PHILADELPHIA – It has been tough going for the Phillies' marketing department in the early going. They promoted the start of the season with a "Paint The Town Red" campaign that seemed to have a main purpose of turning the Phanatic into a mascot for the underworld. Once the season started the only thing that got painted red was the Phillies' derrieres, thanks to four straight spankings.
Saturday was feted as "Kids' Opening Day." There were two problems with that well-intended promotion: 1) The game was rained out, and 2) the press release for the event read "Kid's Opening Day."
Either there was only one kid scheduled to attend Saturday's game, or the Phillies were promoting crappy grammar to our youth.
OK, enough kicking the Phillies while they're (still) down. The point of this is to give an early alert to Scott Palmer, John Brazer and the other members of the Super Happy Club to be prepared for what could be a very, very interesting first weekend of May at Citizens Bank Park.
That weekend the Giants are coming to town, and there is a very strong possibility that Bonds' infamous quest to catch and pass Babe Ruth could reach its zenith in Philadelphia.
Bonds entered Saturday sitting at 708 career home runs, six short of the Babe's mark of 714, second on the all-time list. With 26 days between now and the start of the May 6-8 three-game series with the Giants, it wouldn't be surprising at all to see Bonds arrive in Philly with 712, 713 or 714 career homers.
One can only imagine what a Philadelphia crowd will have up its collective sleeve if Bonds is close to or tied with the Bambino that weekend. Heck, some fan in San Diego put down his sushi plate long enough to throw a syringe in Bonds' direction on opening day. Phillies fans might throw Victor Conte onto the field.
It will be tough for the Phillies to take any direct shots at Bonds, even good-natured ones. Here's hoping the Phanatic (non-underworld version) pulls out his powerlifting skit while Bonds is in town and has a couple of oversized prop bottles of "Cream" and “Clear” there to help him get his barbell overhead.
Don't worry, Super Happy Club – tell Bonds to sue me if he's offended.
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Inspiration at times comes from within.
For instance, after Gavin Floyd was God-awful in his season debut against the Dodgers Friday night and was summarily booed off the field when Charlie Manuel had to take him out of the game in the third inning, someone in the press box said that the fans should be taken to task for aiding and abetting the destruction of Floyd's confidence (or lack thereof).
Which leads to this response: If Gavin Floyd is so fragile that hearing some boos after a genuinely lousy performance is going to undermine his ability to compete in the major leagues, what makes you think that you can ever trust him to pitch in a clutch circumstance?
This isn't to indict Floyd. He wasn't the one who complained about the booing, and perhaps he will go out there for his next start and be tremendous. However, for anyone to complain about the fans when their team has stumbled out to an 0-3 start and the player getting booed has paved a yellow brick road to 0-4 with his ineffectiveness is silly.
Was Floyd under the gun after the Phils were swept by the Cardinals? Yes, he was. But those are the proving grounds for pitchers. Those are the starts where a young pitcher can let his manager know that when it comes down to a big start in September, he can be trusted.
Floyd blew that test. The Phillies used the fourth overall pick in the 2001 draft and $4.2 million of signing-bonus money on Floyd. It matters. He has to live up to that investment. It might not be fair, but who thinks their line of work is fair?
A show of hands?
There's no reason to give up on Floyd yet. Pitchers, the best of them, have rough outings. But if one bad outing turns into two, and two turns into three, and three turns into four … well, after that expect to see Cole Hamels, a prospect who isn't short on guts. <!-- D(["mb","
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Hamels, incidentally, pitched six shutout innings in his debut for Class A Clearwater, and could get promoted to Double- or Triple-A with one more statement start like that.\n
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Hamels, incidentally, pitched six shutout innings in his debut for Class A Clearwater, and could get promoted to Double- or Triple-A with one more statement start like that.
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Ironically, the final game of Ruth's career came May 30, 1935, in Philadelphia against the Phillies. The Phils had just swept Ruth's Boston Braves in a doubleheader that day. Apparently he couldn't bear the thought of playing for a team that actually was worse than the Phillies (the sweep improved the Phils to 11-22 and dropped the Braves to 9-25).