and the farm system has been critically stripped of usable parts in failed attempts to land patches for the holes that appeared in 2003 and 2004. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

Hagen looks at the pitching staff and counsels Wade to consider retaining Kevin Millwood if the price is right, let Eric Milton walk, try to deal the erratic Vicente Padilla, hold on to Brett Myers, wait for Randy Wolf to bounce back from his injury-marred 2004, give Gavin Floyd and Ryan Madson shots to start, bring back Billy Wagner, Tim Worrell, Rheal Cormier, and Felix Rodriguez; and wave bye-bye to Todd Jones and Roberto Hernandez. On the Cory Lidle question, Hagen puts his arms up in the air and says he doesn't know what to do. Left unsaid is that these recommendations do nothing to address the glaring lack of a No. 1 starter which so plagued the Phils this year.

Hayes, taking up the lineup, offers this gem: "You hope."

With seven of eight position players locked into roles that make them either cornerstones or untradable (Mike Lieberthal), you have what you have, with Chase Utley an immediate insert for Placido Polanco at second and Mystery Player X in centerfield: Maybe Jason Michaels, but more likely a low-cost veteran free agent whose offensive input will be coincidental.

"We're not prepared to dismantle the lineup and make wholesale changes," general manager Ed Wade said. "We need the players we have to perform at the level we've seen them perform at in the past."

If this sounds familiar, it's because Wade has said these very words countless times over the last two seasons. I'll bet he simply clicked "Play" on his tape recorder when Hayes asked the question so that he didn't have to actually say the words yet again. Maybe these last two years haven't reflected underachievement; the sample size of games is sufficiently large now to wonder whether what we've seen out of the Phillies is not a failure to play to potential, but as good as it gets.

As Hagen observes today, the Phillies absolutely must convey an impression of urgency to the repair task. There are way too many recent examples of teams that moved into beautiful new parks, stumbled immediately, and now play in front of acres of empty seats. Should the perception become that David Montgomery & Co. are content to sit back and count their money instead of roll up their sleeves and fix the mess, Hagen writes,

nobody will blame fans if they approach any moves made this time around, no matter how glittering and promising they appear on the surface, with a certain amount of skepticism.

The Phillies have to find a way to spiff up their image, to convince people that they really do care more about winning than counting their money after yet another sellout.

And, frankly, they haven't done a very good job of that this year.

Consider the first week of August. Eagles owner Jeff Lurie showed up at training camp one day to deliver his annual state of the team address. He said he was "obsessed" with winning the Super Bowl.

In the meantime, the Phillies had just lost six out of seven to begin a 2-week road trip that looked at the time as though it could define their season. And what did club president Dave Montgomery think? "If we don't make the postseason, our fans will be disappointed and we'll be disappointed," he told the Inquirer in San Diego.

Disappointed? At that time, the fans were distraught, dismayed, disgusted and disconsolate. To suggest they were disappointed was a huge understatement.

The clock starts ticking at about 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon.

"Now is the Time," Meet "Yes, We Can" and "We Owe You One"

2004-09-28T13:15:00.000-04:00

Last night's loss to the woeful Pirates finally, officially, and mathematically extinguished any barely flickering hope the Phillies maintained of making the playoffs. Preseason hype is such a wonderful thing, isn't it? The Phils now can safely sleepwalk through the season's final six games as they did its first 156. Lucky me, I hold tickets to tonight's tilt against the Bucs and Saturday's game with the Marlins. And so once again my final in-person memories will be of who-cares at-bats by triple-A call-ups instead of tightly contested games that, you know, matter.

Now that the body has been certified, the post-mortems are already being filed. Mike Carminati at Mike's Baseball Rants offers a lengthy and depressingly plausible assessment of the failed season, while Tom Goodman at Swing and a Miss takes a look at the enormity of the task facing the Phillies as the off-season looms ever closer. You can judge for yourself which of Tom's suggestions are made with his tongue in his cheek. I'll check in with my long-term thoughts later; for now I need to focus on short-term needs: Tony Luke's tonight, or a Schmitter? Yards Philly Pale Ale, or Brandywine Lager?

Shoot for the Hip

2004-09-27T13:01:00.000-04:00

God bless MTV for padding its schedule with infinite reruns. Thus was I able to tune in last night and catch some of the premiere episode of The Real World Philadelphia, which first ran a couple of weeks ago. As much as I'd love to follow this season closely, I'm afraid I'm going to have to settle for periodic drop-ins, with the aim of ensuring that the city's hipness quotient doesn't get undersold, and that's what last night's viewing entailed.

The result was good news and bad news. On the plus side, the city looked fantastic -- bright and vibrant and filled with fun things for young people to do. Yeah, there was the obligatory huffing and puffing up the Art Museum steps, but there also was a nice shot of Logan Circle, and Old City looked like the place to be. Negatively, the previews for tomorrow's new episode have some of the housemates being hassled by the cops inside a club. Philadelphia -- the place that loves you back. Just not too much -- it doesn't want you to get a big head or anything.

As for the pretty young people, well, it's the usual collection of dysfunctional hotties who are laughably clueless when it comes to how the world works. Each year brings a new handful of angsters who think they have to act more and more "outrageous" -- usually defined as involving massive quantities of alcohol and porn-worthy sexual situations -- in order to make an impression. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm finding such behavior, especially in the preening, self-involved world of reality television, less shocking than it is tiresome. Though I'd be willing to cut Mel, the short-haired California girl, quite a bit of slack ... .

Screen Shots

2004-09-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

Among the many, many changes wrought by parenthood is the newfound necessity to choose carefully when it comes to pop culture offerings. Your window is simply way too small to accommodate the amount of stuff you used to consume. Want to listen to a bunch of CDs on the seven-hour car ride to Cape Cod? Better be a fan of the Wiggles or Philadelphia Chickens. And where once you gladly would have ponied up eight bucks for a trashy art-house flick whose chief attraction is the rampant nakedness of a hot former TV ingenue, you're now reduced to squeezing in whatever's in your Netflix queue after your little one conks out following a night of Pooh and Piglet.

The real challenge comes in September, when the television networks roll out their new offerings. In years past this was a chance to pick and choose from the best of the debuts, while also retaining ongoing favorites and the usual filler that occupies your time when nothing else is on. Now, though, time is just too damn short. Fully immersing myself in a good new show -- getting to know the characters, following the storylines, really giving the work the attention it deserves -- has gotten harder and harder. (Imagine if I had been forced to shoehorn baseball viewing into such a compressed schedule.)

Yet as much as I can't imagine following another serial -- I gave up the weekly apocalypse ER had become years ago, and the dumbing-down absurdity of The West Wing turned me off that former stalwart last season -- I found myself engrossed in the premiere of Lost last week. I'd never watched J.J. Abrams's other stuff -- the well regarded Felicity and Alias -- but quickly came to see why those shows have had so many fans. Lost takes 40 or so survivors of a plane crash, sticks them on a deserted tropical island, stirs in the myriad facets of the human condition, and then tosses in a mysterious, unseen threat the likes of which hasn't been seen since Predator. The first episode began to establish some interesting characters and offered an intriguing mix of thrills, sci-fi/horror, and drama. It was very well done TV, something I can see myself hunkering down in front of every Wednesday -- in other words, exactly the thing I really don't need.

As for a couple of last year's diversions, I'm finding that both Survivor and The Apprentice are starting to show their age. The former kicked off with the no-longer-innovative battle-of-the-sexes format, the same old challenges, and the infuriating spectacle of watching contestants lose it after a couple of days on the island -- like, haven't they ever watched the show before? And The Apprentice, in just its second go-round seems determined to remind us why we took such glee in Donald Trump's 1990s fall from grace -- the gruff but lovable mogul of season 1 has been replaced by the irrational and self-involved prick that you suspect he really is.

Finally, a last valedictory for The Amazing Race, which copped its second straight Emmy Sunday night and which concluded its fifth excellent season with a victory by the extremely likable married couple Chip and Kim. The fortysomethings outplayed their younger rivals -- the volatile and self-destructive pretty people Colin and Christie, and the annoyingly God-fearing pretty people Brandon and Nicole -- to win the million bucks. CBS was set to start Race's sixth season tonight, but after the show delivered big-time ratings this year, the network reportedly decided to find a better time slot than the wasteland of Saturday night. Nice to see the Eye get something right for a change.

Locking the Barn Door

2004-09-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

Of course.

Of course the Phillies sweep the Marlins now. An infuriating hallmark of Larry Bowa's tenure has been winning when it didn't matter much. After nearly two years of abject failure in South Florida, the Phils took three straight to pull to within, what, about a dozen games of the Braves, right? About the only thing the Miami victories are good for is the removal of psychological burdens should the Phillies somehow fashion themselves into a contender next season. Otherwise they're mere window dressing -- frilly curtains which fail to conceal the shattered panes behind them.

Exactly which windows need to be fixed is a major concern for the Phillies, of course. Tom Goodman at Swing and a Miss has some interesting thoughts here, while Rich Hoffman, in yesterday's Daily News, says it's all about starting pitching. Pointing to the correlation between the team's appallingly low number of quality starts and its status as also-rans, Hoffman makes the case for the re-signing of Eric Milton, a topic that has generated some discussion elsewhere.

Depressingly, the trial balloons being floated out of South Philadelphia imply a much less aggressive off-season than the past few years have seen. You'd think that after watching the much-heralded 2004 squad trip over its own cleats, David Montgomery & Co. would recognize the need to field a winner regardless of cost before Citizens Bank Park resembles the deserted wastelands that Miller and PNC Parks have become. I mean, I didn't watch an inning of the Florida series, and, judging by the decreased activity in the Phillies blogosphere, I'm not alone. The Phils have managed once again to drain the passion out of one of the country's most loyal and fervent fan bases, and without a winner next year, baseball will return to its previously full-time status as a sporting afterthought among Philadelphians.

But, hey, at least the ballpark no longer sucks.

What Did You Expect?

2004-09-21T13:51:00.000-04:00

While George Bush and John Kerry spend copious amounts of time dropping verbal cluster bombs on each other, their staffs can't praise each man's opponent quickly enough when it comes to debating skills. It's a funny thing, this expectations game. Set the bar low, and the most pedestrian performance seems outstanding; set it high, and anything less than excellence will seem like a complete failure.

Sound familiar, Phillies fans? The heavily favored Phils, whose discomfort with frontrunner status has been painfully obvious all season long, collapsed almost with the first pitch. What management must ask itself now is whether the expectations were justified. If so, wholesale changes may not be necessary -- a tweak here and there, and certainly a new guy in the manager's office, could make the difference between this year's flops and next year's contenders. But if the boys upstairs take a hard look in the mirror and decide they've been deluding themselves since spring training, then you might expect to see a vastly different team take the field next season at Citizens Bank Park.

Then again, this is the Phillies we're talking about. Honest self-assessment has never been high on the organization's to-do list. Compare the Phils' approach with that of their South Philly neighbors -- the Eagles have spent every season under Jeff Lurie trying like hell to get better. Three straight losses in NFC championship games is nothing to sneeze at, and for all the grief the Birds get from the paunchy, clueless gasbags on WIP, they clearly know what they're doing. Each year has brought higher and higher expectations, and Philadelphia has come damn close to meeting them every single time. Picture the Phillies playing under the weight of what fans expect of the Eagles -- they'd be under the home dugout bench in the fetal position, praying someone would toss them some sunflower seeds so that they wouldn't have to leave to find food.

Isn't it interesting what can happen when the people in charge -- on the field and off -- act like grown-ups and demand accountability?

Putting the 'Ad' in 'Adults'

2004-09-20T23:29:00.000-04:00

Watching the Eagles and Vikings on Monday Night Football tonight, I've seen ads from both Anheuser-Busch and Philip Morris urging parents to talk to their kids about not using their products. Because, you know, beer and cigarette companies don't want anyone getting the wrong idea -- their stuff is for responsible consumption by adults only.

Maybe CBS News should consider airing a similar warning each night.

Homecoming

2004-09-19T21:21:00.000-04:00

No matter how much fun a vacation is -- and make no mistake about it, this one was aces -- there's something quite comforting in returning home and finding things the way you left them. It makes settling back into your routine less stressful and unpleasant. So thanks to the Phillies, whose cruise-control season -- a handful of impressive wins followed by clunker after clunker after clunker, regular as clockwork -- continued unabated while I chased my daughter around a beach on Cape Cod for a week.

While the hometown nine lurched toward the end of their uninspiring season, the Red Sox kept on demonstrating what talent and character can add up to. Even if the Yankees manage to hold on to the division lead that they've nearly wasted, Boston has proven to be everything the Phillies are not.

Not that I needed seven days in area code 508 to confirm it.

Road Trip!

2004-09-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

Time to shut things down and head to the heart of Red Sox Nation to chill. Time for lobster rolls and cold beer. Time for lots of fun time with the family. Time to forget about pennant races and work deadlines. Time for vacation, baby.

See you in a week or so.

Broadcast Blues

2004-09-09T06:20:00.000-04:00

With meaningless baseball returning to Philadelphia painfully on schedule this September, I've begun the process of disengaging from the day-to-day immersion of earlier in the season. No longer must I try to catch at least several innings of every game on television. Instead, I tend to check in on the radio broadcast periodically while out running errands.

Last night, I was in the car during the first game of the Phillies' doubleheader against the Braves, and got to hear Harry Kalas call an inning. Harry brings a different style to his radio work, a little more descriptive and freewheeling, and it's usually fun to give him a listen. But the disappointment of the season was fully evident in his voice -- he sounded thoroughly beaten, as if he couldn't wait to escape to the NFL Films studio. Every Phillies misplay brought a "Now what?" reaction that was difficult to hear. Poor Harry had to start his season uncomfortably in the spotlight due to a conflict with Chris Wheeler, and he has to finish it calling a stretch of games that nobody really cares much about.

And speaking of Wheels, I had game 2 on last night, and when Ryan Howard came to bat in the first, he couldn't resist giggling at Larry Bowa's giving him his first big-league start and hitting him in Jim Thome's usual place in the order. "How about Bo putting Howard in the cleanup spot?" he laughed, as if it were funny that Clueless Larry stuck a rookie with three career at-bats in the No. 4 hole. I know Howard had, like, 90 homers in the minors this year, but presumably the Phils are still trying to win games, and I'm not sure that the cleanup guy should have been a player who spent most of his season in double-A. Wheeler, of course, is completely incapable of delivering even the mildest criticism, no matter how deserved; I think it probably makes him physically ill. But, hey, I'm glad he found Bowa's "managing" so ... amusing. Somebody has to have fun this dreadful season -- why not the team's designated clown?

Seeing Stars

2004-09-08T23:41:00.000-04:00

Hmmm. Two loaded and veteran teams plagued by horrendous underachieving as summer gets underway. The playoffs are a mirage, hazy and questionable on the distant horizon.

Team A insists everything will be fine once everyone starts playing to his potential. The manager stays, and the trading-deadline deals are for uninteresting middle relievers.

Team B cashiers its skipper and lands a stud in a major trade.

Fast-forward two months. The Phillies needed a doubleheader sweep of the Braves tonight just to climb a game over .500; they are a hopeless 11-1/2 games out of first and a daunting six games behind in the wild-card hunt. Their season is, for all intents and purposes, over.

Team B, the Astros, has caught fire. Houston has finally gotten its shit together, and after ripping off its 12th straight win, is up a half-game in the wild-card standings.

I've not followed the 'Stros nearly well enough to tell whether Phil Garner and Carlos Beltran have made the difference for them, though I do know that Roger Clemens has been the kind of ace the Phillies envisioned Kevin Millwood being. (Oh, how naive we all were.) But Gerry Hunsicker took decisive action, while Ed Wade sat in his office gauging the amount of starch in his shirts.

And guess who's a hell of a lot closer to the post-season?

The Funny Papers

2004-09-07T21:47:00.000-04:00

As baseball's losers play out the string, the off-season rumors are already beginning to gather steam. Yesterday's New York Daily News reports that once Larry Bowa cleans out his desk at Citizens Bank Park, he could be headed to Shea Stadium, not to manage the Mets but to serve as Art Howe's bench coach. Seems the comatose Howe is perceived as needing, you guessed it, a fiery sidekick. Adam Rubin's story is filled with howler after howler -- an admiring reference to Bowa's "baseball knowledge and blue-collar attitude"; gushing over his "energy and devotion to winning"; and the capper:

In the clubhouse, Bowa also would be a visible presence, his intensity complementing Howe's laid-back style. While Bowa's style hasn't agreed with every veteran in Philadelphia, his baseball knowledge commands respect around the game.

They do get ESPN in New York, right? Is no one in Flushing paying attention to the massive self-destruction in South Philadelphia over the past two years? That didn't happen by accident.

Then again, if you listen to Bob Ford, it's not all -- or even mostly -- Bowa's fault. The Inky columnist is one of the city's best, but his piece Monday was off the mark. Ford faults Phillies management for its subpar trading-deadline efforts and players for their abject underachievement, and he's drop-dead correct on both counts, yet somehow Bowa gets a free pass. I agree with Ford that Ed Wade bears much blame for putting together a roster filled with delicate egos way too easily bruised -- who on this team has any stones, really? -- but Bowa surely must be on the hook for taking a talented team and producing a total less than the sum of its parts.

One Last Gasp at Respectability

2004-09-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

The last time the Law of Inverse Viewing was in effect was late June 2003. According to the Law, the less I watch them, the more the Phillies win. Well, alert the media, for I saw about two pitches of the weekend series against New York, and whaddya know, the Phils swept. Gavin Floyd, Corey Lidle, and Brett Myers all turned in strong starts, and if you're going to wake up for three games and slap a meaningless sweep on someone, you can't find a more appropriate foe than the Mets.

Indeed, I'm kind of embarrassed to mention the phrase too little, too late -- I try to save my glaringly obvious pronouncements for really special occasions. So I'll just say that the Phillies' painful early-September stab at mediocrity is ... nice. You know -- pleasant. Nothing to get overly excited over, but not something you'd toss in the recycling bin, either.

I just hope Larry Bowa is savoring this last month of games. It'll be a good long while before he's managing games involving teams not sponsored by auto-parts stores and delis.

'Out' Pitch

2004-09-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

It's tempting to watch a film such as Eight Men Out and shake your head and think about how different baseball in 1919 was from today's game.

There were no television broadcasts, or night games, or batting gloves, or steroids, or charter flights. The only people of color were the folks cleaning the stands after the game. Baggy uniforms; tiny, beaten-up gloves used by both teams; shabby ballparks; a largely compliant media corps -- if not for four bases set 90 feet apart, you might struggle to recognize the game as played in 2004.

But Eight Men Out was made by the peerless John Sayles, whose palette comprises infinite shades of gray, each one a particular, unique tone of the human condition. And as Sayles well knows, people are people. Squint your eyes so that the images blur, and just listen to the words, and suddenly the Black Sox scandal peals with a sadly contemporary ring.

Corrupt owners. Greedy players. And kids who don't want to believe that their heroes are tainted.

Working from Eliot Asinof's book of the same name, Sayles offers the players' willingness to throw the '19 World Series as a function of their animosity toward Charles Comiskey, a tyrant of an owner who squeezed his charges for every last dime. For example, with pitcher Eddie Cicotte, hardly the rough-hewn type many of his teammates were, bearing down on 30 wins, a mark that would trigger an incentive clause in his contract, Comiskey ordered Sox manager Kid Gleason to sit him, ostensibly to rest his arm for the playoffs. As a result, Cicotte missed his 30th win, and in an era when salaries were much more in line with what working stiffs earned, the lost bonus was hugely significant. Compare that with the Orioles' treatment of Rafael Palmeiro this season and suddenly 1919 seems much more recent than it is.

The movie is bursting with razor-sharp performances; John Mahoney, whose Gleason gradually becomes aware that his guys are on the take but is unable to stop it, and Sayles staple David Strathairn, quietly wonderful as the reluctant cheater Cicotte, stand out. John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, and Christopher Lloyd are also effective, and Sayles himself pops up as an arch Ring Lardner. As for Shoeless Joe Jackson, possibly the greatest natural hitter the game has ever seen, D.B. Sweeney plays him with expected confusion and a bit of pathos.

Sayles is hardly the flashiest filmmaker working, but he manages, like no other director, to locate and exploit a common humanity in myriad settings. Eight Men Out is no exception. Ballplayers may be moneyed superstars now, but they are also men, not much different from those who toiled in considerably greater anonymity nearly a century ago.

Teflon Ed

2004-09-03T13:02:00.000-04:00

Bad news, friends -- no "Morning Bytes" in today's Inquirer. Maybe Frank Fitzpatrick got beaten up on the flight back from Athens by someone whose nationality he maligned. Fortunately, one need look no further than a couple of pages back in the Inky's sports section to find a piece as difficult to read as Frank's weekly exercise in bad stand-up.

That would be Sam Carchidi's story confirming Ed Wade's return as general manager of the Phillies next year. President David Montgomery said the team is "in much better shape now than we were back" before Wade's tenure began, which is true enough but which also must be evaluated in terms of just how staggeringly inept the mid-to-late-'90s Phillies were. The bar, as they say, was pretty low.

Carchidi, who had a public run-in with Wade earlier this season, uses unusually sharp words --

Another year, another missed opportunity.

For the third time in the last four seasons, the Phillies -- who are now closer to last place than first place in the National League East -- failed to acquire a player near the July 31 trade deadline who would carry them into the playoffs.

In fact, for the third time in four years, the players the Phils acquired have contributed mightily to the club's falling out of contention. ... Most have been flops. ...

The Phils have a 534-570 record, including two winning seasons and no playoff appearances, in Wade's seven years as general manager.

-- to contextualize Montgomery's defense of his GM. What Carchidi forgot to mention was Wade's allowing Larry Bowa another year to screw up. Or his failure to provide players at the top of the lineup able to set the table for the big boppers. To name, you know, just a couple of things.

So Phil Sheridan was right. In holding onto Bowa, his human shield, Wade bought himself another year. Fine -- but next season, he and Monty should be the ones held accountable.

See Yesterday's Post. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

2004-09-02T12:32:00.000-04:00

At this point, as my brother told me today, I know how the Phillies' beat writers feel -- we're all running out of things to say. Writing in today's Daily News, both Sam Donnellon and Bill Conlin offer grim and seemingly accurate outlooks: With much of the roster tied up in large, long-term contracts, and with little internal help on the way, the Phils are going to look much next year as they do this year -- and as they did last year. The problem is, the sample size of games, nearly 300 over two seasons, is now plenty large enough to conclude that, Ed Wade's insistence to the contrary, what you see with this bunch is what you get. Wade's only out now is to change managers, which he will do, but I really wonder how much it will help a team that is going to finish out of first, and possibly behind the wild-card winner, by double digits.

Balance Sheets and Bottom Lines

2004-09-01T13:19:00.000-04:00

This year's Phillies team had the best chance in a generation to return baseball to the forefront of the Philadelphia sporting scene. With a gleaming new ballpark and a roster stocked with talented veterans, the 2004 Phils should have reclaimed some of the ground lost over the last two to three decades to the Eagles. Make no mistake -- Philadelphia has long ceased being a baseball town, but with a big season, the Phillies might have avoided their usual status as annual speed bump between basketball and football seasons and been able to spark some long-term interest.

That chance is gone, a conclusion I reached last night during another sleepy loss at the Park. Eric Milton managed to hang in without his best stuff, but the Phillies' offense generated only two hits through the first eight innings. They scratched out a couple of runs off John Smoltz, pitching in a nonsave situation, in the ninth, but it wasn't enough. Even without Atlanta's fan-aided tater, the Phils would have found a way to lose.

The damaging effects of the Phils' seasonlong futility are starting to show. On an absolutely beautiful night, with the first-place Braves in town, only 36,000 and change were at the Park; there were large swaths of empty seats in the outfield upper decks, and three uncreative fans in the section next to ours spent the entire game with paper bags over their heads. Pedestrian traffic flowed through Ashburn Alley with ease, and I was able to snare a decent parking spot 15 minutes before game time. Even the booing of J.D. Drew was halfhearted, as if fans realized the absurdity of abusing a guy whose team is a dozen games ahead of theirs.

Bill Conlin, just back from vacation, observes today:

The club president, David Montgomery, still seems oblivious to the massive slippage this lost season represents at all levels. And even schoolchildren know the next manager will operate with whatever payroll slashes are made after the Phils are slapped with their first-ever luxury tax. Very sad...

Indeed, if the Phillies think that they'll draw as many fans next season as this, they're fooling themselves. Unlike other cities, Philadelphia will not pack a stadium simply because it loves its team -- that train left 30th Street Station a long time ago. As former Philadelphia sportswriter and current New York Times scribe Jere Longman noted Sunday:

There is no sense here of lovable losers like in Chicago with the Cubs, or of intellectual resignation like in Boston with the Red Sox. Losing is always raw in Philadelphia, which has gone longer than any other city -- 21 years -- without a championship in the four major professional sports. About 3.2 million fans are expected this season at Citizens Bank Park, but hope has fallen to recrimination.

The Phillies likely will still draw over the next couple of years, but at nowhere near a level that a successful 2004 would have guaranteed. The result will be a reduced revenue stream -- certainly one below the team's projections. That means less scratch available to pursue free agents and to retain homegrown talent. Sil Campusano, where have you gone?

The Unbearable Sadness of Rooting

2004-08-31T13:43:00.000-04:00

Back in March, when my brother and I whacked up the 17 pairs of partial-season tickets we had bought, we set aside most of the late-season games to attend together. Envisioning a pennant race and gripping, important baseball games, we thought it would be cool for both of us to be there when the most significant stuff was going down at the Park.

All of that was to have started tonight, but of course garbage time has already begun for the Phillies. My brother and I will be in Section 329, and we'll be cheering for the Phils to down the Braves, but I don't think our hearts will be completely in it. A Phillies win, after all, would cut their deficit to a jaw-dropping 10-1/2 games. We're going to games now for the baseball experience, not a playoff chase. (Well, okay, for the Schmitters and beer, too.)

As much as the blogosphere revels in its own snarky commentary -- believe me, I'm raising my hand -- I have to put aside sarcasm and pride in turning a clever phrase and admit to a very real sadness over this. I love writing, and I love writing about baseball and the Phillies, but it's tremendously disappointing to be spending so much time agonizing over a spectacular and all-encompassing failure. A successful season would have sooooo much more fun. After all, as Nuke LaLoosh once said, winning is, like, better than losing.

The Buck Stops There

2004-08-30T13:47:00.000-04:00

They don't get it.

Any time you find yourself tempted to get all dreamy-eyed at the home-and-home sweeps of the Brewers, recall the home-and-home sweeps administered by the Astros. When you go .500 against mediocre teams, well, that means you're pretty damn mediocre as well. And when you throw in the talent level you started with and the juice of 40 large a night in your new ballpark, mediocre equals sucky. And that's where the Phillies are right now.

That Ed Wade didn't want to answer questions about Larry Bowa from the moment he poured his morning coffee to the moment he flossed at the end of the day every day for the next five weeks is hardly surprising. Nor is it surprising that the out Wade gave himself in the statement the Phillies released Saturday -- "As is the case at the end of every season, we will sit down at that point to review and address the status of our players, our manager and his staff." -- almost certainly means that Bowa will have a lot of time next spring to work on his golf game, as the Bucks County Courier-Times's Randy Miller noted in a scoop reported much more breathlessly than it deserved.

No, here's the kicker, from the Inquirer's Sam Carchidi Sunday:

And what about the general manager -- whose trading record, you could argue, has had a greater effect than Bowa on the Phils' underachieving season?

He's not going anywhere, Phils president David Montgomery said.

Yes, Montgomery is aware that Cory Lidle, Felix Rodriguez and Todd Jones -- three pitchers Wade acquired in deals in the last month -- took a combined 2-7 record and 6.69 ERA into last night. He said it was too early to evaluate those trades.

"You can't look at it in a narrow context," Montgomery said. "You have to look at the whole picture... and he gets great grades for the trades he made in the off-season." He said that he was disappointed, but that "there's still 20 percent of the season left. I'm in the middle of a book, and I'm not ready to close it."

Why isn't Wade part of the off-season evaluation? Has his performance been so sterling that his return is an unassailable certainty? If Bowa has been such a failure as to be fired, shouldn't the team at least look at the guy who gave him a contract extension less than a year ago? Where the hell is the accountability on this team?

The Phillies are conducting baseball operations under a model that was current about 30 years ago. They act as if the word sabermetrics refers to fencing. The blinding intensity of a single world championship in a century and a quarter of playing has lent disproportionate weight to the mindset which guided the Series-winning team; the result is an organization that listens to a guy like Dallas Green way more than it should and that believes that an unqualified manager such as Larry Bowa is an appropriate choice to lead a team solely -- solely -- because he, you know, hates to lose, and is "feisty" and "intense."

They just don't get it.

Rest in Peace

2004-08-27T15:35:00.000-04:00

Major newspapers have regular obituary writers, but small-town papers must enlist the efforts of just about every newsroom contributor in chronicling the stories of those who have passed on. At the paper where I worked 10 years ago, the city editor would snatch faxed messages from funeral homes, hold them high over his head, and bark, "Who wants a dead guy?" And one of us would dutifully raise a hand and get to work.

The Phillies' humiliating self-destruction has turned their beat guys into obit writers. Both the Inquirer's Todd Zolecki and the Daily News's Marcus Hayes today launch joyless efforts to chronicle what went wrong and what to expect in 2005. It's about what you'd expect -- free agents-to-be, pressing needs, the likely changes in management and coaching -- and depressing as hell, considering it's not even September yet. About the only surprise in their pieces is that Hayes goes easier on Bowa than he should.

The blogosphere, too, is starting to fill up with opinions on what the Phillies need to do next year. Tom G. at Balls, Sticks, & Stuff, Bill Liming at Phillies Fan, and Dan at PhogLights have all taken thoughtful stabs at it recently; meanwhile, Tom Goodman at Swing and a Miss offers a sobering, if necessary, caveat: "A wholesale housecleaning may well be on tap for the Phillies but they cannot expect to fill all of the holes in one off-season. The first order of business may be to designate a triage officer."

Ugh.

Back to the Future

2004-08-27T13:40:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that Phillies content has returned to Shallow Center. After a lot of thinking and too many nights trying to post content in two places, I decided to consolidate my stuff and concentrate on things here. My friend Jane Conroy has returned Phanatic Phollow-Up to Most Valuable Network's Phillies slot, and I look forward to reading her as the Phillies play out the string. (Even Jane, a half-full person if ever there was one, is now conceding, "There's always next year.") My thanks to Jane and to Evan Brunell, whose commendable efforts to build a new community of thoughtful sports bloggers will receive all the support I can muster.

Meanwhile, I hope to make a Major Announcement about the future of Shallow Center at some point in the near future. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

Morning Bytes; Fitzpatrick Bites

2004-08-27T13:25:00.000-04:00

In what I assume is his final Morning Bytes missive from Athens, Frank offers "some additional Olympic lists," which, distilled, are a mixture of no-f***in'-shit "observations" ("Though the Games were created to foster a spirit of international community, what you see most frequently is a strident, flag-waving nationalism."), impossibly lame attempts at bashing ("Mascots. Why does Athens, birthplace of Western civilization, feel the need to be represented by two clumsy, gigantic amoebas?"), and -- surprise, surprise -- painfully unsuccessful stabs at bringing the funny ("Five favorite clothing articles: 1. Kerri Walsh's bikini. ... 5. Kerri Walsh's other bikini.").

Oh, yeah, the ethnic slurs -- how could I have forgotten? Were you aware that Japanese people like electronics, and that Europeans like to rag on American reporters about President Bush?

And the traditional media wonders why it's losing readers ... .

Stipe's Rich Pageant

2004-08-26T21:19:00.000-04:00

America's best still-performing band is back with a nifty new song, one which has me crossing my fingers and burning incense in hopes of a return to its beguiling combination of craftsmanship and passion.

The band is R.E.M. -- remember them? -- and the song is "Leaving New York," the first effort off its upcoming record Around the Sun. It's a fine initial single, plaintive and yearning, with Michael Stipe in fine form, supplemented by nice accompanying vocals from Mike Mills.

Once upon a time, of course, R.E.M. was the quintessential indie band, a staple of college radio, and its music from those days of long ago resonates still with many, many fans who insist that that was their best work. They had some crossover success with Green, then exploded with Out of Time, a bouncy and fun romp into the mainstream. Following this came Automatic for the People, for my money not only the band's strongest record but one of the very best CDs of the past 20 years. Its elegaic and often haunting lyrics were perfectly matched by a rich, atmospheric sound that alternated between lush and spare, and the result was a layered, fully realized collection of songs that to this day I find tremendously moving.

R.E.M. then spent several years searching for its next step. Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, and Reveal weren't bad records; they just weren't all that interesting. The musicianship was unquestionably top-notch, but except for a single here and there, the songs felt detached, as if the band's musical advancement had scrubbed some necessary grit from its soul. And after being all over the radio for a period of about five years, R.E.M. no longer mattered much.

Which brings us to the present day and Around the Sun. It's probably fashionable to say that R.E.M. is incapable of making a very good record, let alone a great one, at this stage, but if once-written-off U2 could pull it off with All That You Can't Leave Behind, why not the boys from Athens? Here's hoping.

Until I hear the rest of the CD, I'll have to comfort myself with "Leaving New York" and my other new favorite song. That would be -- and here's where I destroy the cred I've carefully constructed over the previous several paragraphs -- Ashlee Simpson's "Pieces of Me," as fine a piece of disposable pop as is being played on the radio these days. Go ahead, music fans, take your shots; I deserve it.

Favor of the Weak

2004-08-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

We've all been agonizing over the Phillies' implosion, most recently manifested in today's sweep by the Astros, but in a sense they've done us a huge favor. Rather than postponing their inevitable second-half collapse until September, they've gone ahead and gotten it out of the way in August. This is undeniably considerate.

It means that I'll be able to enjoy going to the Park Tuesday to see them play the Braves in a meaningless game. Thank God! No needless worrying over such insignificant things as the score, the number of games behind, the lame rotation, the tattered bullpen, the inconsistent offense, the ineffective coaching staff, the clueless front office -- none of that stuff will matter! Instead I'll be able to concentrate on my Schmitter and my beer and whether to hit the Philadium or the Cherry Street Tavern after the game.

And in a few weeks, when I'm scarfing down lobster rolls and relaxing on the beach in East Dennis, I won't have to scan the Cape Cod Times for wire stories and box scores. I'll be able to concentrate fully on my vacation, secure in the knowledge that final scores are of no consequence and that there will be no need for Larry Bowa to set up his playoff rotation and rest key position players.

By taking swift action and putting this year's failure on the table sooner rather than later, the Phillies have done a civic duty -- the only thing they might have done better was to concede the playoffs by the All-Star break, and some of us had our suspicions even then. Whoever says ballplayers are selfish sure hasn't experienced this bunch.

A Dave and a Sneer

2004-08-25T14:02:00.000-04:00

Sam Donnellon's devastating column in today's Daily News is a spot-on indictment of the layers and layers of incompetence whose end result is the Phillies' smoldering wreck of a season. His buck stops at team president David Montgomery and his fellow owners, a Star Chamber of self-imposed anonymity that has managed somehow to avoid blame for years of neglect and faulty decision-making by its charges. Larry Bowa and Ed Wade, Donnellon writes,

could be gone at season's end. With a new park, high-priced club and even higher expectations for next year, Montgomery, finally, would take the hot seat.

It's about time.

That everyone is talking about next year already is crushing. Better to be realistic, though -- something is seriously broken here, and somebody needs to fix it. The Phillies are about a half-season away from becoming the next Milwaukee Brewers -- they need to ask themselves whether 11,000 fans a night will buy enough Tony Luke's sandwiches to pay off their debt on the Park.

Spiked

2004-08-24T15:31:00.000-04:00

One assumes there was no Usher pulsing through the Phillies' clubhouse. Nor was anyone speaking in cautious yet optimistic tones about climbing back into the wild-card race. For after pushing around the Brewers for three games, the Phils last night ran into Roger Clemens, a guy who pushes back, and lost, 8-4. Then again, when you counter Clemens with Cory Lidle, you can't expect much.

So for all of the talk about signs of life in Milwaukee, the sad truth is this: The Phillies are playing out the string. The papers acknowledge as much simply by their placement of game stories. The players acknowledge as much simply by their approach to each game. After Clemens clobbered Jason Michaels on a tag play at first -- a hard play, but not a dirty one -- the best Michaels could do was attempt a menacing glare directed toward the Rocket, who defused the situation with an apology and a pat on the backside. So much for playing with purpose. Michaels rolled on his back, threw his paws in the air, and let Clemens scratch his belly before slinking back toward the dugout in docile shame. Good boy, Jason, good boy.

Maybe we fans are playing out the string, too -- hell, the game was in the fifth before I even realized the Phillies were playing last night. So dutifully I turned off women's beach volleyball from Athens to catch an inning or two. For some reason I found Clemens's ample backside less alluring than the taut bodies -- er, I mean the impressive athleticism -- of the volleyballers, so back on went the Olympics.

Little Help?

2004-08-23T16:56:00.000-04:00

If anyone can recommend a reliable and reasonably priced Web host, please e-mail me. I'm also interested in hearing about the blogware you like. Thanks.

Gold Milwaukee

2004-08-23T15:56:00.000-04:00

It's hard to get excited about a sweep of the Brewers -- "Too Little, Too Late" is how Bill Liming terms it, while Jeff Hildebrand advises, "Let's not get too excited" -- but wins are wins, I suppose. Yet I can't shake a nagging fear that the Phillies will finally put together the winning streak they've avoided for months and somehow play their way back into wild-card contention, only to fall just short, convincing management that Larry Bowa et al deserve another shot.

Meanwhile, Chase Utley continues to do anything and everything asked of him -- tell me again why he's not starting more? And Roberto Hernandez can't even be relied on to mop up -- tell me again why he's not sitting by the phone and waiting for the Diamondbacks to call?

I Scream, You Scream

2004-08-22T14:11:00.000-04:00

Does Thomas Crown have an alibi for earlier today? The getaway car had to have been a MINI Cooper, right?

Beer Nuts and Tea Leaves

2004-08-22T07:31:00.000-04:00

The Phillies were just about done snoozing through a loss to the Brewers last night when the offense finally woke up. The Phils hung a 6-spot on Milwaukee in the eighth, rallying from five runs down and winning, 8-6. With the sacks drunk in the eighth, Chase Utley took a 1-2 fastball and hit it hard into the gap, clearing the bases with a triple and giving the Phillies the lead. Utley now has 49 RBI in 208 at-bats; more important, his consistent, compact swing should serve as a model for his teammates, who too often allow themselves to salivate over Citizens Bank Park's short fences and end up overswinging. I'm talking to you, Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell.

Meanwhile, the ever-frustrating effort to read between the lines of Ed Wade's comments concerning Larry Bowa's future continues with Jim Salisbury's parsing in today's Inquirer. Salisbury infers from Wade's recent reticence that Bowa will indeed be a part of the off-season house-cleaning. "All Wade will say on the matter is that Bowa is the manager and he's not getting into daily updates on his status," he writes. "That doesn't bode well for Bowa because longtime Wade observers know that he is very capable of giving definitive votes of confidence when he wants to. ... Wade is not nearly as loquacious on the subject of his manager [as he was a year ago], and that is extremely telling."

UPDATE: Murray Chass of the New York Times really takes a stand today: "Consider the state of their pitching," he writes of the Phillies and everyone's search for the party responsible for this mess of a season. Two paragraphs later, he literally writes the phrase "on the other hand,"

the Phillies have played surprisingly poorly for two years despite an influx of talented players. They have underachieved so much under Bowa this season that in the space of six and a half weeks, they lost 25 of 40 games and plummeted from three games ahead in the N.L. East to 10 games behind.

Chass posits, as have many other pundits, that the Phils hesitate to sack Bowa because of his enduring popularity, but I have my doubts. Bowa may remain a fond figure based on his exploits as the feisty little shortstop that could, but are there any fans left who think he's this team's best choice for manager? Those who believe that Bowa as skipper holds some sort of warm spot in all of our hearts just aren't paying attention much.

Milwaukee's Best

2004-08-21T13:23:00.000-04:00

The Phillies snapped out of their stupor, however briefly, with last night's 4-2 win over the Brewers. Eric Milton twirled seven strong innings, and, as Tom Goodman notes in Swing and a Miss today, is starting to make noises about wanting to come back after this, the last year of his contract.

This puts the Phils in something of a bind. Milton has been the team's most consistent starter this season by far, and appears to have the kind of mental makeup necessary to pitch in Philadelphia. (Are you listening, Mr. Millwood?) Yet his record -- 13-2 after last night's win -- has been vastly inflated by the impressive run support he has enjoyed. The law of averages suggests a return to normal next year, and I'm not sure that Milton's going to be worth the scratch he'll want once that happens.

Morning Bytes; Fitzpatrick Bites

2004-08-20T13:04:00.000-04:00

Filing again from Athens, Frank checks in today with an effort reminiscent of my weaker pieces at the college paper for which I wrote. I mean, it's barely worth mocking.

The key word, of course, being "barely."

Today's mail-it-in effort is a listing of lesser-known "events" in Olympic history. Like Mary Lou Retton being penalized points for perkiness. And the IOC denying a U.S. request to make NASCAR racing an event. And the first Los Angeles games including the new sports of Meditation, Ostentation, and Instant Gratification. I'll give you a minute to catch your breath -- all of that laughter is tough, isn't it? This week's ethnic slur is directed at the British:

1948: After a long absence caused by World War II, the Games resume in London. A Paraguayan fencer loses several teeth when he takes an epee in the mouth. He is flown to Paris for treatment after officials fail to locate a dentist in Britain.

Frank Fitzpatrick, ladies and gentlemen. Frank Fitzpatrick.

Connecting the Dots

2004-08-20T12:43:00.000-04:00

The Phils embarrass themselves and their organization in front of hundreds of thousands of fans in kicking a 10-game homestand, yet Larry Bowa climbs on a flight to Milwaukee to go through the motions for another road trip. Bowa jokes -- jokes! -- with reporters about rubber walls and large bottles of scotch, and is widely acknowledged as being more relaxed than at any time during his tenure as manager. Peter Gammons passes along a rumor that the Phillies' off-season shakeup will include major coaching changes but not a managerial switch.

Can it be?

Is it possible?

Could Ed Wade have told Bowa that it's okay to chill? That indeed he'll be back at the helm next year? That they'll pin the blame on Greg Gross and Joe Kerrigan, insulating the GM and the manager for yet another frustrating and underachieving season?

I don't quite agree with it, but I can understand Sam Donnellon's view that sacking Bowa now would make little difference in how the Phillies finish the season. They're as done as an overcooked steak, and no amount of marinade is going to make this tough piece of meat taste like filet mignon. But jettisoning the coaches (a wise move) while holding on to the manager (most unwise)?

No wonder so many people root for the Yankees -- it's an organization that holds itself accountable.

How to Lose a Pennant in Five Months

2004-08-19T22:34:00.000-04:00

They lose pitchers' duels. They lose slugfests. They lose well-played games. They lose coyote-ugly games. They blow big leads. They mount comebacks that fall just short.

If there's a way for the Phillies to lose, by God, they'll find it. Just give them time. Now is the time, right?

Amazingly, it appears as if Larry Bowa will indeed hand out a lineup card in Milwaukee tomorrow night. Then again, it likely makes no difference who's managing this herd of losers at this point; a firing would only have appeased fans and media, and if there's one thing the Phils have never been accused of doing, it's caring much about their dwindling fan base. Ed Wade should have dropped the axe today -- hell, he should have dropped it last October -- but evidently he decided to let Bowa go down with the ship.

Well-chronicled are the rumblings that little internal help is on the way over the next couple of years, thanks to a farm system depleted in a bunch of moves that have left the team three games under .500 and 10 games out of first. So, yes, we were all wrong -- Wade will trade away prospects. And it's not as if he got bad players. (Well, not all of them.) But his manager fails to get the most of the talent on the field, and there is no ass-kicker in the locker room, just a bunch of laid-back nice guys who just don't get it.

In landing pretty good players, Wade somehow managed to assemble a pretty bad team. In retaining Bowa, he gave the Phillies absolutely no shot to be something more than the some of their parts. On a squad with very little heart, this was a fatal combination, a perfect storm of malaise, guaranteed contracts, and incompetence.

Field of Screams

2004-08-19T14:52:00.001-04:00

We're all running out of things to write about this bad baseball team, so I'll borrow a paragraph from Sam Carchidi's story on last night's loss in today's Inquirer:

The Phils are now 1-8 on the homestand, which mercifully concludes this afternoon. With a loss, the Phils will have their worst 10-game homestand in the club's 122-season history.

Real grass. Real disaster.

For a team that has lost more games than any other in U.S. pro sports history, that's a hell of a thing to consider. Meanwhile, everyone parses Ed Wade's words in an attempt to read the tea leaves. The most obvious time for a sacking would be after today's game, but, alas, the Phillies seem to have the Astros on the ropes in the sixth; would Cautious Eddie dare to pull the trigger -- as he should -- after a win? Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Lance Berkman destroys a high fastball from Roberto Hernandez -- who else? -- and we're all tied up at 7. The Phillies' five-run lead has evaporated, and Ed Wade, one hopes, is preparing to meet the media.

UPDATE: Eric Bruntlett -- all together now: Who? -- goes yard off Rheal Cormier to give Houston a three-run lead. All the beat guys are grumbling because they'll have to write extra stories about Larry Bowa's firing.

UPDATE: Astros 12, Phillies 10 -- final. To Wade, I offer just two words, channeling Ben Stiller from Starsky & Hutch: Do it.

This Just In

2004-08-17T13:29:00.000-04:00

So I'm the car last Thursday, listening to Channel 6's coverage of Jim McGreevey's resignation. I hear a reporter -- Cathy Gandolfo or Nora Muchanic, I think -- mention that there have been rumors of the governor's switch-hitting for a while now, but that Action News tries not to report rumors.

And I hear anchor Jim Gardner, his immaculately trimmed mustache bristling, cut off the reporter and say with barely contained righteous fury, "Not only do we try not to report rumors, we don't report them."

Had I been drinking something at the time, I would have executed a world-class spit-take onto the interior of my windshield.

Only among the good folks in WPVI's marketing department is Gardner considered some sort of scrupulous, ethically upstanding paragon of journalistic integrity. How many times in his career do you think he's begun a sentence "Sources tell Action News ... "? In fact, the missus reported that not long after Gardner's snippy correction, he passed along an unconfirmed report about a potential sexual-harassment lawsuit against McGreevey. That the report was later confirmed doesn't change its status as, yes, a rumor at the time Gardner delivered it.

Broadcast journalism traffics in rumor-mongering. Without it, those pretty men and women on camera might have to attempt something they're professionally incapable of doing -- actual reporting.

War and Remembrance

2004-08-16T21:10:00.000-04:00

Nestled on the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial is a poignant reminder of the effort expended by -- and the terrible sacrifice extracted from -- a generation of young men and women who saved the world.

Our weekend trip to the D.C. metro area brought the chance to walk among veterans, family members, and fellow tourists checking out the new memorial. Separate portions pay tribute to those who fought in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of operations; embossed quotes punctuate the enormity of their accomplishment. A series of bas reliefs offers a nod to efforts on the homefront.

Most striking was the wall of stars, each representing a certain number of servicemen and servicewomen killed during the war, above a slab marked with words reminding visitors of the price of freedom.

In an age of ambiguous combat, it's tempting to look back 60 years with a kind of wistful longing for a "cleaner," less questionable war. The threat posed by the Axis powers was immediate and obvious, and the enemy was easily identified and found. World War II is described sometimes as our country's last "just" war, though I'd argue that efforts to locate and either capture or kill Osama bin Laden are easily morally defensible.

But to argue about whose war was "better" serves no purpose except to diminish the bravery and commitment of all Americans who have answered the call to serve. Regardless of one's politics, the World War II Memorial stands as an elegant and appropriate acknowledgment of fallen heroes who in death preserved liberty and made possible so much good that followed.

Morning Bytes; Fitzpatrick Bites

2004-08-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

Oh, that wacky Frank Fitzpatrick. Filing from Athens, he devotes his entire piece today to a bunch of short Olympics-related items in which he pokes fun at Greek ruins and sports he's not interested in. Because, you know, the Olympics are all about what a calcified, coffee-breath, aging Philadelphia sportswriter thinks is interesting. There's even his weekly note of bigotry, this one because a Greek politician has some trouble with English:

Greek to me. I speak no foreign languages. And if asked to translate English into a another tongue -- the reverse of which is often the case with my copy -- it likely would be more incomprehensible than a Stuart Scott-hosted SportsCenter.

That being said, however, if I were a city official preparing a written statement to hand out to the world's media, I'd do a better job than Panayiotis Janikos did.

Janikos is the mayor of Maroussi, the Athens suburb where the main Olympic stadium is located. A packet handed out to the assembled journalists contained an official welcome by the mayor.

"At the end of the 20th century," the welcome begins grammatically enough, "our Greece, was candidate for organizing the games here in the place that were born and revived, was also placing a bet on capability towards the world, and putting the stakes for such a small very, very high."

Ha-ha! Does Frank Fitzpatrick bring the funny or what? There's even an ironically placed typo ("a another tongue") in the first 'graph of that item. He is the master of irony! Maybe next week he he'll write something hilarious about the fact that so many of the Olympic athletes look ... different than he does. We can only hope.

Uniform Standards

2004-08-12T15:14:00.000-04:00

The best reason to cheer the launch of the NFL season is the return of Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Gregg Easterbrook's enormously entertaining weekly look at pro football, quantum physics, cheerbabes, science fiction movies, geopolitics, and anything else that crosses his mind made its 2004-05 debut Tuesday. TMQ likes to write about uniforms, and said that of all the NFL teams that have altered their unis over the last several years, "only the Bucs, Eagles and Rams look better in their revisionist duds than those that came before." He also drooled, as usual, over the Eagles cheerleaders' unis, or lack thereof, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Speaking of uniforms, Paul Lukas has taken his Uni Watch column from Slate to ESPN.com's Page 2. His inaugural column there, explaining his general thoughts on teams' clothing, can be found here.

Rudderless Brooklyn

2004-08-11T13:50:00.000-04:00

Writing in the New York Times Book Review last May, Laura Miller did readers everywhere an enormous favor by issuing a blanket amnesty for those who abandon books before finishing them. "Why subject yourself to an irksome book when so many sublime ones are available?" Miller asked. A number of writers and reviewers with whom she talked agreed. The talented Michael Chabon, who gives a book two pages to grab him, explained his ruthlessness as a function of time: "I'm very unforgiving. ... I guess I'm less responsible to books than I should be, but my time for reading is so limited and the competition is so fierce. It's a Darwinian process."

Miller continued:

Some might see this as evidence of a culturewide case of literary attention-deficit disorder, but it's hard to justify time wasted in the reading of unloved books. The burden is on the author to prove that what you're holding is something exceptional, and if not in the first few pages, then where? It's also unwise to idealize the passionately committed reading habits of youth; becoming a writer yourself can make you realize how low you once set the bar. ''I had an insatiable appetite for complete narratives,'' says Jonathan Lethem (''The Fortress of Solitude''), remembering the years when he finished every book he started. ''I needed to know what happened. I'd fillet a novel of its story. Now I read more slowly, less to get to the end than for the pleasure of the sentences and paragraphs. Before, it was pure consumer frenzy.''

Interestingly, I thought of Miller's piece while struggling with the first 150 pages of Lethem's book and ultimately giving it up. His ode to "the pleasure of the sentences and paragraphs" is what made Fortress such a frustrating read for me. The portion I read was terrifically overwritten, as if Lethem ached with the need to describe, as unnecessarily precisely as possible, every last excruciating detail in the lives of a white kid and a black kid growing up together in Brooklyn in the 1970s. While his acclaimed Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, careened along with an entertaining, manic abandon, Fortress feels like a calculated attempt to write something Important, and in the process the book suffers. Suffocated by its attention to detail, the novel come across as unfocused, with nothing to ground it, nothing to compel me to continue to its conclusion

My brother, a more discerning reader than I and a hell of a writer in his own right, offered both a modest defense and a few jabs of his own:

I'm sure Lethem would tell you he's trying to take a giant step forward. From what I understand, most or all of his previous books are exercises in so-called "genre" fiction, especially sci-fi and mystery; even "Motherless Brooklyn" (the only other thing by him that I've read) is at heart a detective novel. "The Fortress of Solitude" feels to me like a very conscious (or self-conscious) attempt to write the Great American Novel -- a serious literary book that will say everything important that needs to be said. ...

For what it's worth, I found it equal parts interesting and frustrating. (How's that for taking a stand?) Yes, parts are overwritten -- the obsessive attention to detail, in particular, feels frantic and precocious, like grad-school fiction. And the second half of the book -- in which a 30-something Dylan ends up unhappy and adrift in California, and feels the pull of Brooklyn -- is pretty unsatisfying because it's so generic and easy; Lethem uses bright, weightless California as a lazy stereotype, the opposite of dark, gritty New York. But a lot of the first half is really something. You don't have to have grown up on that particular block in Brooklyn to respond to Lethem's channeling of summer in the neighborhood. ...

Like I mentioned earlier, it's definitely a product of its time, sharing a voice and a mission, among other things, with "The Corrections" and "White Teeth" and "Underworld" and other recent books about everything.

I guess I give Lethem points for trying, but I can't say I regret bailing, especially after recalling Miller's essay. If life is too short to drink bad beer -- and it most certainly is -- then, too, it is too short to finish frustrating books. Back to the search for something sublime.

Maybe Next Season is the Time

2004-08-09T17:14:00.000-04:00

Out: Pat Burrell, facing season-ending surgery.

In: Cory Lidle, acquired from the Reds for two minor leaguers, neither of them a blue-chipper, and a PTBNL.

Burrell had dropped off after his promising start, but still showed enough flashes to provide some measure of protection for Jim Thome. If Chase Utley is even remotely ready for leftfield, I'd run him out there over the Doug Glanville/Jason Michaels combo any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

As for Lidle, he's no one's idea of a Cy Young Award candidate, but the guy does eat innings, and if there's one thing the Phillies' staff needs, it's that. Much of the bullpen's struggles this year can be attributed to the increased workload forced upon it by ineffective starting pitching. Lidle, who doesn't walk a ton of guys, looks to be able to hold down the fort -- and make no mistake, that's why he's here, not because anyone thinks he's going to have a Randy Johnson- or Livan Hernandez-like impact -- better than Paul Abbott.

Regardless, each passing day seems to bring news that buries the Phillies deeper and deeper. This season of promise increasingly feels destined to end in all-too-typical disappointment.

Homecoming

2004-08-09T09:43:00.000-04:00

MVN is having server troubles, so this morning's Phillies post is on Shallow Center:

Brett Myers's sparkler capped a strong latter half of the Phillies' road trip, allowing the team to finish it 6-7 after starting 1-6. That's the good news.

Here's the bad news: During that same stretch, the Braves went 11-2, so the Phils, by virtue of their completely mediocre performance, lost five games in the standings. That's right -- for all the talk about how strong they finished, the Phillies suffered serious slippage in National League East.

Even worse, Larry Bowa's job apparently is no longer in jeopardy.

So after an enigmatic road trip, a two-week microcosm of this puzzling team's mysterious season, the Phillies return to Citizens Bank Park in worse shape physically and in terms of the division race. Jeff Hildebrand at Phillies Foul Balls nicely summarized the team's various mood swings last night. The Phils do play 18 of their next 25 games at home, and 16 of 19 against sub-.500 teams. For any normal team that would augur a nice little run, one which is desperately needed, but these are the Phillies, remember. Conventional wisdom need not apply.

Poor, Poor, Pitiful Them

2004-08-08T15:10:00.000-04:00

You might think that in 2004, Baby Boomers would have finally run out of things over which to claim victimhood.

You would be wrong.

Inquirer columnist Karen Heller is all hot and bothered because her kids made fun of '70s clothing, hairstyles, and music after watching the Starsky & Hutch remake.

No, really.

Referring to the likes of Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell, Heller writes:

Those are fighting words. We already have political strife and class conflict and global issues and high gas prices and a looming deficit, but that wasn't enough in these times, when we should all be coming together. No, these boys, boys being the operative term, had to launch age warfare.

They've reduced my decade of Nixon, Carter and Reagan to John Travolta in snug pants.

As a bona fide member of the baby boom -- a claim as unpopular as liberal or feminist or intellectual -- as someone who graduated from high school and college during the 1970s, perhaps I can jog their memories and help reeducate the poor, misguided children of today who believe, falsely, that Anchorman is a fitting time capsule. I'm no fan of nostalgia, but these guys have played the ugly-clothes card one too many times.

She continues, with absolutely no hint of irony, that her '70s was a decade marked by more daring fashion designers, more intelligent filmmakers, more significant writers, and more vital causes. The laughable conclusion:

Perhaps, in 30 years, when the kids of today are making movies, they'll exact revenge and harvest this period for their own recycling.

Alas, when they look back, all they'll find is a stale collection of fright wigs, tight shirts and retro car crackups. They'll be forced to be creative and original.

Just like people were back in the real 1970s.

Poor Boomers. Not only do we have to listen to them prattle on about how groundbreaking their contributions have been; not only must we agree with their self-assessment of being the most important people in the history of the world; not only must we acknowledge the inferiority of all other generations' cultural legacies; but we also must respect their desire to be sacrosanct, and must never, ever laugh at them.

To offer a typically Philly response: Yo, Karen, lighten up. There isn't a child alive who doesn't think his parents dressed funny 30 years ago. And just because you protested 'Nam and Watergate doesn't mean your hair wasn't hideous. Just because Scorsese and Spielberg were making magic on the screen doesn't make today's writers and directors are hacks. Reserve that epithet for the bloggers, okay?

Morning Bytes; Fitzpatrick Bites

2004-08-06T13:18:00.000-04:00

If it's Friday, that must mean it's time for another Morning Bytes column in the Inquirer. Not to mention a brand-new Shallow Center feature -- a weekly assessment of Frank Fitzpatrick's painfully unsuccessful attempts to bring the funny.

Today Frank leads with a pretend memo from the Phillies' owners to the team's staff suggesting possible ways to cut costs. You know, because the Phillies are cheap. What's that you say? They're spending more than 90 million this year on a second-place team? It's not that they're not spending, it's that they're not spending wisely?

Things get even worse with Frank turning his middle-aged attention to the Eagles and Terrell Owens. Among the list of things he hopes "T.O." doesn't stand for are "Totally Obnoxious" and "Too Outspoken."

I'll pause while you wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes and catch your breath.

Frank's "NASCAR Note of the Week" -- he's so funny for ripping on NASCAR; why didn't anyone else ever think of that? -- includes a Montezuma's Revenge reference, as there will be a race in Mexico City next year. So now we're trading in ethnic slurs. How the hell did Last Comic Standing miss this guy?

And the coup de grace: "'X' marks the slop. It's ESPN's X Games time again. Among the new events added to this 10th edition of the slackers' favorite sporting event will be body defacing, parental resource draining, grammar butchering and nihilistic narcissism." Oh, stop, Frank! You're killing me! If you keep this up, people might stop thinking of you as an amusing curmudgeon and start calling you a cranky and nasty old bastard embittered beyond belief and incapable of seeing value in anything that's happened since the Kennedy administration.

A gratuitous shot at the Big 5, based on recent scandals at La Salle and Villanova, concludes the hilarity for the week.

Have you stopped laughing yet?

C'est McVie

2004-08-04T21:58:00.000-04:00

A very welcome voice is poised to return to music. Christine McVie, who sat out Fleetwood Mac's last studio effort, Say You Will, releases her new solo disc, In the Meantime, next month, and I heard its first single, "Friend," on 'XPN Monday. Like much of McVie's work, it's a pleasant, sturdy little tune; if history is any guide, repeated listens will foster the realization that she continues to be capable of writing songs with irresistible hooks and of singing them in a lovely, perfectly inflected, and singular voice.

McVie for years served as Mac's unsung heroine. While Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks garnered all the attention, McVie was quietly writing and singing some of the band best songs. Lacking Buckingham's self-indulgent flash and Nicks's goofy aura of the occult, she simply kept her head down and did her job. In a sense she was Larry to Buckingham and Nicks's Moe and Curly. I mean that as a compliment -- honestly. And though Lindsey and Stevie famously used the band as a cathartic outlet to soothe the pain of their mercurial relationship, Christine managed to divorce bassist John McVie then continue to work alongside him in an arrangement seemingly built on mutual respect and professionalism.

Nobody pays much attention to her, but McVie gave Fleetwood Mac a necessary softening. Maybe I'm just a sucker for sweet pop tunes, but without her presence, it would have been easy to envision Mac drifting into a wearying and pointless stasis of never-ending punches traded by her two more famous bandmates.

Rotation Play

2004-08-02T20:13:00.000-04:00

I won't lie to you.

Yeah, I started this thing more than a year ago as a way to do something for myself. Yeah, I told myself that if folks checked it out and liked what they read, well, that would be pretty nice. Yeah, it's been kind of cool to find out that there are indeed people all over the world who, for reasons known only to them, hunger for news and views regarding Phillies baseball, and come to Shallow Center as part of their foraging.

But then I found out that I'm in some kind of demand, and, well, then I really had some juice.

And so when Evan Brunell of the fledgling Most Valuable Network e-mailed and asked me to join Jane Conroy on her Phillies blog, Phanatic Phollow Up, I was intrigued. Well, intrigued and flattered. Alright, flattered. Anyway, I poked around the other MVN sites, listened to Evan tell me his plans for world domination, and thought, hey, I'd like to be part of that.

But as much as Shallow Center is mine, Phanatic Phollow Up is Jane's, so she and I did some brainstorming for a new name, something that would represent a newly hatched project we could work on together and build up over time. Thus was born Poor Richard's Scorecard, the new Phils blog on MVN. From now on, just about all of my Phillies stuff will be posted there. So do update your links and bookmarks accordingly, and check out my stuff as well as Jane's.

The thought of giving up Shallow Center is too much to bear -- no, really, it is -- and so this little site will live on. The banner at the top mentions something about "pop culture and other important matters," so if the urge strikes me to write about something other than Larry Bowa's job status, I still have a place to put it. And I plan on taking advantage of that, regularly. There's a very fulfilling non-baseball portion of my life, and I do enjoy writing about it, so please continue to check back here.

As always, let me know what you think, of what's happening here and on MVN, by leaving comments or dropping an e-mail. Thanks very, very much for reading so far -- and keep it up!

It's Not Randy Johnson, but ...

2004-08-02T09:09:00.000-04:00

Unlike the Phillies, the management here at Shallow Center has some major changes in the works. Details to come soon.

Poison Ivy

2004-07-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

The Phillies need a standing eight-count.

After the Marlins staggered them with a four-game sweep, the Phils wobbled into Chicago, where the Cubs rocked them this afternoon with a come-from-behind, 10-7 win that was as demoralizing as any this season.

In the early to middle innings, this one looked like a game the Phillies could have used to swing a turnaround to what had been a wretched road trip. They were hitting Mark Prior hard, Eric Milton was locating his curve well, and there were some rare signs of life. Bobby Abreu's three-run homer to dead center, off an up and away Prior fastball that he simply destroyed, gave the Phils a 6-3 lead only a half-inning after a potentially crushing two-run dong by Derrek Lee had tied the score. Placido Polanco, playing perhaps his final game as a Phillie, made a spectacular, over-the-shoulder catch on a pop fly well down the rightfield line to end the fifth, then accepted jubilant high fives as he made his way through the Phils' bullpen while returning to the dugout.

But on a day when the Cubs' vaunted pitching was a liability, the Phillies' hurlers were even worse. Milton unraveled in the sixth, and Rheal Cormier and Roberto Hernandez were equally ineffective, and when it was over, a winnable game had turned into a 10-7 loss.

The trade deadline is less than 24 hours away, and while the Marlins swung a major deal today, the Phillies swapped Ricky Ledee and a minor leaguer for Giants reliever Felix Rodriguez, the kind of trade Ed Wade lives for -- a major bench contributor for a retread bullpen guy. On my way home tonight, I listened to WIP callers come out of the woodwork to point their fingers at Wade, and while Howard Eskin wondered why the writers have given the Phils' GM a pass, I screamed at my car radio that Eskin needs to go online, where feelings are a little different. Alas, those callers seemed to see this as a zero-sum game -- if Wade stinks, then Bo must be okay. Whereas the truth is that Wade's biggest failing is allowing Bowa to last as long as he has.

Two-thirds of the way into a season that saw them as the consensus pick to win the division, the Phillies are a game over .500. They have a manager unfit for Little League, a GM who's running his club as if it were a fantasy team, an ownership group more concerned with beer-stand concessions than wins and losses, and a roster stocked with slackers and crybabies. It's a wonder the Phillies are only 4 1/2 out.

UPDATE: Looks as if the Mets rolled the dice today, too.

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Worse

2004-07-29T15:19:00.000-04:00

That gurgling sound you hear is the Phillies' season slowly and perhaps inexorably sinking down the drain.

Even by the considerable standards of this disappointing season, the Phils today really brought the stinky. A seven-run Marlin third, capped by light-hitting Alex Gonzalez's grand slam, put the morose Phillies into an 8-0 hole, and you could see them deflating before your eyes. They're spineless enough even when they're winning, but hit them with an early, eight-run deficit and they fold like Mo Gaffney on Celebrity Poker Showdown.

The final was Marlins 10, Phillies 1, marking a stunning four-game sweep by Florida. This was a disaster, from the first pitch to the last. Terribly misplayed balls -- a grounder to third that ate up Tomas Perez, a pop-up that Jimmy Rollins should have snared easily but instead lost in the sun in shallow center -- will be what you see on SportsCenter tonight, but just as damaging were Paul Abbott's completely useless start and the paucity of offense (five hits, zero spark).

That makes 14 consecutive losses at Pro Player Stadium, ensuring that if the Phillies do make it back to South Florida in a position to play meaningful games in September, the mental burden the Fish have managed to hang on them will still exist. More significantly, after everyone, the team included, targeted the critical stretch of 12 games in 15 that the Phils would play against division foes immediately following the All-Star break, they got thrashed, going only 4-8.

The Phillies are in bad, bad, bad shape.

I could feel myself getting progressively more upset, in a way I haven't yet this season, as the game unfolded silently on the TV screen in my office. It wasn't yelling and screaming, but sadness, the sense that all of that optimism in March was utterly unfounded. This series, at its beginning, had the whiff of a turning point, a chance for the Phillies to gather themselves and launch their pennant drive. Now that it's over, it still smells like a turning point -- but it sure looks like a wrong turn the Phils have taken.

Tyler Houston's Ghost

2004-07-29T12:55:00.000-04:00

Salisbury today on "an almost annual phenomenon. Disenchantment in the clubhouse.":

This whole drama is getting ridiculous. Every spring, the players say they won't let Bowa's hiss and vinegar bother them, then every season they do. Why they can't accept him for what he is and tune him out -- for the most part, they are all richer and have more job security than he does -- remains a mystery.

The players always seem to be looking for Bowa to make a funny face and say something critical. The manager often obliges and the whole thing becomes a cyclical distraction that a team in a so-called pennant race doesn't need. Pennant race? Aren't they supposed to be fun and exciting? These Phils often approach the game as if it's drudgery, and shame on them for that.

Bowa is not a bad person or a bad baseball man. He works hard and he loves the Phillies organization. But, he is clearly in some of the players' heads (we don't think he can help it) to the point that they are obsessing on it.

Maybe that's part of the reason -- we'll give you injuries, but only to a point -- they can't put together a winning streak.

Eventually, maybe in the coming days, maybe over the winter, Wade is going to reach the point where he realizes there's little meshing of personalities here, and decides it's easier to remove one person than a dozen or so.

That's why Bowa could be in trouble right now. The Phils have 61 games left, plenty of time to save the season, especially in the mediocre National League East. Management spent $93 million putting this team together. It won't waste a chance at winning a very winnable division because -- regardless of whose fault it is - the players aren't seeing eye-to-eye with the manager.

Ed Wade has the power to fire Larry Bowa. Believe that.

Will he? We're not sure. But we'd bet he's thinking about it.

Hofmann, a little more supportive of the manager:

We have been here before, of course -- more than once, frankly. The most famous time was last year, after Bowa blew up at his team one August afternoon in Montreal during an epic downspiral. It was a gamble -- the players could have taken ownership of the situation or they could have folded, with rather negative consequences for the manager's long-term employment prospects. But it paid off for Bowa -- the team started winning again, and competed for a wild-card playoff berth until the final week of the season.

That's the key point here, and always has been. Specifically: that even if there are players who don't like the atmosphere surrounding the team -- and there are -- there is no evidence that Bowa is an impediment to winning.

And now, well, the theory will be tested again.

In a sense, Bowa is right: The players should be embarrassed. They're being paid an awful lot of scratch, and they're not performing. But this is a theme common to every single season Bowa has managed in Philadelphia. If he were a guy with a winning track record, hey, more power to him. But we're talking about someone who's 24 games under .500 as a manager. Who has no clue how to handle his pitching staff. Who has shown no ability to motivate players to achieve more, and not less. Who is neither liked nor, more importantly, respected in the clubhouse.

Tell me again why you'd want someone with that profile managing your team?

The season isn't yet lost. There are two months left, and the Phillies are just two-and-a-half back in a weak division. Each passing hour reduces the likelihood of landing an impact player by the trade deadline. But imagine the potential effect in the clubhouse of replacing Bowa, who must be greatly perceived there as an impediment, and not a conduit, to winning.

Let's Make a Deal

2004-07-28T15:10:00.000-04:00

An interesting discussion in the comments section of my last post concerns how hard the Phillies should be pressing to make a trade, and for whom. My argument boils down to this: The team as currently constructed is not succeeding, nor do I see it doing so come late September. The talent, I think, is there, but something necessary and intangible is missing. Nobody seems to have any stones in the clubhouse, or any ability to shake off bad stuff and focus on the next game. The papers described the mood following last night's loss as funereal, and Rheal Cormier said "you could tell" that the Phillies believed themselves doomed while sitting out an eighth-inning rain delay down a run. "I feel that even though we're down a run or two, we should never be out of the game," he said. "There are a lot of times when you're walking off the field and you're down by one, you feel the game is over, and we still have one more inning to go. It's frustrating."

Something's not right. The 2004 Phillies, like the 2003 version, are something less than the sum of their parts -- even counting injuries.

My favored solution is to hire a new manager, but at this stage of the season, with just two months to go, that's not going to happen. It should have last November, should have this May, should this fall. But it won't happen now. Given that, you have to look at where and how to upgrade the roster.

And that's why Ed Wade has the town's toughest job right now. Would Steve Finley be an improvement over the three-headed monster of Ricky Ledee, Jason Michaels, and Doug Glanville? Probably, but he wants to stay out West. Would Kris Benson be better than Paul Abbott? Almost certainly, but he's likely to end up in Minnesota. Would Ron Villone provide a veteran presence in a bullpen stocked with Triple-A arms? Yes, but he's said to be off the market now.

Even if Wade can identify the right peg for the right hole, he has to ask: At what cost? Lots of Phillies want him to swing a deal, but concede that losing guys like Chase Utley, Ryan Madson, Cole Hamels, and Gavin Floyd is too high a price. Yet legitimate shots at a championship -- not the pie-in-the-sky, happy-to-be-here long shot that the '93 Phils were -- don't present themselves very often in South Philadelphia. And so it's hard to fault Rich Hofmann's argument in today's Daily News:

The fundamental divide- - whether they should husband their prospects or use them as chips in deals now, whether they should be patient or overpay for today -- remains in place. And we'll state the obvious again -- that the Phillies need to do something now, even it means taking a dip into the pool of the untouchables. The team needs it. The clubhouse needs it. The fans need it.

Does the clubhouse need it? There's no consensus among those who should know best. Similarly, those of us who watch with vested interest and write what we see and hope and believe are at a loss ourselves. Brian at the Citizens Report notes seasonlong problems and says, not unreasonably, "[Wade] has to come up with something or it's devastating. ... [W]e are three days away from the trade deadline ... nothing. All the while the team has been meandering around .500 since the All-Star break." But as Swing and a Miss's Tom Goodman points out, the pickings are pretty slim: "Nearly every hoagie shop patron in the Philadelphia area and many Phillies players willing to be quoted are imploring GM Ed Wade to do something before the July 31 trading deadline; but it doesn’t appear likely the acquisition of anyone short of Randy Johnson will help all that much unless, of course, Steve Carlton is reading this blog and can make it to South Florida before tonight’s game."

No doubt Lefty is too concerned with Zionist conspiracies and black helicopters to get involved at this point. But I wonder what Garry Maddox is doing these days ... .

Wading into the Deep End

2004-07-27T14:30:00.000-04:00

Finley. Benson. Lofton. Villone. Hernandez.

The names blur together in the last week of July. The Phillies, potential buyers for the second year in a row, look at who's available.

Byrd. Polanco. Utley. Hamels. Floyd.

The front office gathers to determine whom they're willing and unwilling to part with in order to pry loose those key missing pieces from the sellers. It's far from easy. But as the gaps grow ever wider, the need to fill them becomes more and more pressing. Time is of the essence.

Wade? Bowa?

A change in field management is very unlikely, though in my opinion, and others', the Phillies have underachieved for more than a season-and-a-half, and at some point you have to ask whether something more than physical talent is the issue. Larry Bowa's shortcomings have been well chronicled and continue to be much despised -- deservedly. But now Ed Wade also finds himself a center of attention -- and not just from the media and the blogosphere, but from his own players as well. Wade's in-season moves over the last two years have been far less decisive and significant than what he has done in the off-season, much like a football coach who prepares his team well during the week yet suddenly grows gun-shy and ineffective at 1 o'clock Sunday afternoon. (Sound familiar, Eagles fans?) And people are starting to notice. So while not excusing Wade's profanity-drenched tirade at a reporter Sunday, Bill Conlin at least understands it:

Timing really is everything and I can identify with Ed [Wade]'s short fuse and his discomfort with the 24/7 media scrutiny suddenly engulfing his stewardship. His expensive team has underperformed and he is feeling suffocating pressure to make a major move.

Everybody has given Ed his props for capably spending the franchise-record money Dave Montgomery made available, banking -- pun intended -- that the Money Pit revenue stream would transform the Phillies into a big-market player. He got Jim Thome and David Bell because he was able to overpay. He got Kevin Millwood because his contract was too heavy and the Phils had the young catcher the Braves had to have.

But Wade has also acquired an in-season record of unfulfillment. Some very bad things have happened on his watch. J.D. Drew, who refused to sign here for reasons both financial and personal, is the most potent hitter on a rival Braves team that has overhauled the Phillies. Curt Schilling forced the 2000 deal to Arizona that left the D-backs with eventual World Series rings. Now, Schilling, who wanted to return here, is a Cy Young candidate in Boston. The Phils re-signed Millwood instead. Current MVP candidate Scott Rolen forced a 2002 trade to St. Louis after inflicting a big shiner on Wade and Montgomery, charging a lack of commitment to winning.

Drew ... Schilling ... Rolen. That's one hell of a hit for the services of a currently disabled pitcher and Placido Polanco.

Perhaps someone should remind Ed Wade that the time is now. Isn't it?

Heading South

2004-07-26T22:21:00.000-04:00

How many times this season have we read stories in which the Phillies acknowledge that their upcoming slate of games is pretty gosh-darn important, and, gee, it sure would be nice for us to get on some kind of winning streak?

As Mr. Pink said in Reservoir Dogs: A lot.

Yet each time, it seems, the Phils can't get their shit together. The latest incarnations -- the post-All-Star break stretch involving divisional foes and the two-week road trip that began tonight -- are overlapping with the current four-game series against the Marlins in Miami. And true to form, the hometown nine came out flat, dropping an 11-3 game to the Fish. With few people in the stands to watch fading Florida, the Phillies evidently thought they could trot out their Bad News Bears act without anyone noticing. They left 14 men on base. Kevin Millwood, after a couple of good starts, resembled the stumbling softball pitcher of the season's first half. Pat Burrell looked as clueless as a major leaguer can look while losing a fly ball in the lights. The bullpen, already damaged by an injury to Ryan Madson, rolled over and threw its paws in the air in the seventh and eighth, crippling a potential comeback attempt -- not that any such effort was visible.

Meanwhile, Ed Wade, normally about as excitable as Untouchables accountant Oscar Wallace, tore a new one in a reporter who had the temerity to ask him yesterday about the Phils' attempts to swing a trade. Wade, alas, profanely lost it in front of hundreds of fans before the game at the Park. (Brian Peoples at the Philling Station has an excellent recap of the current status of possible deals.) Maybe the GM is starting to realize that his manager is not the only guy on the hook this season.

Holes in the Ozone

2004-07-26T13:31:00.000-04:00

A new kind of hero debuted in a new kind of TV show in the late 1980s. The hero was Vinnie Terranova, an enormously conflicted cop assigned to infiltrate criminal organizations, get close -- very close -- to their leadership, and take the whole thing down. The show was Wiseguy, the first to expand beyond the usual episode-by-episode format and tell stories over sprawling, multi-episode arcs. Vinnie had spent a year in the joint to give him the kind of street cred necessary to cozy up to the bad guys -- charismatic, eccentric types like Sonny Steelgrave and the Profitt siblings, Mel and Susan. Wiseguy's writers and producers often allowed the crooks to take center stage, giving the audience a chance to see why Vinnie would end up bonding, in a way, with them. After tearing down whichever criminal empire he was investigating in a particular arc, Vinnie would torture himself with feelings of disloyalty and treachery -- sure, he had taken down evildoers, but those people had trusted him, and he had betrayed that trust. He'd retreat into a haze of booze and self-loathing until his boss, Frank McPike, would wander onto the beach where Vinnie was brooding and stoically convince him to return for his next assignment. Which Vinnie would do.

Ken Wahl played Vinnie with just the right combination of Italian machismo, vulnerability, and cool, and he and the show quickly won over critics, if not viewers. Talk about a guy who should have had it all. But if you thought Vinnie was troubled, you ain't seen nothing yet, boyo. Dalton Ross's interview with the uber-reclusive Wahl in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly is a disturbing portrait of wasted talent and self-destruction. Stephen J. Cannell couldn't have cast a better guy to play Vinnie Terranova. In many ways the trajectory of Wahl's life has mirrored that of Wiseguy, which exploded onto television with layered, complex storytelling and pitch-perfect actors in all roles, then veered into a self-conscious, esoteric weirdness before finally collapsing, just three years after its promising beginning. Ken Wahl needs help, but you have to wonder whether, like Vinnie, he's too proud to seek it.

The Big Picture

2004-07-26T09:48:00.000-04:00

Last year, when Kevin Millwood no-hit the Giants, I was out with the family running a bunch of Sunday-afternoon errands. Scott Graham's ninth-inning play-by-play on WPEN was my only lifeline to Millwood's gem. So when I took a break from yesterday's chores to check the score on TV and found out that Eric Milton had kept the Cubs hitless through six, I cleared the decks and hunkered down.

Milton, of course, lost his no-hit bid, and then the lead, in the ninth, but watching those couple of innings, hearing the sellout crowd at the Park roaring with every strike, seeing them stand and salute the Phils' hurler as he walked to the dugout after each inning and, finally, when Larry Bowa took the ball from his hand, well, all of that is why I love sports. On any given day, you have the chance to see history made. He's not referring to yesterday's game, but Bill Conlin's column today reflects a similar sentiment. Urging fans of all sports to take a peek at the wider world, Conlin recalls his own history growing up as a fan: "I learned from other disconnected but thrilling events of the day that sports is a movable feast and just being there can be enough. You can focus a lot of passion on your team, the one you live and die with. But while celebrating the latest victory or agonizing over the latest loss, it is possible to come up for air once in a while for a look at the big picture."

The Phillies' ninth-inning win was the most important news of the day, of course, but Milton's heroic start seemed to inspire a lot of searching for the larger picture to which Conlin refers. Doug Glanville's sacrifice to set up the winning run, a half-inning after he misplayed a pair of balls in centerfield, including the bloop double that broke up Milton's no-hitter, soothed the souls of many Phillies bloggers, who have made him their personal whipping boy throughout the season. Chase Utley and Pat Burrell earned big props. And nobody seemed to notice that the Braves had maintained their half-game lead over the Phils. The race resumes for the Phils tonight in Miami, but for an afternoon it was enough to watch one man's supreme and nearly successful effort.

UPDATE: Actually, Bill Liming is in a pretty unforgiving mood when it comes to Glanville.

Frank Talk

2004-07-25T13:10:00.000-04:00

Inquirer food columnist Rick Nichols takes a swing today at the hot dogs at Citizens Bank Park, but only after his admittedly damning-with-faint-praise observation that the Park's chow "is head and shoulders above the wretched fare at the late Vet ... ." Nichols describes a couple of my CBP faves, Peace a Pizza slices and the roast pork sandwiches from Tony Luke's, in moderately complimentary terms, though he tragically fails to mention the Schmitter. Anyway, after a few 'graphs of this, he starts grilling the Phillies on the ballpark's biggest culinary failing:

If you want to actually see the game, on the other hand, you can grab a hot dog. But there's the rub. Someone forgot to pay attention to the official nosh of the national pastime: The dogs, not to put too fine a point on it, bite.

The worst of the lot are the rubbery tubes of barely warmed baloney, turning their buns to mush in stacks of foil body bags ($3). You can pay a couple of bucks more at the Hatfield stands, where they griddle foot-longs. They're better, but not much.

This is a towering shame because hot dogs are meant for the masses. They're quick, cheap, customizable, portable (though, lamentably, I didn't see a single roving hot dog vendor) and forgiving. Just because they're easy, though, doesn't mean they don't deserve respect.

Build one right, and they will come and remember -- and be fans forever.

It's a hell of a thing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a gleaming and immaculate new stadium only to screw up one of the very basic parts of the ballpark experience. Of course, if that turns out to be the biggest problem with which we have to contend this year, then it will have been a good year. Oh, that's right -- the Phillies' mind-blowing inconsistency and enormous, gaping holes in centerfield, in the rotation, and at the top of the lineup are pretty bad, too. Yesterday the roller coaster began climbing back up, which means we can expect it to plummet again any day now. Hot dog!

Cubs 5, Phillies 1

2004-07-24T13:59:00.000-04:00

The evening had started with such promise. Late-afternoon and early-evening rain showers ended just before game time, enabling Brett Myers to deliver his first pitch at the scheduled 7:05. But the heavy drenching kept crowds in Ashburn Alley lighter than usual, and my brother and I had only a few minutes' wait in the line for Tony Luke's. Soon each of us was enjoying a roast pork sandwich, the Park's most delicious food option. (The Schmitter remains the stadium's best value, as measure in taste-to-waiting-in-line ratio.)

Matthew had even managed to solve the mystery of Eric Gregg's disappearance. The last known sighting of the rotund former umpire was last season at Chickie's & Pete's at the Vet, where he poured me suds once or twice. Last night, though, Matthew ducked into a small C&P french fry stand shoehorned into a little-used corner of Ashburn Alley, and there was Gregg serving beer.

Myers pitched a decent game, his best in a while. He had good command of his curveball, and when the Phillies plated a first-inning run on Jimmy Rollins's triple and Placido Polanco's single, we thought we were in for a good night. But then the Cubs started playing longball. Derrek Lee and Moises Alou went yard early, and Sammy Sosa put Ryan Madson in his book with an impressive bomb to center. Meanwhile, Kerry Wood cruised. Jim Thome, out with a sore finger, was missed by the Phils; Bill Wagner, out with a sore shoulder, wasn't, as the team never came close to needing him.

Wood's performance was overwhelming, but the Phillies helped his cause with their usual tendency toward impatience at the plate. And despite a crowd that was, for once, less interested in walking around the concourse and more inclined to stay focused on the action, the Phils were maddeningly lifeless, accepting their loss with docile glumness. Their dugout was devoid of anything resembling emotion, and two of their three ninth-inning outs came on called third strikes. Then again, we fans were pretty silent ourselves; there just wasn't much to cheer for. It was up to the depressingly large number of Cubs fans scattered throughout the Park to make some noise.

And so the Phils fell out of first by a half-game, thanks to the Braves-Mets rainout last night. A playoff spot, once a virtual certainty, grows ever more tentative by the day. You wonder if the folks in the Phillies' clubhouse and front office know that. I mean, really know it.

News Flash: More Movies Portraying Cursing, Sex-Obsessed Elderly People, Too

2004-07-23T13:27:00.000-04:00

It goes by many names: A kick in the jimmies. A blow to the boys. Sportscasters prefer calling it a "deep thigh bruise." My friend John memorably referred to it once as a "nadectomy."

That's right, we're talking about a shot to the male crotch. Or, rather, the Los Angeles Times is, in a hilarious piece earlier this week that attempts to make the case that such (literal) male-bashing, usually played for laughs, is on the upswing in movies and on television.

Citing current films DodgeBall, Napoleon Dynamite, White Chicks, and Anchorman, Martin Miller argues that more and more writers are seeking to "elicit the crowd-pleasing merriment of watching a grown man take a monster shot to the groin."

Two points here: First, this feels like a classic case of an axiom that was often bandied about in a newsroom I worked in: News is what happens to editors. I'm guessing a soccer mom on the city desk took her 12-year-old to a DodgeBall matinee, was stunned by what she saw, and breathlessly told the entertainment editor that "we really need to do a piece on that." But even a casual pop culture observer realizes that taking a basketball where it hurts is hardly a 2004 phenomenon. I mean, my God, Bob Saget was able to put three kids through college and buy a house on the Riviera simply by grimacing his way through a few seasons of America's Funnies Home Videos more than a decade ago.

The second point involves why Miller's story is so funny: Anytime you can get culture studies professors with Ph.D.'s to talk about getting slammed in the crotch, well, friends, that's comedy.

Alas, Miller's piece falls short a couple of important ways. First, any male will tell you that the recovery time of on-screen incidents is impossibly short. Even a glancing blow is enough to have a guy writhing on the ground for a good 15 or 20 minutes, slowly breathing and reciting the names of his second-grade classmates in alphabetical order in an attempt to distract himself from the searing pain he's feeling and keep from throwing up.

And Miller misses the boat on the best crotch shot of the last 20 years. Leave it to Bill Simmons to clean up the mess. The Sports Guy, in a laugh-out-loud, wet-yourself-funny piece in which he lays out his Vengeance Scale, puts it at 9.6 out of a possible 10.0: The scene in Pulp Fiction in which Ving Rhames's Marcellus Wallace, after being rescued by Bruce Willis's Butch, fires a shotgun into the groin of the redneck who was violating him. And then the promise of retribution, delivered in Rhames's devastating rumble: "What now? Let me tell you what now. I'm gonna call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' n-----s, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'm gonna get medieval on your ass."

Kinda makes a dodgeball strike seem not so bad, huh?

Maybe It's the Groundskeeper's Fault

2004-07-23T11:17:00.000-04:00

Marcus Hayes says give Larry Bowa a break. Bill Liming says you gotta be kidding me. Mike Carminati says Ed Wade needs to pick it up.

Bill Conlin says Mike Lieberthal and Pat Burrell have to step up. J. Michael Weitzel, one of the Berks Phillies Fans, agrees about Lieberthal. Todd Zolecki begs to differ on Burrell.

Balls, Sticks, & Stuff's Tom G. and others say deal Ryan Howard now, if not yesterday, while he still as value.

Jane Conroy wonders why following this first-place team feels so unfulfilling. Carminati has the answer:

Still, the Phils somehow exceed true mediocrity. I think a better way to look at the Phils is that they are a wildly uneven team, a team that is measured, almost on a daily basis, by their plusses and their minuses. After the wild mood swings of the first month and a half of the season, they have reached a sort of stasis. It depends on any given day which Phils team will show up. ...

One thing is good about the [trade] deadline. It creates a sense of finality for the calcified Wade. Maybe it will be enough to nudge him into an actual deal. Without it the Phils may have a share of first, but it'll be fleeting. Like the ground Napoleon conquered in Russia before having to retreat inevitably.

Meanwhile, the dog days approach, and the traction-less Phillies are still digging in their junk drawer in an effort to locate the leash -- and with the rest of the division's pooches snapping at their heels.

The One That Got Away

2004-07-22T16:47:00.000-04:00

The Phils battled back from a 10-3 deficit to draw to within two runs, but wasted a bases-loaded, one-out chance in the eighth on their way to a loss to and predictable split with Florida this afternoon at the Park. Randy Wolf couldn't make it out of the fifth, and the offense, forced to play catch-up for most of the afternoon, just couldn't get over the hump. The Braves, naturally, won today, returning to a first-place tie with the Phillies. The Fish are just two games back, with the Mets a game behind them. And so it continues. I'll be at the Park tomorrow night for the opener of the weekend's three-game set with the Cubs.

Mom's Review

2004-07-22T13:36:00.000-04:00

Shallow Center's Deputy South Jersey Correspondent, known colloquially as Mom, e-mails her first impression of Citizens Bank Park, where she saw last night's Phillies win:

It was terrific -- the place is really great. Even better were our seats ... . Section 115, row 1 is beside the Phillies' dugout. At the end of the dugout are the photographers/cameramen, then there was us ... . The game was great since we finally beat the Fish and Dad came home with a ball. Placido Polanco made the last out in the top of the first, and as he was leaving the field Dad yelled loud enough that Polanco looked up and tossed the ball to Dad. Polanco is now his favorite player!

The only downers were the length of time it took us to get out of the parking lot at the Linc and onto the Walt Whitman, and the lines to get food at any of the decent places. We arrived at 5:20, for a 7:05 game, and could not get in McFadden's or Harry the K's, and the lines for Tony Luke's and Bull's were unbelievable.

Overall, a good time was had by both. The park really is a great place.

Mom is completely right about the lines; likewise, my brother was correct, in his response, to recommend that Mom try a Schmitter from the Cobblestone Grill tucked in just behind the leftfield foul pole. It's a hell of a sandwich, and the most I've ever waited for one was about five minutes. As for my father's little gift, I guess it makes up for the foul ball that fell straight through his hands at a game a number of years ago. The bruise on his thigh was visible for weeks. No, really. I'm glad you were able to handle this one, Dad.

On the Links

2004-07-22T09:33:00.000-04:00

Longtime reader Tom G. has realized that, well, this ain't rocket science, and launched his own blog, Balls, Sticks, & Stuff, to chronicle "sports ... and other stuff too" (sounds familiar!). Elsewhere, Tom Goodman has come out swinging, appropriately enough, on his new blog, Swing and a Miss. Sharply worded posts on Larry Bowa and Citizens Bank Park portend another intelligent and contrary voice within the Phillies blogosphere. Welcome to the Show, boys; I look forward to reading your stuff.

Meanwhile, I've rediscovered Baseball Desert, written by an Englishman living in France. Talk about a fascinating look at the national pastime. Iain writes with a big heart, and his love for baseball is refreshingly free of cynicism. Plus, as he recently pointed out, we're both Del Amitri fans, and that counts for a lot. Check him out.

Airing Grievances

2004-07-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

A few quick words on the radio and TV broadcasts of tonight's game. While cleaning up in the kitchen, I caught a couple of innings on the radio, and, as usual, found myself shaking my head in amazement at Chris Wheeler's rampant whining. At least three or four times, he talked about this being another "strange" or "weird" Phillies-Marlins game. The talk only intensified when the Fish tied the game in the top of the seventh and again when Ricky Ledee went yard in the bottom of the inning. What Wheeler was doing was prepping his audience to blame the fates, or Providence, or bad luck, or whatever -- anybody but the Phillies -- should the Marlins win. Florida's domination over Philadelphia last year and this isn't due to chance -- the Fish have won too many games to chalk it up to strange happenings. Wheels surely knows this, and shame on him for trying to spin bad news to fans whose howling passion shouldn't be mistaken for gullibility or stupidity. His home-town hucksterism is an embarrassment.

On the TV side, listening to Harry Kalas and Larry Andersen call the ninth when Wagner pitches is becoming increasingly difficult. Their practiced nonchalance when the Phils' closer hits the upper 90s or three digits on the radar gun was cute for a game or two, but it's late July, and they're still doing it. All of Philadelphia knows that Wags can bring it, and we're all impressed by it. Andersen is a below-average color man, while Kalas, a Hall of Fame broadcaster on merit, is showing some signs of slippage. Put them together with Billy Wagner on the hill and the result is, sad to say, more reminiscent of a minor-league broadcast than anything else.

Fish Phry

2004-07-21T22:38:00.000-04:00

Kevin Millwood gave the Phillies the kind of start they're paying him for, Ricky Ledee saved a homer with a great catch in left and then lined a solo shot into the first row of the rightfield seats, and Billy Wagner went an inning and a third, all of them combining to help the Phils, finally, beat the Marlins. The 2-1 victory was as important psychologically as it was in terms of standings, as the Phillies hadn't beaten Florida since last September.

Larry Bowa's use of Wagner lately has been especially noteworthy. It's as if he's been checking out the blogosphere, which has been much more critical than the print media of his (and others') typical limiting of closers to ninth-inning appearances only. New blogger Tom G. of Balls, Sticks, & Stuff has already checked in with a brief thought on Wagner's four-out save tonight. Frankly, after watching Billy labor through the ninth last night, I was surprised that Bowa brought him in so early tonight, especially with Tim Worrell throwing well. All's well that ends well, as the poet says, but it would be nice for the offense to show up Thursday and give Wags a break.

One Step Forward (For Now)

2004-07-21T12:07:00.000-04:00

The very best part of the Phillies' important, come-from-behind win over the Braves last night was that it came only hours after the 76ers had traded Eric Snow, ensuring that Inquirer hack Stephen A. Smith would be writing about basketball, and not baseball, today.

Well, okay, maybe the best part was that the Phillies stole a game that they absolutely had to have. Billy Wagner's atypically wobbly ninth made Phillies Fan's Bill Liming and Phillies Foul Balls' Jeff Hildebrand a little nervous, but I'm more concerned that the Phils again seemed to be aimlessly strolling through this one, as they had the night before. The late-inning heroics were fun to watch, but where was the team before the eighth? And they managed to squander the chance to score even more; think of how damaging that would have been had Wagner unraveled further.

In an interesting change of pace, it was the opponent's manager, not ours, whose behavior warranted second-guessing, as David Pinto questioned Bobby Cox's use of John Smoltz here and here. Still, while Mike Carminati, like Jane Conroy, loathes Atlanta, he points out that Cox's ability to extract above-average results from a less than stellar roster would be much appreciated in Philadelphia.

Back in South Philly, the Phils welcome the Marlins for a two-game set at the Park beginning tonight, leading the Daily News's Sam Donnellon to file an amusing if inconsequential piece on Florida's replacing New York as our hated geographic adversary. The Phillies, dominated over the last two seasons by the Fish, say they're not afraid of the Marlins; Florida, though, has been struggling with the same kind of inconsistency that has plagued Philadelphia. If form holds, of course, the teams will split.

It's a Crying Blame

2004-07-20T13:40:00.000-04:00

In addition to the pain of being passed in the standings by the Braves, the Phillies now are experiencing the added hurt of increasingly greater numbers of pointed fingers being stabbed into their sides. With each successive day of underachievement -- or perceived underachievement -- the blame game intensifies. The shame of allowing Atlanta, whose very public off-season cost-cutting essentially told the National League that it would mail this year in, to leapfrog over them and into first place last night exposes the Phils to the added shame of being dumped on by the Inquirer's Stephen A. Smith today.

In typical fashion, Smith buries his precious few nuggets of readable insight underneath mountains of excruciating and tangled prose. Just when you think you've found something to agree with -- that both Larry Bowa and Ed Wade must share blame for this disappointment of a season -- he snaps his head around, like a toddler who suddenly realizes Sesame Street is on, and locks onto "the name that mattered most ... that of team president David Montgomery ... the man both Bowa and Wade ultimately answer to, with the power to get rid of both of them."

Meanwhile, the blogosphere checks in with its own finger-pointing. Mike at a Citizen's Blog fears a third-place finish, while Phillies Fan's Bill Liming, who seems to have been at last night's game at Turner, supplements my thoughts on the Phils' sleepwalking with an interesting observation of the varying degrees of liveliness in the opposing dugouts as the game progressed. You can probably guess whose dugout was raucous and whose was solemn.

Elsewhere, commenting on Smith's mess of a column, Baseball Musings' David Pinto defends Wade as "a weak general manager ... doing the best he can to survive and win" and as having "put a good team on the field," but I think we need to reserve judgment on that until we see the end result. He's certainly on the hook for Bowa, who should be managing in A-ball somewhere, and if he fails to bolster a team in dire need of another starter and a major league centerfielder, he should be on the hook for that, too. Yes, the Phils' burgeoning payroll was a welcome change this year, but countless teams have shown that there's an enormous difference between spending money and spending money wisely. Should the Phillies flounder their way to another season of October-less baseball, Wade should be called on for spending money foolishly.

Wake Me When It's Over

2004-07-19T22:17:00.000-04:00

Their hustle was amazing, their play inspiring. Outfielders diving for balls with reckless abandon. A starter with complete command of his pitches. Young players, in the thick of a pennant race, performing with confidence, with grace under pressure. A sure-handed manager who handles stars and role players with equal aplomb.

Yeah, those Braves are an impressive bunch. Mike Hampton dazzled the Phillies tonight, allowing just five hits in seven innings, and John Smoltz closed the deal with two innings of scoreless, one-hit ball, propelling Atlanta into first place by a game.

Let that sink in for a minute. On July 19, the Braves beat the Phillies to return to first place in National League East.

Stop me if you've heard this before -- well, actually, don't -- but the Phils, as they have since April 2003, played another game as if they were attempting not to lose. While Larry Bowa smolders in the dugout, his charges lazily punch the cruise control button and expect to glide along in the left line, obstacle-free, at a constant 70 mph. It's just that someone forgot to tell the Braves (and the Marlins and the Mets). At one point in the middle innings, a frustrated Larry Andersen said the Phillies needed some sort of spark, and Chris Wheeler, the ultimate toady, faced with evidence so damning even he couldn't spin it into somebody else's fault, reluctantly agreed.

By then, though, Paul Abbott had dug his usual hole, in this case four runs in four-plus innings, and the Phils' offense, so potent leading up to the All-Star break, continued its feeble, post-break sputtering. Tonight's 4-2 loss sets up an important game tomorrow, for after closing the brief series at Atlanta, the Phillies return to the Park for a pair against Florida, against whom, you'll recall, they've dropped a zillion straight.

Thank God now is the time. I mean, I'd hate to see how the Phils would play if this were a rebuilding year or something. They'd probably be hovering around .500, right? A perfectly acceptable so-so season, just like so many in this franchise's sad-sack history.

Anybody else notice the 2004 version seems hell-bent on continuing that legacy of mediocrity?

Trump the Shark II

2004-07-19T13:43:00.000-04:00

As much as I want to loathe Donald Trump, there's a part of me that admires the stones he has. After squeezing his way back into the national spotlight thanks to Mark Burnett's enormously entertaining The Apprentice, Trump could have kicked back, fired up a stogie, and thanked whatever god he prays to that people were talking about The Return of The Donald and not The Impending Collapse of The Donald's Casino Empire.

Instead, Trump apparently recalled his near-ruin of the 1990s and decided to strike while the iron is hot. He's doing syndicated radio commentaries. There's talk of a Trump magazine. The second season of The Apprentice will air on NBC soon. He's on the cover of the August issue of Esquire, which arrived in my mailbox last week. He's doing commercials. I'd joke about a Trump breakfast cereal or a Trump-edition Lexus, except that I fear those things are just around the corner.

He's one overexposed son of a bitch, but that's not his fault. Trump's "always been a better self-promoter than businessman," somebody really smart once wrote, and he's quick enough to realize that his run won't last forever. His jump-the-shark moment has to be coming soon, and by the time America moves on to its next bizarre infatuation, Trump will have made enough to keep him in ex-wives for the rest of his life. Or until he needs to spring for a new set of hydraulics to keep that painstakingly constructed 'do from looking even more hideous than it currently does.

Split Happens

2004-07-18T21:25:00.000-04:00

With the in-laws in town Friday night, and then the whole lot of us in the Shenandoah Valley yesterday and today, keeping track of the Phillies was much tougher than usual. I caught an inning of Fox's telecast yesterday while in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and then a couple of innings on the radio while making the return trip on the Pennsylvania Turnpike today, and that was it. From the looks/sounds of things, the Phillies' series with the Mets comprised a pair of well pitched wins and a pair of weak-hitting losses. Undoubtedly in tomorrow's papers the Phils will make noises about being happy with a split on the road against a tough team, but the truth is that after taking two of the first three, they needed to step on the Mets' throats. Instead, the Phillies allowed the New Yorkers to claw their way to within two games, and Atlanta abused Montreal to climb into a first-place tie. Up next are a crucial pair against the Braves at Turner. The hometown nine don't make it easy, do they?

Pearlslam

2004-07-16T13:53:00.000-04:00

If you have cable, even your most cursory surf through the channels is guaranteed to turn up at least one of three things: (1) Either The Shawshank Redemption or The American President; (2) an episode of Law & Order in one of its three variations; or (3) one of VH1's I Love the ... series.

All are compelling for their own reasons, but for sheer crack cocaine-like addiction, nothing beats the VH1 stuff. The series is now examining the 1990s, and while I've been helplessly sucked into a few installments, I must confess to a certain discomfort over watching.

It's not as if the '90s lacked trends and icons to mock. But we're just too close to the things they're laughing at. The "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady? Sure, I remember her -- laughed at her then, too. The Ally McBeal dancing baby? Sure, I remember it -- thought it was stupid then, too. Look, anything that gets Liz Phair on the air more is something I'll all for, but there's something missing here. The distance between now and prior decades is what made I Love the 70s and I Love the 80s such a kick, and what drains I Love the 90s of its desperately needed "Oh, yeah!" value. If things continue as they are, in about six weeks Michael Ian Black will collapse under the weight of his own understated irony:

Ed was about a bowling alley owner ... who was also [eyebrow cocks] a lawyer. Because so many lawyers are looking for second careers involving [head tilts] recycled shoes. And then the guy who plays the bowling alley sidekick [eyes twinkle, lip quivers] moves onto a cable series mocking ... . [Head explodes in meta-ironic spectacle.]

No Offense, But... .

2004-07-16T11:58:00.000-04:00

Well, so much for starting the second half on a high note. I realize that this space may sound overly pessimistic, that those with some distance might see the Phillies' position in a more forgiving light than I, but I just can't help but feel that there's something not quite right with these guys. They are, as my pal said last night, awfully hard to root for.

Last night the Phils' impotent offense wasted a good start from Eric Milton and some generally good bullpen work, Roberto Hernandez's 11th-inning implosion notwithstanding. Baseball Musings' David Pinto joins Bill Liming in asking where the hell Billy Wagner was while the ugly scene unfolded at Shea. It's a terribly valid question.

The Phils have begun a stretch during which they will play a whole slew of games against teams that are close in the standings. As the Daily News's Rich Hofmann, in New York with the team, observes today, the next three weeks could be very rewarding for the Phillies -- or disastrous.

But, hey, at least Larry Bowa acknowledges that a barely-above-mediocre four games over .500 isn't anything to write home about. That's progress, right?

Pray to Jobu

2004-07-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

The city dailies offer the predictable second-half previews today -- Todd Zolecki's evenhanded breakdown in the Inquirer; and, in the Daily News, Marcus Hayes's half-full assessment and Paul Hagen's half-empty one. The blogosphere is similarly conflicted; Phanatic Phollow Up's Jane Conroy and Phillies-Fan's Bill Liming counsel patience, while Mike of a Citizen's Blog and Brian of the Citizens Report, like me, are more concerned.

I'm reminded of a couple of movies as the season's second half gets underway.

The first is Rocky III, and the scene playing in my mind takes place after Rocky has gotten his ass kicked by Clubber Lang. He's moping around a gym, mourning Mickey and feeling sorry for himself, when Apollo Creed shows up. Apollo gives Rocky a necessary reality check, telling him that while Mickey's death undoubtedly contributed to the merciless beating inflicted by Clubber, "you lost that fight for all the wrong reasons."

Likewise, the slimness of the Phils' first-half lead is for all the wrong reasons. I don't want to hear about injuries. I don't want to hear about slumps. The Marlins lost a lot over the winter, but they're right there. The Mets were thought to be at least a year or two away, and they're right there. The Braves are a shell of their 1990s dynasty, and the Jones boys have been an embarrassment this season. But they're still there. The Phillies, meanwhile, like last year's squad, are a team whose total is less than the sum of its parts. Every few weeks they look around their locker room and say, geez, now would be a great time to pick thing up, and then they go out and go .500 against the likes of the Expos and Royals. On paper the class of the division, they are in reality its biggest disappointment, and there is no close second.

The second movie I'm thinking of is Major League. The Phillies are about to play 19 of 24 games on the road, including four series over the next two weeks against Florida, Atlanta, and New York. They desperately need to tear off the kind of streak the Indians put together after Jake Taylor told his teammates they had to "win the whole fuckin' thing" just to spite their owner. In one of the greatest sports-film montages ever, the Tribe do absolutely everything right -- stay late for additional batting and fielding practice; take the extra base; pick one another up; star in an American Express commercial -- and are rewarded with a first-place tie with the Yankees. I long to pick up my morning paper in late September and see the kind of stirring headlines and photos that the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran to accompany the Indians' fictional romp through the American League.

And if that doesn't happen anytime soon? Well, don't expect Larry Bowa to pay the price. As Hayes notes in his story, GM Ed Wade is

not considering firing the manager or coaches.

"I think our staff's done very well," Wade said, especially lauding Bowa. He was dubbed by many the manager most on the hot seat as the season started, with the club that faded out of two wild-card races in his first three seasons now carrying a team-record $93 million payroll. "One of the things is keeping an even keel. Letting the guys develop their own chemistry."

As Bowa often says, chemistry equals winning.

With 12 of their next 15 games against division rivals New York, Atlanta and Florida, against whom they are a combined 8-18 this season, the chemistry's volatility will be tested immediately.

Now is the time, boys. Again.

Odds and Trends

2004-07-14T12:52:00.000-04:00

It wasn't all that long ago that we were basking in the glow of preseason predictions, nearly all of which saw the Phillies as the rampantly obvious team to beat in the N.L. East. It was hardly a dangerous pick -- the Phils had patched obvious holes in the off-season and were moving into a cool new ballpark. The stage seemed to be set.

What a difference 87 games can make.

Inconsistent pitching, injuries, an offense that can't seem to sustain itself over the long haul, and a petulant, clueless manager who's more caricature than field general have kept the Phillies from opening up any distance in the division. If the season ended today, the Phils would be the worst of the six teams to make the playoffs -- and that's the good news. As Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci observes, four times over the last 10 years the Phillies have, including this year, held a playoff spot by a game; the previous three times, they've failed to make the postseason. In a division the Fightin's should absolutely own, not one team, according to Verducci, can be given a playoff edge.

Even among the hometown bloggers, typically a bastion of optimism, there is discontent. A Citizen's Blog recently surveyed the team and concluded that

the Phils are in trouble. This team is better off in the standings now then in ’03 (when they trailed the Braves by ten or so games), but they have a worse record this year (46-41) than last (52-40). They are playing too inconsistently, and they have real competition: the Mets and Braves are playing well, and the Fish will rebound from their June slump.

Indeed, I don't know whether to be relieved or concerned that the Phils' biggest objective backers these days seem to be the bent noses and leg-breakers.

Dressed to Hurl

2004-07-13T14:30:00.000-04:00

It's time to start saying "no" to the retro uniform renaissance. Walk around Citizens Bank Park's main concourse and you'll see a slew of t-shirts and hats emblazoned with that bizarre, 1970s Phillies "P," the one with the goofy-looking baseball in its center. And the colors -- the horror, the horror! You'll see caps in the horribly glaring home uniform maroon, and shirts that resemble that era's fey road powder-blues. Yes, I know the Phils won their only World Series in these unis, but there's a reason they were jettisoned after less than 25 seasons' use: Much like the old woman's age spots in that commercial from the '70s (there's that decade again), they were ugly. (Or fugly, as the missus and I put it when something is really heinous.) It's not a look for the 21st century. It screams polyester leisure suits. It yells disco. It bellows AMC Gremlin. It's as much a hideous symbol of its time as Houston Astro orange and Vancouver Canuck brown.

If you have to go retro, Phillies fans, I say do it right -- go back to the turn of the 20th century, when the players wore a cool, block-letter "P." It was much more imposing symbol that the smiley-face, touchy-feely version that polluted the '70s uniforms. And in case you're wondering, the Phils did reach a World Series playing in those unis, in 1915, when they were beaten by the Red Sox. Those Phillies uniforms were extremely effective, producing an ordeal so arduous to Boston that the Sox have been able to win only one other title, in 1918, in the 89 seasons since. And there wasn't a stitch of powder blue in sight.

Playing the 'Race' Card

2004-07-12T23:29:00.000-04:00

Television's best reality show has returned, and airs its second episode of the season tomorrow night. CBS's nifty The Amazing Race relaunched last week by sending its 11 two-person teams from Los Angeles to Miami and then on to the unlikely destination of Uruguay. (Don't worry, it's a real country -- I checked.) Each week the teams will scurry across the globe, completing challenges, dealing with all sorts of foreign inconveniences, and trying to avoid finishing last during a leg, until one teams finally returns first to L.A. to claim the first-place prize of a million bucks. For a few seasons now, CBS has seemed uncertain on bringing the show back, and each time, thankfully, the network has made the right call. The Amazing Race is hands down the most exciting and honest show of the reality genre, which I realize is the very essence of damning with faint praise. Just trust me: If you're not watching, start.

What distinguishes the show from its peers is that there is no filler. Nobody's lying around, scratching their bug bites while they try to catch fish. Nobody's trying to "find love," which is TV code for "get laid by a bunch of hotties while simultaneously avoiding any semblance of commitment." Nobody is lying and cheating to win a chance to be mercilessly browbeaten by Donald Trump for a year. Nobody is abusing the nation's canine population with unbearably off-key singing. From the minute it comes on the air to the minute the last-place team gets booted from each leg of the global pursuit, The Amazing Race is an undiluted adrenaline rush of pedal-to-the-metal excitement.

And personality clashes. Unlike other reality competitions, which pit individuals against one another, The Amazing Race is team-based. Each pair has an existing relationship, which creates some enormously entertaining mini-psychodramas each week. Dating couples who somehow think the stress of a nationally televised chase will bring them closer; fathers and daughters seeking to gain each other's respect under difficult circumstances; best friends who have done nothing more challenging together than drink beer over a backyard barbecue -- just about any two people wrapped up in the cloak of mutual dysfunction seem to find their way into sketchy backwater airport terminals, checking their watches every five seconds and worrying that they're losing ground to the other teams.

The whole game is entirely merit-based. If you breathlessly reach each week's pit stop and check in with the refreshingly un-Probst-like Phil Keoghan after all the other remaining teams have, you're gone. You can be obnoxious, annoying, or even outright evil, and it doesn't matter. This is, praise the Lord, not a popularity contest.

And speaking of the Big Guy upstairs, my favorite moment from last week's premiere came when the twentysomething team of Brandon and Nicole, models and self-professed Christians, noted the confidence they're placing in God to guide their success. I observed out loud that I sincerely doubted the Almighty's interest in helping these clowns carry a 50-pound side of beef a half-mile to a Uruguayan butcher shop, given the other slightly more pressing issues in the world demanding His attention. The missus trumped me by smartly noting, "Uh, God allowed a gay team to win last time."

It's too early in the race for me to have a favorite team for which to root, but I certainly have targeted some I don't want to win. I'm hoping the God Squad drops out soon -- banished to last place, perhaps, but a group of slow-driving atheists. I'm also pulling for a quick demise for the pizza-making brothers from Dallas (just go with it, folks), a couple of big, honkin' tools who have already shown themselves to be sexist and bigoted. Undoubtedly they also kick puppies. God wants them to win even less than He did Reichen and Chip, I'm guessing, and that's good enough for me.

Inbetween Days

2004-07-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

Faced with a 14-game, make-or-break homestand, the Phillies did neither, going an uninspired but not awful 8-6 and hitting the All-Star break in first place but not comfortably so, with three teams within two games of them.

Since my last post, the Phils played four games that could serve as a microcosm of the season so far. On Thursday night Bobby Abreu's ninth-inning heroics saved the Phillies from the ignominy of dropping three of four to the Mets at home. (Yes, I have noticed Bobby's recent fine play, as well as his selection to the All-Star team. I may not always like the way he plays, but I acknowledge achievements when they happen, and, hey, I voted for him in the online poll, so step off.)

Friday night saw me, my brothers, and a friend at the Park for my annual birthday present (last year's trip was to Yankee Stadium), and boy did we see a doozy. The Phillies clawed out of a 6-1 hole with runs in the eighth, ninth, and 10th to earn a 7-6 win over the Braves in a terrifically exciting game. Early on, Rafael Furcal had homered down the leftfield line; replays would later show the ball to be clearly foul. Nestled just behind the rightfield foul pole, we were about as far from the disputed tater as one could be, but from the way Pat Burrell blew in from left to protest the call, we thought immediately that maybe the umps had gotten it wrong. A few batters later, after the replay presumably had aired on the clubhouse TV, Larry Bowa got run, prompting him to let the home-plate umpire have it. With fans screaming in support, Bowa, his leg twitching from time to time, went toe-to-toe with the ump and got his money's worth. (The over-under on the date of his on-field stroke, by the way, is August 2.)

The Phils chipped away, though, and the CBP crowd was more into the game, and not just the ballpark scene, than I've seen it this season. When Chase Utley took a really good, down and in pitch from John Smoltz over the right-center wall to tie the game in the ninth, the place exploded. An inning later, Tomas Perez's base hit plated Mike Lieberthal, and our little party drifted to a great little neighborhood bar near the Parkway to celebrate the victory.

It was a wonderful win, the kind of gut-check performance that can propel a team into a hot streak. Oh, right, this is the Phillies. They followed up their pair of last-inning Ws with a clunker against Mike Hampton Saturday and yesterday's Randy Wolf implosion.

And so, 87 games into the season, we know about as much about this team as we did in late March. Which is to say, not much. As Bill Conlin asks in today's Daily News:

With all the body-English agonizing over the water-torture game this team seems to play most days, is it possible that this is all there is? Maybe there is no there here.

Did everybody miscalculate how good these Phillies were going to be, everybody from Ed Wade to the fans in the not-so-cheap seats?

If so, can any amount of trading and body-shuffling do enough to redeem what might be a basic slightly over-.500 team?

The Phillies have 75 more games to answer that question.

Most observers think that the Phillies probably have enough to win, but are unwilling to call them a lock. Writing in yesterday's New York Times, for example, Murray Chass rather heavy-handedly called the Phils "kings of the underachievers," but noted "[t]hey may still take command." Likewise, Phil Sheridan, in yesterday's Inquirer, pointed out that the chance to grab the division is still right there, but without a certain "chemistry or personality or whatever" that the really good teams all seem to have, they're going to have to battle their own legacy:

At the all-star break ... the best you can say is that the Phillies haven't blown that opportunity.

They haven't exactly seized it, but they haven't blown it. Unfortunately, given their history, you get the queasy feeling they're more likely to blow it than not.