For the next three weeks, the Phillies will play 15 of their next 20 games at home with no days off. Of those 20 games, 18 are in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So obviously, this is a big stretch for the Phillies. Needless to say, everyone will likely be sick of each other by the time the next day off on May 8 rolls around.
But how could anyone get sick of a 1-0 game at Coors Field? On the way home after a 4-2 road trip, the Phillies are 4 1/2 games behind the Mets in the East with six straight games against the two teams with a worse record.
What was that pithy saying on those old red t-shirts? Now is the time?
And now it's time to check out the latest scribblings on the local ballclub.
Marcus wrote about Brett Myers' gem at Coors Field in the 1-0 victory, as well as the struggles from the middle relievers and Jon Lieber's 0-3 record.
Chances are Marcus will make an appearance on Daily News Live this week, too.
With a pudcast, a reader mail column and a night club act similar to John C. Reilly's in Boogie Nights, Todd doesn't need the exposure from a regional sports cable channel. Instead, he exposed Myers' outing at Coors, and Ryan Howard's game-winning home run to end an 11-game homerless skid and how pleased Myers was with Mike Lieberthal's effort behind the plate.
In Radano's Monday minor-league feature, he wrote about Jason Jaramillo and Carlos Ruiz and how the Phillies hope they can catch on (get it?) and help the club in the not-so distant future.
The Daily Times at a full plate of Deitch on Monday morning. First, there was the chronicling of the heroics from Howard and Myers in Denver, plus, how Tom Gordon adjusted to pitching at Coors. Deitch also has a note on how crappy the official scoring has become around the league and Pat Burrell's bloody nose.
Scott Lauber wrote about Myers' win against the Rockies even though Charlie Manuel is a little concerned about the shaky middle relief.
Like wire copy? Then check out the Courier Post, PhillyBurbs, CSN and Allentown.
Nationally, Jayson Stark offered his Rumblings & Grumblings on ESPN.com where he had an item on the Phillies. Jayson also penned a "More Rumblings" column for the ESPN's Insider with a note on Charlie Manuel's future with the Phillies:
In my chat for ESPN.com the other day, I was bombarded by questions from Philadelphia about why Charlie Manuel hasn't been fired yet as manager of the Phillies.
Simple answer: Because the new GM in Philadelphia, Pat Gillick, has seen Manuel manage for less than two weeks. And he knows the Phillies played their tailbones off for Manuel in the second half. And he understands nobody ever asked Manuel to turn himself into Tony La Russa.
Remember this: Charlie Manuel was hired, essentially, to not be Larry Bowa. And he still fills that role as well as ever, even if his game-management ambience is, to pick a word, unpredictable.
"Charlie is a very positive guy, and I think that's what this club needs," Gillick told Rumblings. "The one thing I've seen so far is that this club has played hard and hustled and hasn't backed off. ... And I think that's important.
"Charlie has a different style than Larry had, and that's OK. I think with certain players, Larry's style worked, and with certain players, it didn't. But the feeling I get, on the field and in the clubhouse, is that Charlie's got these guys in the proper frame of mind."
Two years ago, the Phillies started 1-6 with Bowa in charge, too. So if nothing else, the Phillies have proved they can get off to horrible starts no matter what kind of personality their manager has.
Nevertheless, Gillick is in this to win -- sooner, not later. So if this group doesn't win, nobody who plays a part in this season should forget that he has no allegiance to anything or anyone that was there before him.
Jayson also wrote about David Dellucci's role with the Phillies:
A scout who is a big David Dellucci fan says the Phillies are misusing Dellucci by not letting him start at least a couple of days a week.
"He has to play some," the scout said. "He has one of those swings where he has to get at-bats. He's got a little inside-out loop that causes him to swing through pitches when he isn't sharp. And he's very patient, which doesn't always bode well when you pinch-hit. And to take advantage of his best aspect -- his chemistry -- he's got to play more. You can't exert much leadership when you're on a new team and you're not playing."
Also on ESPN, Buster Olney wrote that Scott Rolen should get some pitches to hit if he remains in the order behind Albert Pujols. The reason is because Pujols isn't going to get anything to hit any more since Jim Edmonds just had a cortisone shot for his shoulder and Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker are gone ... then again, Brett Myers threw a pitch that was nearly over Pujols' head and he still knocked it into the left-field seats at the Bank.
FoxSports.com's Ken Rosenthal wrote about the amphetamine ban and how it will affect the game on Saturday. We missed it, so here it is.
*** This week's music choice: Les McCann & Eddie Harris "Compared to What" from Swiss Movement
David Byrne once wrote that lyrics and vocalists were the reason why people listened to modern, pop music even though they often ruined it. That was the reason why Byrne liked jazz so much -- the music spoke for itself.
Obviously, Byrne wasn't writing about Les McCann and Eddie Harris' "Compared to What," a song in which the lyrics are even more trenchant now than they were when the song was first recorded in 1969.
Anyway, right-click on this one and save it. It took me three years to locate a copy of the album, which was out of print for a while until the Beastie Boys started sampling from McCann and Harris and rhyming about them (... make you shake your ass like Les McCann... ), and Martin Scorcese used a couple of songs from Swiss Movement in Casino.
Of course, it's on iTunes now.
*** Apropos of nothing, here's the best email I received today. It's from Michael Wann, the neighborhood gadfly and master gardener:
The revolution is gaining momentum... The New York Times recently reported that--for the first time--a full-time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in America at market rates. That means more and more people like Michelle Kennedy--a former Senate page and author of Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (With Kids) in America--are finding themselves homeless and living out of their cars.
At a town hall meeting in Ohio on April 2, Representative Sherrod Brown, a staunch advocate for social and economic rights (he and Bernie Sanders are the two best candidates running for Senate in 2006) railed against the economic hardship brought on by stagnant wages: "It is unacceptable that someone can work full-time--and work hard--and not be able to lift their family out of poverty." He blasted a system where a full-time minimum-wage worker earns $10,500 a year, while "last year the CEO of Wal-Mart earned $3,500 an hour. The CEO of Halliburton earned about $8,300 an hour. And the CEO of ExxonMobil earned about $13,700 an hour."