Revisiting Pat Burrell's unique impact in Philly

We’re very into measuring legacies here on this littlesite. Go ahead and dig through the archives and there will be plenty of stories detailing the impact certain athletes had on their time and place. Some guys made a big impact in a short amount of time like Cliff Lee, Terrell Owens or Lenny Dykstra, while others stirred the drink over a longer period like Donovan McNabb or Jimmy Rollins.

The thing about coming to define a ballplayer’s legacy is that it’s totally subjective. For instance, a guy like Simon Gagne is the longest tenured athlete in Philadelphia right now, and might go on to set a whole bunch of franchise records for the Flyers. However, Gagne was rarely the most important player on his team.

Of course an argument could be made about Gagne these days considering the Flyers are 7-1 in games that he played in during the current playoff run.

Still another thing about this exercise is that it defies statistics or any other type of metric. It’s completely one of those “it” things. You know, it’s so tough to define “it,” but you know it when you see, “it.”

So with the end of his days as an everyday player on a major league roster likely looming after the Tampa Bay Rays sent him packing, we are officially entering the beginning of the end for Pat Burrell. The weird thing about the fan favorite here in Philly being sent out by Tampa is how quickly the bottom fell out for Burrell. After he clubbed that long double off the top of the center field fence to set up the World Series-winning run in October of 2008, Burrell has not been very good.

No, he hasn’t been as awful as he was in 2003 when he batted just .209 and manager Larry Bowa wanted to send him back to the minors only to be vetoed  by general manager Ed Wade because they signed the guy to a $50 million deal before the season. However, with the remainder of a $16 million deal still owed for the rest of the year, Burrell has been bad enough that the Rays had to do something.

After all, Burrell still has that big, sweeping swing that leads him to strikeout more often than he puts it into play. Remember that swing? You know, the one that made you throw things at your TV set because you saw it so often every summer so you figured someone must have been in Burrell’s ear telling him not to swing at those low and away pitches that sent his rear to the on-deck circle while his bat flailed like an old lady beating back a prowler with her cane.

Yes, that swing. Apparently the folks in Tampa had less patience for it than we did.

Chances are Burrell will clear waivers and catch on with a team as apart-time DH or right-handed bat off the bench. He’s not so far gone that he’s completely worthless even though he’s hit just two homers, whiffed 28 times in 84 at-bats, and posted a .202 batting average. Just like Charlie Manuel in Philadelphia, Rays’ manager Joe Maddon couldn’t say enough nice things about Burrell even when kicking him to the curb.

“The thing about Pat that I respect so much, this guy worked very, very hard despite a lot of outside criticism,” Maddon told reporters on Saturday. “But I’m always about effort and work, and this guy did that every day. He was the first guy showing up. He was always in the cage, always worked on his defense even though he didn’t play out there. He was very supportive among his teammates. It’s just unfortunate that it did not work out.”

In other words it was business, not personal. It was exactly what Ruben Amaro Jr. said when the Phillies decided to allow Burrell to become a free agent after his key double and role as the Grand Marshal in the World Series parade down Broad St. Quite clearly, it was a great send off and one Burrell never wanted. If the Phillies would have had him back, he would have stayed. And yet despite some kind words from people like Bill James touting his stats, the Phillies kind of knew better.

There were just too many of those swings.

But how will you remember Pat Burrell? Is he a Greg Luzinski type with some big slugging seasons before a very quick demise? Did he have a career worthy of the Phillies’ Wall of Fame?

Or was he the epitome of unfulfilled promise and hype? Was he one of those guys who just had so much talent and raw ability, but no idea how to piece it all together?

How about all of the above?

Burrell, of course, was the No. 1 overall pick out of Miami in 1998 who belted 29 homers in his first full season of pro ball in ’99 and then got the call to the big club in May of 2000. In fact, in his first big league game in Houston, Burrell hit one so hard that if that high wall in left field hadn’t gotten in the way, the ball might have orbited the earth. Oddly enough the pitcher who served up that shot was none other than his soon to be nemesis, Billy Wagner.

Go figure.

Burrell hit 18 homers in 111 games of his first season, 27 in 2001 and then the big year in 2002 with 37 homers, 116 RBIs and a career-high .920 OPS. After that season he had the city in the palm of his hand because of his ability to get huge hits against the Mets, that $50 million deal, and his de facto title as the “Midnight Mayor” of Philadelphia.

And then he just never put it all together. Sure, there was that good 2005 season and a strong 2007, but his inability to hit with runners on base in 2006 might have cost the Phillies a shot at the playoffs. Strangely, 30-homer seasons with solid RBI and slugging numbers seemed rather mundane, probably because we expected so much more.

Isn’t the curse of high expectations always a lose-lose? Strapped with burden, it always seemed as if Burrell should have been better when in reality he wasn’t that bad.

Yet Philadelphia loved the guy. He somehow was excused from the boos that rained on Mike Schmidt during rough times, or hundreds of lesser players. Why was that? How could a No. 1 overall pick struggle to hit .200 and to avoid a trip back to the minors wind up being cheered… in Philadelphia?  Somehow Burrell charmed the fans even when he was snubbing the press. Needless to say, Burrell was in a unique position for an athlete in the city.

Maybe the reason for that was because he was so accessible. There were probably thousands of Phillies fans that ran into him after games at The Irish Pub or out in Olde City, where he likely bought a few rounds for the house. Perhaps Burrell was immune to the catcalls because he lived the fantasy life of a star athlete to the hilt, and didn’t miss work or call in sick. In fact, he and his bulldog Elvis were usually the first pair in the clubhouse every day. Better yet, he was one of the leaders behind the scenes with the Phillies when they finally broke that playoff drought.

He did a lot of things that fans and ballplayers liked, such as calling out guys like Wagner for perceived slights and not airing his laundry in the media. Actually, Burrell called us “rats,” which is fair considering we ripped him for all those slumps and strikeouts. Sure, he was fine to shoot the breeze with or trade in some friendly banter or idle gossip, but to go to talk about himself or some insight on the team or the game… forget it. That’s when the walls went up.

For those looking for the defining quotes on Burrell, look no further than this gem Dallas Green dropped on Jim Salisbury a couple of years ago:

“I’ve been out with him a couple times in Florida. We have a secret (watering) hole every now and then.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. There are tons of guys in the Hall of Fame that were like that.

“It’s neat to have money, it’s neat to have good looks, and it’s neat to have broads all over you. Every place I’ve managed, I’ve talked to kids about the same thing. It’s a hell of a life. But there comes a time in every player’s life when he needs to get his act together.”

No one is saying Burrell doesn’t have his act together—far from it. However, the act often changes for all ballplayers and athletes. Sometimes it has to come crashing down to remember how good it once was.

The warm-up act

The early reports indicate that Super Bowl 44 was thehighest rated version of the game ever. If that’s the case, it will surpass the 1982 Super Bowl, which was seen in 49 percent of U.S. households for a 73 percent share, the Saints-Colts game could rank up there with the most-watched TV events ever.

There’s the last M.A.S.H., the “Who Shot J.R.?” Dallas episode, Roots and probably Super Bowl 44.

Perhaps adding to the allure of watching the game was the proliferation of social media, the Internet and all that stuff. These days a guy can have a Super Bowl party with all his friends and followers without traveling anywhere. And based on how the roads look after the big snowstorm that walloped us, we weren’t getting too far anyway.

Besides, who wants to be in the same room with half of those people anyway… I keed, I keed.

Anyway, back in my day when MTV and ESPN first came out and we went from 12 channels with a dial to 30 channels with a space-age remote, Super Bowl Sunday meant a day filled with tons of good sports matchups. In fact, I recall a Sixers-Celtics and Celtics-Lakers matchup as an appetizer for the big game. For geeks like me it was pretty fun to watch Doc, Moses, Andrew Toney, Larry Bird, etc., etc. before the biggest sporting event of the year. Often the NBA games were even better than the Super Bowl.

These days, though, there are 900 channels, on-demand, in-demand, DVR, TiVo, YouTube, Hulu, and whatever else you need to watch whatever you want whenever you want. Who can keep up? Moreover, the ratings are never going to be accurate—if they ever were in the first place.

Nevertheless, harkening back to those halcyon days when Super Bowl Sundays were spent with Kevin McHale and Joe Montana, I figured the lead-ins to the big game were worth a look again. Why not? I was already snowed in and didn’t feel like traipsing through our winter wonderland.

So after waking up at the crack of noon[1], the first stop on the TV was the NFL Network where they were set up at a desk on the field a good seven hours before kick-off. Even stranger than that, there was a whole bunch of hired heads yapping about the game from a whole bunch of different desks located around the stadium. The main desk, of course, had Rich Eisen at the head chair with Marshall Faulk, Steve Mariucci and Michael Irvin.

Across the field from the main desk was a blonde-haired woman with long hair that got all entangled in the wind whipping through the stadium. I probably wouldn’t have cared if she didn’t spend at least 30 seconds of TV time yapping about it as if the wind were literally spitting on her. In TV, 30 seconds is an eternity, but considering the NFL Network had more than six hours to fill the wind was as topical as anything else.

Still, the silliest part about the wind/hair/curses-to-Mother Nature was how the blonde-haired TV woman thought the development of strong morning breezes could have some affect on the passing attack for the Colts and Saints in the game. You know, because weather never changes in the span of six hours. If it’s windy when TV lady is on the scene, well by golly, it will be windy when everyone else is there, too.

Of course the big topics were reserved for Eisen and his crew on the other side of the field. That only makes sense considering there was only one meaningful topic, which they proceeded to pulverize with plenty of ancillary bantering between the panel because the game did not start for another six hours. Then, of course, Eisen ran things because he was the only guy there who did not play or coach in the NFL yet still was e-mailed bikini photos of that former anchor woman in Philly[2]. That makes Rich Eisen a hero to dweeby sports geeks everywhere and sends an important message…

Stay in school, kids. Study up on those important facts and sports reference material. Watch plenty of games and skip class if you must, but by all means, stay in school. You too can be just like Rich Eisen and hang with some ex-football players where you will spend the better part of six hours discussing Dwight Freeney’s ankle on a sun and wind-swept afternoon in Miami.

Good times!

But way too crazy for me. I needed to pace myself if I was going to make to kick-off so it was off to investigate what else was out there in the wonderland known as cable television. Better yet, I settled onto the MLB Network just in time to pick up Game 5 of the 2008 World Series exactly where it picked up after the two-day rain suspension. You remember the first part of the game, right? That’s the part where it rained so hard during the action that it could only be properly summed up by a soaking wet Ryan Howard after the stoppage in play when he told me it was a, “bleeping bleep show.”

How right he was.

Since I never saw the completion of Game 5 of the 2008 World Series except for in actual real time, I settled in to watch. Only this time I did it without the threat of having to go straight to the airport and to Tampa afterwards. It was much more enjoyable and relaxing this way.

But here’s what I don’t get:

Why did Joe Maddon leave the lefty J.P. Howell in to hit and then pitch to righty Pat Burrell to start the seventh? Burrell, of course, hit that double that just missed landing in the seats and then immediately took him out for a righty to face a switch-hitter and two straight right-handers? I thought Maddon was a genius?

Anyway, we all remember what happened from there and since they cut away before the clubhouse and field celebration—thus eliminating a chance for me to see myself lurking in the background like an idiot—it was time to move on…

… to a Duke-North Carolina match-up from 1988 when the Tar Heels were rated No. 2 in the country and Duke was on the way to a Final Four appearance. Oh yes, they were all there: Danny Ferry with hair, Quinn Snyder all skinny and point-guardy. There was J.R. Reid with that flat top, Rick Fox in short shorts, and Jeff Lebo from Carlisle, Pa. where he and Billy Owens won the state championship.

Yes, Dean Smith was there, too, along with Coach K still looking as rat-faced as ever. But what was the most interesting was catching a glimpse of Billy King when he was a school boy with Duke. We all remember Billy, right? The Sixers’ slick and stylish GM, who given the current state of the franchise, might not have been doing too badly. Nevertheless, in 1988 King didn’t have those chic thin glasses or the neat clean-shaven head like he did when he was running the Sixers. Instead he had a mustache that would have made Billy D. envious and a flat top that fit perfectly with the trendiness of 1988.

But Ferry, the current GM for the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers, ran things for Duke back then. With Kevin Strickland and Ferry combining for 41 points, Duke got a 70-69 victory in their first of three wins over Carolina that season.

But Billy King’s mustache and haircut can only pique one’s interest for so long. It was Super Bowl Sunday, after all, and kick-off was quickly approaching. It was time to prepare, so I checked on the veggie chili I had simmering on the stove top, poured myself a tall glass of iced tea, and flipped the dial back to the NFL Network for any last minute insight.

Instead I got a whole bunch of yelling and a lot of goofing off.

Seemingly holding down the fort as if in some sort of sadistic dance marathon, Eisen was sitting there in Miami grinning like a goon as Mariucci and Irvin were shouting overly wrought football points about topics no one could decipher. Actually, Irvin dropped into some sort of loud, pontification worthy of the finest antebellum preacher or Stephen A. Smith marked with a ridiculously loud over-enunciation usually reserved for people trying to sell you a mop on TV or folks who just have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. Why shout and put on such an over-the-top show if you have the facts cold? If it’s true, it doesn’t have to be sold. The truth sells and I’m buying. Only I didn’t buy any of this[3].

Just the facts, guys.

Oh, but if you wanted to hear Irvin really get loud, all you had to do was wait for Adam Sandler, David Spade, Kevin James, Rob Schneider and Chris Rock take over the set to talk about some movie they have coming out sometime soon. Aside from being the typical comedians-interviewed-at-the-Super-Bowl bit, the only trenchant part came when Spade astutely replied to Eisen’s query of a prediction with, “No one cares what we think about football.”

That David Spade is a wise one.

Then again maybe that’s not entirely true. Maybe that depends on what those guys actually have to say about football. Take Chris Rock, for instance. After the group interview with the funny guys, Rock gave a private interview with Deion Sanders in director’s chairs near the field because… well, because he’s Chris Rock. And aside from explaining to Deion that he was no Juan Pierre during his baseball days, Rock dropped this nugget when asked who his favorite player was.

“Donovan,” Rock said.

In the history of the NFL there have only been nine guys with the name, “Donovan.” Chances are Chris Rock was not talking about Art Donovan, the Hall-of-Fame tackle for the Baltimore Colts during the 1950s. Making it easier to deduce that this “Donovan” character was indeed, Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles, came when Prime Time asked why Donovan was his favorite player.

“He wins like a man and loses like a man. … He takes responsibility,” Rock said.

Interesting, huh?

Chris Rock is a tough act to follow so just before heading off to a pre-game nap, I flipped to CBS just in time to see host James Brown tell analyst Dan Marino that the road leading to the stadium in Miami was, “Dan Marino Blvd.”

Judging from Dan’s expression upon hearing that news, it looked as if the ol’ QB took had taken a few wrong exits off that road in the past.

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[1] No, not really. I just love that expression and the humor that comes with sloth.

[2] For the life of me I can’t remember her name. Alycia was it? Does it matter? Is there a difference?

[3] The only way Irvin could have sold me is if he would have twisted his mustache and wore a bowler hat like an evil spy. Otherwise, it’s just yelling.