Bimbo misses out

Merchandise keeps us in line

Common sense says it's by design

-          Traditional

If the television program Mad Men has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes selling out can be artistic too. That starving artist bit… bah! It takes a real craftsman to take something utterly useless and turn it into something that everyone must have.

Take the plate appearances by Single-A minor league outfielder Bryce Harper of the Hagerstown Suns, for instance. Whenever the slugging high school dropout steps to the plate for the Washington Nationals’ affiliate, the P.A. announcer at Suns games will read a prepared statement:

“Now batting, Bryce Harper, brought to you by Miss Utility, reminding you to call 811 before you dig…”

Look, if you’re going to dig a hole, no matter what the circumstance, it’s a good idea to make a call or two. After all, there are zoning laws in most communities designed to keep folks away from trouble. Say you’re out in the yard digging a hole, just having a day out, and then all of a sudden a water pipe bursts, or underground wires are disturbed, or worse, a time capsule is disturbed long before it’s to be unearthed.

We can’t have that.

Nevertheless, we understand that the folks at Miss Utility are looking out for the people in Hagerstown, Md., and if they can make a buck or two off your potential hole-digging excursions, all the better. But it takes money to make money — or something like that. Besides, this isn’t about Miss Utility or the trench at the property line. No, this is about Bryce Harper and commerce and forward thinking.

As the Miss Utility people wrote in an email to Dan Steinberg over at the D.C. Sports Bog/Washington Post:

“They jumped at the opportunity to be connected with the top prospect in Major League Baseball, knowing that the window of opportunity as a nonprofit to be associated with an athlete of this caliber is very limited,” reads the e-mail accompanying the press release about Miss Utility sponsoring Bryce Harper’s Hagerstown at-bats. All of which I love typing.

Of course, the forethought of Miss Utility illustrates an amazing array of missed opportunities here in Philadelphia. Yeah, sure, the Bimbo Bread company has plastered its logo front and center on the front of the Philadelphia Union’s kits, but let’s take a moment to reflect on Bimbo’s incredible error of foresight…

Where were they when Pat Burrell was in town? Just imagine this nugget from Dan Baker:

“Now batting, brought to you by Beeem-bo, Pat Burrell …”

Too easy? Of course it is. However, why is it that a company in Hagerstown came up with the idea of sponsoring plate appearances before a big league team/company? Oh, the big league teams might trot out something like “purity” of the game with a straight face as if they haven’t already sold every square inch of the ballpark built with public funds as for why they won’t sell in-game announcements, but let’s face it, it’s coming. Considering the Phillies have already milked every dime out of Citizens Bank Park short of raising ticket prices to Yankee Stadium levels and only sell the last legal drug until the seventh inning, this could be the way to go.

Think about it… selling plate appearance sponsorships could be the difference in buying Michael Young to play second base for the short term.

Pat Burrell is no Gil Hodges

This is the lull. Free agency doesn’t officially begin until Sunday, and the World Series was too painful for many to watch after the Phillies went belly up against the Giants in the NLCS. Of course it didn’t help that the Giants had a pretty easy time with the Rangers, either.

Still, there isn’t much that will be memorable about the 2010 World Series. The pitching duels between Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum didn’t exactly pan out, and the Rangers’ offense that tore apart the Yankees, didn't show up.

Actually, the Giants’ offense didn’t exactly conjure memories of Willie Mays or Willie McCovey or even Will Clark. Edgar Renteria was the MVP because he hit two home runs and got seven hits against a team that had one run in its last three losses.

Hitting-wise the World Series was disappointing, though not an all-time worst. That’s excluding former Phillie Pat Burrell, who not only set a record for the most strikeouts in a five-game series (in four game, no less), but also appeared to be defying physics, geometry and basic biology by failing to put the bat on the ball.

How bad was Burrell?

Let’s take a look…

***

As the 1952 World Series bounced back and forth for a week during a tense, ping-ponging of leads and ties, people in the borough of Brooklyn went to church to light candles and pray for Gil Hodges. Watch any of those saccharine-sweet documentaries about the so-called “Golden Age” of baseball when the Dodgers still played in Brooklyn and the Giants were still in the Polo Grounds in Harlem and invariably there will be a segment about Gil Hodges and the ’52 World Series.

Hodges went 0-for-21 with six strikeouts and five walks during the seven game series against the Yankees, which very well could be the most famous slump of all time. In fact, Hodges’ epic oh-fer is one of those flashpoints in time for a lot of baseball fans. Shoot, even Charlie Manuel has spoken about Hodges not being able to get a hit against the Yankees in the World Series, a moment from his youth he recounted in pre-game chats with the scribes. Manuel was eight during the 1952 World Series and said it was unbelievable to imagine a hitter like Hodges struggling like he did.

Would Gil Hodges ever get a hit? The Brooklyn fans held up their end, including Father Herbert Redmond of St. Francis in the borough who announced during an unseasonably warm mass, “It's far too hot for a homily. Keep the Commandments and say a prayer for Gil Hodges.”

With Hodges batting sixth for the Dodgers in the Game 7 at Ebbets Field, he was able to tie the game in the fourth inning on a ground out. But with no outs in the sixth inning and the tying run on first base, Hodges grounded into a double play to further dishearten the Dodgers’ spirits. They got two more base runners for the rest of the game as the Yankees won yet another title.

It’s still easy to wonder how Brooklyn’s fortunes would have turned if Hodges had gotten just one hit in the World Series. Considering he led the team with 32 homers, 102 RBIs and 107 walks, the Dodgers’ success or failure was tied to Hodges’ ability to drive the ball. Strangely, in ’52, Hodges hit 15 fair balls in seven games and not a one of them dropped onto the grass for a hit.

Funny game.

But was Hodges worse than the 0-for-13 with 11 strikeouts Pat Burrell posted for the Giants in five games of the 2010 World Series? Think about that for a second… Burrell went to the plate 15 times, he walked twice, popped out twice and was benched once. So in four games he flailed hopelessly at pitches, rarely putting the onus on the defense to make a play.

He swung and he missed. And then he did it all over again.

Now the extremists in the religion of advanced metrics will tell you that a strikeout is just one out, no different than any other. They will also explain that instead of bouncing into a double play during the sixth inning of Game 7 of the 1952 World Series, Gil Hodges would have been better off striking out. And you know what? Technically they are correct.

But do you remember the feeling of what it was like to strikeout in little league in front of family and friends or in a legion game where your smart-ass friends were sitting a few rows up in the bleachers making wise cracks at every swing and miss? You do? Well, guess what… it’s the same thing for a lot of major leaguers. The feeling of crippling failure that a strikeout leaves one with never goes away, according to some of the guys who have done it in the big leagues. In fact, some guys don’t even want to talk about the strikeouts. When the subject was brought up to Ryan Howard after he set the single-season record for whiffs, the normally affable slugger clammed up and brushed off the significance of the strikeout.

“It’s just one out,” he said dejectedly.

It is just one out, but it’s also the greatest indication of failure in sports. It even looks nasty in the scorebook with that vulgar-looking “K” slotted next to a hitter’s name. For Burrell, his ledger was riddled with them, closing out his time with the Giants with seven of those ugly Ks in his last two games.

So in going 0-for-13 with just two fair balls against the Rangers, did Pat Burrell have the worst World Series ever? Hell, is Burrell the worst World Series player to win two titles? With the Phillies in ’08 and the Giants this October, Burrell is 1-for-27 with 16 whiffs. He has fewer hits in the Fall Classic than Cliff Lee and the same amount as pitchers Joe Blanton, Cole Hamels and utility man Eric Bruntlett—in far fewer at-bats, too.

Yet his 1-for-27 has come to two rings. That’s two more than Ted Williams and Ernie Banks and one more than Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, George Brett and Mike Schmidt.

Nevertheless, it’s a tough to determine if Burrell’s performance is the worst because the Giants won the series in five games. They won it despite Burrell’s strikeout with two on and one out in the seventh inning of a tied Game 5. Burrell whiffed on a 3-2 pitch from Cliff Lee with first base open in what had been the biggest at-bat of the game to that point…

Three pitches later Edgar Renteria hit a home run to deliver the title to San Francisco for the very first time.

Indeed, Burrell, unlike others, was left off the hook. Maybe that was because the Jesuits at his alma mater Bellarmine Prep in nearby San Jose, Calif. lit some candles for him?

Evan Longoria was not so lucky. In 2008 he went 1-for-20 with nine strikeouts in a series where the Phillies won three of the five games by one run. Like Burrell and Hodges, Longoria was a middle-of-the-order hitter for the Rays who’s only hit of the series drove home a run in Game 5.

The one we remember all too well in these parts came during the 1983 World Series where Mike Schmidt dug in against the Orioles 20 times and got one hit in five games. Schmidt, of course, was the MVP of the 1980 World Series, but three years later he whiffed six times and came to bat 10 times with runners on base and four times with runners in scoring position, yet got just one chance to run the bases.

When Schmidt did barely loop one over the infield and onto the turf at The Vet, base runners moved, a rally started and a run actually crossed the plate. It’s funny how that happens.

Weirdly, Schmidt batted .467 with a homer and three extra-base hits in the NLCS before managing to eke out one bloop single in the World Series. That’s kind of reminiscent of the postseason experienced by Placido Polanco in 2006.

In leading the Tigers back to the World Series, Polanco batted .471 in the first two rounds of the playoffs, including .529 during the ALCS to take home MVP honors, only to hang up an 0-for-17 in five games against the Cardinals.

Odder yet, Polanco whiffed just once during the ’06 World Series. The same goes for Scott Rolen in ’04 when he went 0-for-15 with just one whiff against the Red Sox. Rolen very well could have been the MVP of the NLCS on the strength of a seventh-inning homer off Roger Clemens to give the Cardinals the lead they never relinquished. In fact, Rolen belted two other homers in the Cardinals’ Game 2 victory and had six RBIs in the series, which was dwarfed by four homers and a 14-for-28 showing from Albert Pujols.

Of course Rolen whiffed nine times in that series, too, yet still managed to get some big hits.

Not in the World Series, though. Better yet, both Polanco and Rolen put the ball in play to make something happen, but walked away with nothing. Kind of like Hodges.

Funny game.

... and Cliff Lee is ready to go in Game 1

Let’s just cut right to it…

The Phillies choked. They blew it. Worse, they choked and blew it with what might have been the best team ever assembled in franchise history—at least after Ruben Amaro Jr. traded for Roy Oswalt.

Yet the idea that the 2010 Phillies were as great as advertised doesn’t really matter anymore because the best team won’t be representing the National League in the World Series this year. Oh sure, the Giants deserve credit because they responded to every bit of gamesmanship and intimidation the Phillies threw at them. Between that phony, Pat Burrell, and Tim Lincecum shouting at Phillies’ players, and Jonathan Sanchez calling out Chase Utley, causing the benches to clear in Game 6, the Giants deserve some credit.

But let’s not give a team with Pat Burrell, Cody Ross and Aubrey Huff in the middle of the batting order too much credit. After all, the Phillies pitchers held them to a .249 average with just two different players hitting homers. The Phillies even outscored the Giants in the six games, 20-19. This was the same Giants that batted just .212 against the Braves in the NLDS. You know, the Braves that the Phillies manhandled during the regular season.

Frankly, it was a sickening display of offensive futility during the playoffs. They batted .212 against the Reds in the NLDS and .216 against the Giants. Sure, Lincecum, Sanchez and Matt Cain are solid pitchers. Lincecum is a bona fide star, in fact, and manager Bruce Bochy has enough versatility in the bullpen to match up, hitter by hitter, late in the game.

Oh yes, the Giants can pitch. In fact, they pitch very well. However, imagine how great a good pitching team will look against a bunch of hitters who were lost. How lost? Take a look at the schizophrenic postseason from Ryan Howard and compare it to his typical production.

It was just last season where Howard set the record for consecutive postseason games with an RBI and was named MVP of the NLCS. That was the postseason of, “Just get me to the plate, boys,” in Game 4 of the NLDS when the Rockies were just an out away from sending the series back to Philadelphia for a deciding Game 5. Moreover, 10 of Howard’s 15 postseason hits in 2009 went for extra-bases and the 17 RBIs in 15 games were one of the big reasons why the Phillies got back to the World Series.

This year Howard had good looking stats, batting .318, posting a .400 on-base percentage and a .500 slugging average. But Howard hit no home runs and got no RBIs. No, it’s not Howard’s fault that there were runners on base when he hit, but when there were men on base he struck out. Seven of Howard’s 12 strikeouts in the NLCS came with runners on base and five of those came with runners in scoring position.

Strikeouts only equal one out, sure, but there are productive outs where runners move up and fielders are forced to make plays. Considering that Howard had three three-strikeout games, including back-to-back triple Ks in Game 5 and 6, the heart of the Phillies’ order was punchless.

“If the production is there, you can tend to get away from strikeouts,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “But I feel especially after Ryan got hurt that he didn't find his swing. I feel like I know that he’s a better hitter than what we saw at the end of the year.”

The same goes for many of the Phillies’ hitters, especially Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. Utley’s swing looked off most of the postseason as if it were difficult for him to complete it. The question many asked of Manuel was about the second baseman’s health, which is always an issue late in the season. However, straight answers never were offered and the assumption was Utley was properly healed from the thumb injury he suffered in June.

But the Phillies finished the season with the best record in baseball and closed the year by going 49-19. They had Halladay and Oswalt and Hamels lined up and all three lost in the playoffs. Sure, the Phillies pitched as well—maybe better—than the Giants, but that was it.

“I don't think we ever got our offense clicking,” Manuel said. “It always went up and down. We hit a hot streak, especially after Houston swept us earlier in the year. From that period on, we started winning a lot of games. But we weren't blowing people out and weren't really hitting like we can. It seemed like we never put up runs like I know we can.”

Maybe there was something to the injuries or maybe the preparedness. Even the victories in the postseason came in games where something extraordinary occurred. Halladay pitched a no-hitter in one and Hamels a five-hit shutout in another. In Game 2 of the NLDS the Phillies scored five unearned runs and in Game 2 of the NLCS, Oswalt pitched a three-hitter.

Finally, it came down to Halladay pitching six innings on a strained groin just to send the series back to Philadelphia.

But back home where the fans where waiting for hits that never came and runs that never circled the bases, all that was left was disappointment. The team with the best record in baseball fell to a team that batted Pat Burrell cleanup in a NLCS game... Pat Burrell?

When it finally came to an end it was Howard standing at the plate, watching as the third strike buzzed past just above his knees.

“Just get me to the plate, boys.”

“It's kind of a sucky way to end the game, a sucky way to end the year, you know, being that guy,” Howard said. “But I'll have to try and take that and use it as motivation and come back next year.

"I can't say what I want to say.”

No, he can’t, but there will be plenty of talk this winter about that last at-bat and the last series. Plain and simple, the Phillies blew it. Choked. The Phillies were the big bullies on the school yard and they got punched back and didn’t know what to do.

“I just don’t think any of us saw this happening,” closer Brad Lidge said. “I felt like we had the best team in baseball this year. It doesn’t always work out. Unfortunately, we just caught a team that seems to be doing everything right. They got the last hook in there. We just didn’t get our best game out there tonight. So shocked is a good word.”

Shocked like the rest of us that a team with hitters like the Giants could deliver more than the Phillies. Then again, the old, injured sage Jamie Moyer once played for a Seattle club that won 116 games, but lasted just six in the ALCS, To this day Seattle is only one of two franchises never to make it to the World Series.

“We had the best record in baseball, but when you get to the playoffs it really doesn’t mean anything,” Moyer said. “Everything starts just like it did in April. Everyone starts at zero. Now it’s about who is going to play the best, who is going to get the key hits and we fell short. …”

Cliff Lee will pitch in Game 1 of the World Series. Roy Halladay will not.

A look back at the Halladay-Lincecum duel

Pat Burrell and Cody Ross were downright giddy sitting while sitting at the dais to answer questions after Saturday night’s first game of the NLCS. It was no wonder considering Burrell and Ross were the big hitting heroes in Game 1, which made the actual conversing with media types a slight bit tolerable.

At least for Burrell.

There was more to it than that, of course, and it had little to do with the fact that both Burrell and Ross were players that we let go by the teams they began the season with. Burrell, of course, was not re-signed by the Phillies after he led the World Series parade down Broad St. and then was waived by Tampa Bay in May.

Ross was claimed off waivers by the Giants from the Marlins in late August not because he was wanted, but to stop the outfielder from going to divisional foe San Diego. The Giants were 5 ½ games behind the Padres when Ross joined them and didn’t even a need a month to slip into first place. Were Ross and his .286 average for the Giants the difference? Probably not, but the home run in the clincher in Game 4 of the NLDS along with the two bombs in Game 1 against the Phillies made the Giants’ prevent defense against the Padres look pretty good.

No, Burrell’s RBI double and Ross’s homers were most responsible for ruining the expected pitching duel between Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum. In fact, Halladay looked like he was on his way to another epic performance in his first start since his no-hitter against the Reds in his playoff debut.

Halladay retired the side in order on eight pitches in the first and 11 pitches in the second. He got an out on three pitches in the third until Ross swung at a 2-0 pitch, did a little crow hop and watched the ball sail into the left-field seats. They seal had been broken.

Starting with Ross’s homer, the Giants rapped out eight hits over the next 22 hitters covering 4 2/3 innings. Still, there was the two-strike pitch with two outs to Burrell that Halladay thought was good he began his first steps back to the first-base dugout. Inexplicably to Halladay, home-plate umpire Derryl Cousins called it a ball. One pitch later, Burrell bashed his double off Raul Ibanez’s glove and the left-field wall.

Some duel, huh?

“I made some bad pitches at times. The first pitch to Ross I didn’t think was that bad, but the second one I left a ball over the plate. And then in the sixth a couple pitches there cost me,” Halladay said. “At this point you make a couple mistakes and they end up costing you.”

Ah, but maybe there was a pitching duel after all. You see, after Halladay gave up the homer to Ross, Lincecum served up one to Carlos Ruiz. He also gave up a homer to Jayson Werth to help the Phillies crawl back to within a run. That’s exactly where Lincecum was better than Halladay because he was able to recover from the initial home run.

That, obviously, was the difference.

Lincecum held the Phillies to an 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and 1-for-11 with runners on base. Better yet, Lincecum held the Phillies to a 2-for-11 with two outs, which made sure to kill any hope for a late rally.

“It wasn’t about the numbers. It was about giving us a chance to win,” Lincecum said after the game. “I put those home runs behind me. You could squash yourself on that, make some more bad pitches, but I just took it on to the next batter after that, man. It was just enough to squeak by for us.”

Yeah, man.

Now here’s the really crazy part…

With 22 strikeouts (14 vs. the Braves in the NLDS, 8 vs. the Phillies) in his first two playoff games, Lincecum is tied with the great Bob Gibson for the most Ks in the first two games pitched. [1] Yes, Lincecum and Bob Gibson.

Let that soak in for a bit.

Now what’s the first thing a person thinks about when Bob Gibson’s name is mentioned? If it isn’t intimidation, brush back pitches, a nasty fastball and intensity. His teammates were afraid to talk to him and opponents were just afraid of him. Jim Ray Hart, a slugging third baseman for the Giants in the 1960s and early ‘70s, tells the classic Bob Gibson story:

“Between games, Mays came over to me and said, ‘Now, in the second game, you’re going up against Bob Gibson.’ I only half-listened to what he was saying, figuring it didn't make much difference. So I walked up to the plate the first time and started digging a little hole with my back foot... No sooner did I start digging that hole than I hear Willie screaming from the dugout: ‘Noooooo!’ Well, the first pitch came inside. No harm done, though. So I dug in again. The next thing I knew, there was a loud crack and my left shoulder was broken. I should have listened to Willie.”

Hart should have called time out and filled up the hole the way it was.

Now compare Gibson with Lincecum, the floppy-haired 26-year-old right-ahnder from the Seattle suburbs. He kind of blends in with the kids hanging out in the Haight or Mitch Kramer in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, than the typical ballplayer sent from central casting.

But here’s the thing about that—like Gibson, Lincecum can pitch. He has a fastball he’s not afraid to challenge hitters with and has added a changeup to go with it. And like it was with Gibson, sometimes it’s just not fair when Lincecum takes the mound.

Of course there are also other times when Lincecum can be gotten to, like Game 1 at the Bank. The problem for the Phillies was Lincecum gave the Phillies a few chances and opened the door ever-so slightly before slamming it closed before it was too late.

Will Halladay and Lincecum get after each other again?

---

[1] Gibson struck out nine in a loss to the Yankees in Game 2 of the 1964 World Series, then came back to get 13 in 10 innings in Game 5. For good measure, Gibson went the distance in Game 7 and got nine more strikeouts to lead the Cardinals to the title.

'Remember his name...'

It’s not often that Pat Burrell felt helpless in an athletic competition, especially during high school when he was the all-American slugger and All-Star quarterback at Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose, Calif., but there he was faced with the near impossible task of trying to tackle Pat Tillman.

In addition to being the quarterback for Bellarmine, the alma mater of at least 13 former major leaguers and a pile of NFL players, Olympians and pro soccer players, Burrell was the team’s kicker, too. That meant he usually hung back as the last line of defense if a returner broke through the wedge and the defensive coverage and was on the way to the end zone.

So in a game against Leland High, Burrell kicked off to running back/linebacker/kick returner, Tillman, and waited with the sense that it was going to come down to him preventing a touchdown. And sure enough, he was right. In a matter of seconds all that was left between Tillman and the end zone was Burrell.

“I thought, ‘Oh, bleep,’” Burrell remembered Thursday afternoon before the Giants beat the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.

Burrell said he stopped Tillman from scoring a touchdown, but only because he approached from an angle and tripped him. Technically, it wasn’t really a tackle, but it got the job done.

It’s interesting, though, that two kids from San Jose, Calif. born exactly a month apart during 1976 are involved in two very different things this Friday. Burrell likely will bat cleanup for the Giants in St. Louis where his team tries to make up some ground in the playoff race. Tillman, the ex-college and NFL star who enlisted to become an Army Ranger only to be killed in Afghanistan six years ago, is the subject of a documentary to be released Friday.

The film, called The Tillman Story, directed by Amir Bar-Lev, took the Sundance Film Festival by storm and opened it up to an audience that might not have been seeking it in certain parts of the mainstream media or from best-selling author, Jon Krakauer. In fact, renowned journalist Charles P. Pierce called the tale that emerged after Tillman’s death, “extraordinary,” and “the greatest sports-related story of my lifetime.”

Pierce wrote:

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Pat Tillman's life and death is the greatest sports-related story of my lifetime. It had extraordinary sacrifice, that led, horribly, to the ultimate sacrifice. It had tragedy and heartbreak. It had lies and deceit. It had a family honoring its lost son by forcing the institution that sought to hide the truth about his death to come clean in the light of day. And, in the middle of it, was someone whose writings before his death indicate, had he survived, that he would have come out of his experience a different, brilliant man. It is every bit an epic. It needs a Homer to tell it.

I mention this only because the man who was most responsible for fudging the truth about Pat Tillman's death is going to have a very bad Wednesday. The Tillmans have been, and are, unrelenting. They honor us all just by being our fellow citizens and doing their duty as such.

Obviously, the Tillman story wouldn’t be as compelling if it weren’t for the man himself. He was, after all, a man who believed in honesty and integrity above anything else. He was a pro football player who turned down a $9 million deal from the Rams out of loyalty to the Cardinals. The Cardinals were the team that gave him a chance when no other team would — to Tillman there was no price on that.

Sadly, Tillman’s sense of loyalty and righteousness was seen as kooky and weird. Since the world is a rat race, the conventional wisdom indicates that it’s OK to be a rat. But not to Tillman. For some reason no one could believe that someone could challenge every convention and mean it. It was further baffling to folks that Tillman would trade a $3.6 million contract from the Cardinals for the salary of an enlisted man in the Army.

Was he crazy?

No, not at all. He was just real. Dignity, honor, loyalty and truth weren’t throwaway words to Tillman. Life was short, he reasoned, so why should he always do what was expected instead of challenging himself.

Maybe the military and the government underestimated these qualities when they lied about him after his death. As Krakauer wrote, they stole his honor and rewarded him by using him as a propaganda tool. Wars were ugly business and as one of the men who was part of the initial wave of soldiers into Iraq in 2003 and viewed the action as “criminal.”

Perhaps that’s why the government lied about him and why his belongings were destroyed, including his diary. Here was a man living his life by a code of ethics and morals and they used him for their own selfishness.

Tillman’s story is complicated and further exasperated by the fact that he could not be pigeonholed in life or death.

Burrell and Tillman. Both from San Jose who took similar and divergent paths. When asked if he was familiar with Tillman’s posthumous story, Burrell just looked forlornly and shook his head slowly, as if to express how unbelievable life can be sometimes.

Rowand remembers, 'For who? For what?'

It was the greatest catch many of us saw and that was before we understood the aftermath. Like a receiver on a fly pattern, Aaron Rowand ran as hard as he could to a point where he thought the ball was going to land, which was amazing enough.

The situation called for it, Rowand said. With the bases loaded and two outs and pitcher Gavin Floyd nearing his 30^th pitch in the first inning, the May, 2006 game was hanging in the balance. Xavier Nady’s long fly had escaped Rowand's glove, he could have run for days.

It was when his momentum carried him that extra half-step and he looked up where things went wrong.

In retrospect, maybe it didn’t all go wrong. Sure, Rowand got hurt pretty badly. Who can forget Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu frantically waving for the training staff to rush out to the center field warning track to help as blood poured from Rowand’s face? Very quickly, he was helped from the field by some paramedics to an ambulance waiting to rush him to Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Center City. In that short time, Rowand went from just the very capable center fielder that arrived in town as part of the Jim Thome deal to a cult hero.

And all it took was a face plant into an exposed metal bar, a broken nose that required surgery, stitches for his mouth and nose, a plastic splint to protect his still-tender nose, dark violet bruises ringing his eyes and cheeks, and two weeks on the disabled list.

It was a few days later when Rowand truly became the cult hero when he dropped the retort to Ricky Watters’ infamous explanation as to why he developed alligator arms while going for a pass from Randall Cunningham over the middle.

“For who? My teammates. For what? To win,” Rowand said without hesitation or wavering. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Looking back on it, a writer for Baseball Prospectus named Clay Davenport surmised that Rowand’s catch was the equivalent to him hitting two home runs in the game. Had Nady gotten a double or triple on that play, the Phillies would have had just a 30.8 percent chance to win the game based on Davenport’s situational data. But making the catch gave the Phillies nearly a 60 percent chance to win, Davenport wrote. In other words, for a team that missed the playoffs by one game in 2005 and had not seen post-season baseball since 1993, “The Catch” was something that could have transformed the team.

Of course the Phillies barely missed the playoffs in 2006, though they rallied for a strong second-half when Abreu was traded to the Yankees. In 2007, with Rowand playing 161 games, the Phillies finally made it to the playoffs, though the trip lasted just three games.

Interestingly, Rowand missed one game in 2007 because he injured his shoulder playing tag at his daughter’s birthday party. Oh yes, no matter what the game was Rowand went all out.

“The next day I got shot up a little bit and went back out there and it was fine,” Rowand remembered for us before Tuesday night’s game between the Phillies and Giants at the Bank.

So as he’s getting closer to the end of his current five-year deal with the Giants and his career creeps closer past the middle toward the end, how does Rowand feel about that one play — one that sent him to the hospital and kept him out of action for a couple of weeks — defining his legacy? Yes, it was the greatest catch some of us ever saw, but a baseball player with a World Series ring with the White Sox in 2005, a Gold Glove and an All-Star Game berth should be known for more…

Right?

Then again, if that’s what it is, Rowand doesn’t mind.

“I look at it more along the lines as there are a lot worse things you can be or be remembered for,” he said. “If it’s going to be me being remembered for playing the game hard and being a good teammate, I don’t think anyone could ask for more than that. If that’s what I’m remembered for, after I retire and I’m bleeping long gone, so be it. It’s a good thing to be remembered for.”

Looking back, that’s not too far off from what Rowand told us in the moment. Clearly Rowand was more valuable to the Phillies on the field than rolled up in a heap on the warning track with blood pouring from his face like it was a spigot. After all, he was a player who knocked himself out cold when he ran into a cinderblock wall in college and separated his shoulder colliding with a wall in Chicago — didn’t he understand the concept of restraint?

That answer is obvious, and here’s how Rowand explained it:

“That’s why [the critics] are sitting behind a desk or a microphone,” he said tersely with his purple-ringed eyes narrowing. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing and my teammates enjoy it, too. I want to win. That’s how I play. People can call me stupid. I don’t care. I’m sure the fans got a kick out of it and I know my teammates did. Think what you want — I’m here to play and play hard.”

Rowand was clearly the heart and soul of those Phillies teams, just as he was when he was playing for the White Sox, too. More interestingly, Rowand became a “Philly Guy” in a relatively short time. Think about it… Rowand spent two seasons playing for the Phillies, just missed out on winning the World Series here (“hell yes I’m jealous!”) and took the five years offered to him from the Giants, which was better than the deal offered by the Phillies.

Still, does Rowand ever wonder how he became so beloved in Philadelphia?

“The thing about these fans is they are some of the smartest baseball fans in the country,” he said. “I think everyone knows they can be rough sometimes, but it stems from a good spot. It stems from passion, it stems from their infatuation with this team. It’s a blue collar town, people here work hard and they come out and watch their sports teams play and they can relate with the guys who have the same mentality they have when they go to work.”

When Rowand was here he went to work. No doubt about that. So when the Phillies fans cheer the return of Pat Burrell, don’t doubt for a second that they will cheer for Rowand, too.

The next big thing

DENVER — Hang around baseball long enough and you will learn some lessons, most of them the hard way. It’s guaranteed if you’re smart enough to keep your eyes and ears open. It doesn’t matter how smart a guy thinks he is, how many good sources he has or how many games he has seen in person, there is always something.

So the best lesson I’ve learned about baseball that has been incorporated into my regular, civilian life is a hard one. There is very little wiggle room in this lesson and it is deliberate and foolproof if applied correctly.

Believe nothing. Unless you can confirm something or saw it occur in front of your own two eyes/ears, don’t believe it. In fact, even then it’s a pretty good idea to go out and get a secondary source. For instance, if you believe Albert Pujols is the best hitter you have ever seen, it’s a really good idea to get some back up. Try to find someone who has seen a lot of different hitters from all kinds of backgrounds and ask for their opinion.

Regarding Pujols, I asked Mike Schmidt and Charlie Manuel if he was, indeed, the greatest hitter I had ever seen. Schmidt went so far as to demonstrate Pujols’ batting stance right there in the clubhouse at Veterans Stadium where he described the genius of the Cardinals’ slugger.

“Watch what he does,” Schmidt said, squatting down low with his hands held high, choking up on an imaginary bat. “He always goes in there like he was two strikes on him.”

The thinking, according to Schmidt, is that Pujols is always weary, always thinking and always protective of his strike zone. Pujols wasn’t going to give in to a pitcher’s pitch or chase garbage. The theory is to kill a pitch over the plate and if a guy is good enough to throw one of those fancy breaking pitches on the edge of the plate, just tip your cap and walk quietly back to the dugout.

After that Schmidt went back to trashing Pat Burrell and his lack of hitting acumen.

Big Chuck didn’t demonstrate Pujols’ stance or make any over-analyzed hitting theories. Instead, Charlie made me think and dig between the lines. He does that a lot, actually. A big one with Charlie is, “Watch the game.” That means don’t believe the hype.

“He’s up there,” Charlie said. “He can be whatever you want him to be.”

What does this long-winded preamble have to do with uber-prospect Dom Brown? Well, everything actually. The truth is Brown’s long-awaited ascent to the Majors has sent lots of smart folks struggling to control their emotions. Long, rangy, smart, powerful and fast, Brown comes billed as the ultimate post-steroid era ballplayer. What do you need? Well, guess what? Brown has that trait in his repertoire. He was drafted in the 20^th round out of high school as a left-handed pitcher because most teams thought he was headed for the University of Miami to play wide receiver. Since then he’s never thrown a pitch in a game and the only catches he makes are in right field.

What those teams didn’t know was that Brown was a baseball player who grew up idolizing Ken Griffey Jr., which is perfect. Brown, a lefty in the field and at the plate, could be a stronger, faster version of Griffey. If Griffey was the ultimate player for the pre-steroid era, Brown is his successor.

Oh yes, he’s that good.

That’s the hype machine talking, of course. Griffey, ideally, should be a unanimous Hall-of-Fame pick five years from now. Of course there were a lot of players that should have been unanimous selections in the past—Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Tony Gwynn, etc.—spring to mind, but the BBWAA votes on these things… what are you gonna do?

The question no one has pondered is if the hype and the expectations are fair to Brown. There is a lot of pressure put on the 22-year-old kid to live up to a standard set by others. Yes, it’s the way it goes in this over-populated media landscape of ours, but that doesn’t make it right. Too often we are so quick to anoint everything the greatest hero or flop of all time. There’s never just good or mediocre anymore—it has to be extreme.

We saw this happen to Burrell when he was summoned from Scranton during the 2000 season and we could not understand why the Phillies took so long to call up Marlon Byrd in 2002 because we were told he was going to be the next great center fielder. Eventually Byrd became an All-Star, but it took three teams and six years after he left the Phillies to get there.

Then there were the untouchables, Gavin Floyd and Cole Hamels. When the Phillies were hanging around the cusp of a playoff berth in 2003 and 2004 as the trade deadline loomed, Floyd and Hamels were the first players every team asked for only to be told to beat it or were given a counteroffer that included Ryan Howard.

It was the Pirates, not the Phillies, which backed out of the Oliver Perez-for-Ryan Howard deal at the last minute. Coincidentally, Floyd was included in the trade that sent Howard’s roadblock, Jim Thome, to Chicago in order to clear a path for Howard.

As Charlie would say, “Funny game.”

Here’s what I know… having seen Burrell, Byrd, Chase Utley, Floyd, Hamels, Howard and Brown play in the minor leagues, I’d like to think my eyes and ears haven’t mislead me. I thought Burrell would be better with at least one All-Star berth to his credit. Byrd was marketed wrong and probably needed a little more work on his makeup in order to be a star for the Phillies.

Utley was raw and no one really was sure if he’d ever be able to field an infield position. When it appeared that Scott Rolen wasn’t going to re-sign with the Phils, Utley was promoted from Single-A to Triple-A where he spent the season playing third base. Sure, he hit fairly well, but some are still amazed that Utley didn’t kill someone (or himself) with the way he played third base. But out of all the players listed, he has come the farthest as a player. No one expected him to be the best second baseman in the game. Burrell was supposed to have the career that Utley has put together and Utley was just supposed to be a really good hitter.

Who knew?

Floyd was a talent, but not as good as Hamels and certainly lacked that cockiness and swagger the lefty had even way back when he was pitching for the Reading Phillies.

Howard? Wow, was he smart as a minor leaguer. The aspect to Howard’s game that goes unnoticed is how quickly he can make adjustments and alterations at the plate. There’s a lot more than sheer brute force to what he does up there and the massive amount of strikeouts is a byproduct of something. What has been missed is the intelligence for the game Howard had even as a minor leaguer.

Howard and Hamels were the best of the bunch until Brown came along. In his first game for Reading last summer, Brown hit a home run that will go down as one of those legendary moments they talk about years from now. The problem with this legend, however, is that there isn’t much room to embellish it. C’mon… Brown hit a ball about as far as a human being could smash a baseball at Reading’s ballpark without it sounding cartoonish or like something conjured in a video game.

Even better than the talent, intelligence and everything else, Brown was grounded. People kept spelling his name wrong but he was too polite to correct them. When he answered questions he used the word, “sir,” and he wasn’t being sarcastic. Know what? Pujols did the same thing a decade ago.

For now Brown is perfect. His first plate appearance ended with an RBI double crashed off the wall. Famed documentarian Ken Burns was even on hand to see it, which hardly seems like a coincidence.

But Brown is also the one player general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. would not part with when he was cleaning out the farm system to get Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. Brown is the chosen one even though Amaro went on Daily News Live last week and plainly stated that the kid wasn’t ready for the big show yet. Perhaps that was just Amaro trying to tamp down expectations in order to keep the hype from overwhelming us. A little breather, if you will.

Oh, but we know better. Amaro had no other way of dodging it. Money is always at the fore and guys like Brown (and Howard before him) have the natural flow of their development slowed in order to keep that arbitration and free agency clock from ticking. It stinks because there’s something truly sinister about those motivated by money over merit, but so far we’ve seen guys like Howard and Utley get theirs after toiling away in the minors for no good reason.

Maybe we are jumping the gun on Brown a little bit. Maybe he’ll be more Burrell and Byrd than Howard or Utley? Baseball has a way of separating the champs from the chumps really quickly. You can go to the bank on that.

But I know what my eyes have seen and I know that Brown made it through every level of pro ball with tons of scouts and management types watching his every move with the intent on prying him away from Philadelphia. There’s a reason why Halladay didn’t pitch for the Phillies in 2009 and it was because there was no way Amaro was giving up Brown to get the best righty pitcher in the majors.

Now both Brown and Halladay are teammates with lockers on the same side of the clubhouse. Chances are they’re going to remain so for a while, too. Needless to say, it’s going to be fun following Charlie’s advice…

“Watch the game.”

How can you not?

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.

---

[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.

Trolling the lobby

INDIANAPOLIS—Just did my first serious troll through the veritable Star Trek convention that is the Baseball Winter Meetings, and to describe the scene by paraphrasing a line from Bill Hader in the marvelous opening scene in the epic film, Pineapple Express, "One: lots of dudes... "

Truth be told, I've quoted that movie twice already this morning by using the always versatile phrase, "What happened to your eye?"

Regardless, the first trip proved to be quite fruitful when the rumor du jour involved ex-Phillie Pat Burrell. According to the reports, tweets and scuttlebutt, Burrell was said to be involved in a threeway deal.

Yeah, too easy...

The report was the Rays were going to trade Burrell to the Cubs for Milton Bradley and then the Cubs would turnaround and send Pat The Bat to the Mets.

Wouldn't it be awesome to see Burrell 18 times a season in a Mets' uniform? Just think about how much fun that would be aside from it underscoring the mercenary nature of baseball. Ah, but to be a wet blanket -- according to the terms of his contract, the Rays would have to pay Burrell cash if he were to be traded. Sure, the Rays got to the World Series in 2008 and are no longer the doormats of the American League, but that doesn't mean they are so flush with cash that they can go around making trades and signing free agents.

Leslie Gudel sent a message to Burrell on whether or not he heard about the rumor and (not surprisingly) he had not. Burrell wasn't known to follow the hot stove back when he was playing for the Phillies and he, said back then, he didn't even own a computer. Chances are he hasn't changed his media diet all that much in the year since he has been gone.

But when asked by Tim Brown of Yahoo!, a Rays' representative dropped the ol', "That's news to us," line on Brown.

In other words, the Burrell to the Cubs and Mets rumor was too good to be true.

Another good one had ex-Phillie Brett Myers headed to either Houston or Texas...

Yes, there is a joke somewhere in there, too. Go ahead and make up your own about Brett Myers, Texas, his penchant for going to the gun range, Ed Wade, and, of course, Brett Myers in the state of Texas.

Meanwhile, the Phillies didn't appear to be too busy on the first day of the Winter Meetings here at the Downtown Marriott. At one point, key front-office types Charley Kerfeld, Gordon Lakey and Howie Freiling were all in the lobby mingling with the scribes. While this was going on, Ruben Amaro Jr. and a bunch of the rest of the Phillies' brass were standing along the railing overlooking the lobby where they were undoubtedly making wise cracks about the show down below.

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

For what it's worth, the Phillies are said not to be willing to part with the money in order to get Brandon Lyon. Last season for the Tigers, the reliever earned $4.25 million and is in line for a raise this year. Still, he is the type of player the Phillies are looking to add before spring training.

Perhaps this is the off-season where the economy of the U.S. really comes into play.

You are quite welcome, Pat

CLEARWATER, Fla. – Not much going on here in sunny Bright House Field. The Phillies have a game against the Pirates with the aim to snap the four-game losing skid. Worse, the WFC Phils have lost six of their last seven spring games. Not good.

But get this - the first time through the lineup in Friday's action, the Phils grounded out eight times and whiffed once. Even the team's first hit was an infield single from leadoff hitter Eric Bruntlett. A walk to Ryan Howard and an error loaded the bases with two outs in the fourth for the Phils, but young slugger John Mayberry whiffed on a 3-2 count to end the threat.

Bummer.

No worries though. The Phillies are just getting their work in.

Nevertheless, the big news here this morning was about the full-page advertisement ex-Phillie Pat Burrell purchased in the Daily News thanking the fans for the support during his time in Philadelphia.

Here, take a look:

Oddly, Burrell did not thank the Philly media by name, but by purchasing such a big, costly ad, he kind of did.

So you're welcome, Pat. Don't mention it.

Otherwise, the other big news is that third baseman Pedro Feliz suited up and played in his first spring game of the year. Feliz's return from off-season back surgery has been a little slow going, but all indication have him back in the lineup at full bore by Opening Day.

Meanwhile, Chase Utley is expected to get into some Grapefruit League games next week. On another note Utley was in the clubhouse before the game with a big grass and dirt stain on his uniform pants.

The guy isn't even playing and he's already mixing it up.

He's a gamer.

Finally, saw a whole bunch of the Maple Street Press Phillies pre-season annual out and around for purchase at the ballpark today. Considering some of the authors in that book, I don't understand why it isn't flying off the shelves.

We were somewhere near Barstow...

I'm holed up here in a hotel in the Pocono Mountains kind of like Hunter Thompson on the Vegas strip, only not as much fun and fewer grapefruits. But I bet I have the departed gonzo doctor beat on pounds of ice applied to muscles and tendons as well as milligrams of NSAIDs ingested. Do I know how to party or what?

Anyway, it's always peculiar to note the extremes folks (like me) will go to in order to put on some skimpy and overpriced clothing along with shoes featuring more technological materials than the space shuttle in order to run around like a weirdo. Oh sure, there really aren't too many things that are more fun than dashing around all naked in the wind-like, but it's not exactly natural. Hell, when is the last time a giraffe out on the savanna decided to get the training run in for the day?

Giraffes run when they have to, not because they can.

But speaking of natural, Pat Burrell's plate appearance with two outs in the bottom of the 10^th was certified organic. Better yet, it was artful - a measure of power vs. power and baseball savvy all rolled into a healthy, natural mix. Better yet, watching here in the heavily fortified compound off the Interstate with free parking, a pool, wireless and a complimentary breakfast, it was hard not to see how Burrell was going to end last night's game with a home run. On the telecast it was easy to see Burrell attempt to get his timing down to catch up with Brian Wilson's blazing fastball and by the time he solved the riddle of velocity and location, the baseball didn't stand a chance.

But more than the walk-off homer to win another game for the Phillies, Burrell's transformation this season has remarkable. At the plate he's balanced, patient, focused and relaxed. He seems to have a plan every time he strolls to the plate that goes beyond the simple grip-it-and-rip-it mien. For once it seems, the numbers tell the full story about what Burrell is bringing to the table for the Phillies - certainly it's been a long time since that occurred.

Burrell rates in the top five in six major offensive categories. He leads the league in RBIs (29); he's second in homers (nine) and slugging (.690); third in OPS (1.142); fourth in on-base percentage (.452); and fifth in walks (23). Better yet, Burrell is on pace to set career highs in homers, RBIs, walks, hits and runs.

Perhaps most importantly, Burrell is on pace to set a career low in strikeouts. Sure, he's whiffing at a clip that could give him 113 for the season, but that's a big drop from last season's 120. That's because he and Chase Utley are carrying the middle of the order while Ryan Howard attempts to find a clue out there.

But how about this? Should Charlie Manuel bump up Burrell a spot in the batting order to cleanup and slide Howard down to the fifth or sixth spot? For one, Burrell might get more pitches to hit with the specter of Howard's past performances lurking on the on-deck circle. For another, the Phillies break up the lefties in the middle of the order so that the opposition can't bring in a late-inning left-hander to face both Utley and Howard.

From here, holed up on the first floor waiting for the wakeup call in order to get caffeine and numb from the ibuprofen, the Burrell-Howard switch seems like the smart thing to do. With Burrell driving in runs and winning games for the team and Howard doing his best to kill rallies with an avalanche of whiffs, the longest-tenured Phillie seems ready to be the anchor.

Is he really that slow?

For the first time since the Expos moved from Washington to become the Nationals I will miss all the games of a Phillies series at RFK. Oh, I’ve missed specific games before, but until now I’ve been to at least one game of every series the Phillies have played in The District.

I was there when Chase Utley hit the ball off the foul pole and had it called foul. I was there when the game started close to midnight because MLB had no contingency plan for weather events. I was there the final weekend in 2005 when the Phillies swept the Nats only to miss out on the playoffs by one game on the last day of the season. I was there in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when the feeling of anger was palpable in the city.

And of course I was there when Ken Mandel, dressed as Thomas Jefferson, took his failed dash down the first-base side of the field. Actually, The Mandel Run could go down as the most memorable moment in my long history of watching baseball games.

Yes, it was epic.

The thought is that Mandel should put that big, oversized Jefferson head back on, station himself back at the top of the ramp beyond the right-field fence, and keep running until he completes the course. If he falls again he should get back up start all over.

In the meantime Ken will probably be watching Julie Moss in the 1982 Ironman Triathlon for motivation because every criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. Ken will run, dammit! He has to.

Anyway, I’m sticking close to the house for the foreseeable future because my wife – God bless her – could go into labor at any moment. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if she is in labor right now as I type this… just checked and we’re OK.

In other words, when the word comes I’m gone. In the meantime, get cozy with Lauber and The Zo Zone! It’s spelled with an exclamation point, right? Isn’t that what the Inquirer does?

Anyway, because of her state, my wife – God bless her – has been watching baseball on the teevee lately. An inquisitive sort, my wife – God bless her – keeps a running dialogue with whomever is around when she’s parked in front of the tube. If she’s alone she has her laptop nearby to give the rundown via instant messenger to keep the conversation going, and if my son or I am in the room, the banter, inevitably, turns to an inquisition.

This happens with movies, too, which usually leads to me responding with, “You’d know what’s going on if you stopped talking and paid attention,” a little too loudly.

Seriously, how complicated was Syriana? Really? Then again, I have watched that one at least four times so I guess I have figured it out by now.

Anyway, last Sunday night the old girl was lounging on the couch and taking in the Phillies-Braves matchup when the incessant chatter on Pat Burrell started up. Burrell, it seems, is an interesting and enigmatic character to casual fans, hardcore fans as well as the scribes the regularly write about the ballclub. Certainly there are other adjectives that could be used to describe Burrell, but enigmatic seems to cover them all like the giant parachute that we used to like to play with in gym class back when we were kids.

So as we were discussing the enigma that is Pat Burrell and his incumbency as the so-called "midnight mayor of Philadelphia," Jayson Werth lined a two-out, bases-loaded single to right field. Running on the pitch because Werth faced a full count and there were two outs, Burrell got a good steam of momentum off second base as the pitch was delivered and wasn’t just going to stop running when he got to third base. The problem, though, was that the ball his struck quite hard and right fielder Jeff Francoeur, known for his very strong arm, fielded the ball cleanly and was in perfect position to make a solid throw to the plate.

As a result Francoeur’s throw to the plate beat Burrell by about five yards. However, despite this the result of the play was still in doubt. Burrell is a big dude and had a full head of steam gathered by the time he reached the plate. Catcher Brian McCann could drop the ball if jarred even though he caught it, turned and was waiting as Burrell approached.

But Burrell avoided the contact with the catcher. Instead of taking the force of his 225-plus pounds into the plate, he launched into a floaty-kind of slide about three yards away from the plate as if he was a running back diving over the top on a goal-line stand.

Needless to say he had no chance.

But that was just the beginning. The commentary shifted to such intense questioning that I now know what it’s like to be sitting at a small wooden table on a hard-back chair with a couple of investigators playing good-cop/bad-cop. The only thing missing – besides the table, chair and detectives – was the naked light bulb beating on my skin and making my face sweat like a fountain. By the end of it I was the innocent man ready to sign the confession just so the questions would stop like Daniel Day-Lewis as the would-be IRA flunky in In The Name of the Father.

“He was running before the pitcher threw the pitch and he was still out?” she asked, incredulously.

“Yes.”

“How can that be? Is he slow?”

“Yes”

“How can he be that slow?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he the slowest guy on the team?”

“He’s up there.”

“You mean there are guys slower than him?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Johnny Estrada is really slow. Wes Helms is slow, too.”

“But are they slower than Burrell? He’s really slow.”

“I don’t know.”

“How can he be that slow? Is he hurt?”

“He has had some foot trouble. Last year he showed me the orthotic he wears in his spikes and it looked like a boot. It had ties and clamps on it and everything.”

“You mean it wasn’t like the normal type of orthotic that runners wear?”

“No.”

“It’s not like that little orthotic that you got when your Achilles was hurting and that guy stole when you were at that race?”

“No.”

“How can he be that slow? Don’t they know he is slow?”

“Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that he’s really slow.”

“But that slow… come on.”

“What do you want me to say? He’s slow.”

“Does the guy in the outfield have a good arm?”

“Yes, he has a really good arm.”

“How good?”

“Really good… one of the best.”

“So why did they send him home if they know he’s slow and the guy has a good arm?”

“That’s a good question.”

“And what was with that slide? That was pretty wimpy.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

Then came the really good question.

“Why didn’t he knock over the catcher? They’re allowed to do that, right?”

“That’s a really good question. I was wondering the same thing.”

“They are allowed to do that, right?”

“It used to happen all the time.”

“When?”

“When there was a play at the plate.”

“No, I mean when did it happen all the time?”

“I’m not sure. Some players would have run over the catcher.”

“Like who?”

“Chase Utley.”

“Yeah, I can see that. So why didn’t Burrell run over the catcher?”

“Good question.”

“Is he a wimp?

Pause

***
POST SCRIPT: My wife pointed out that she was also not-so fleet afoot. In fact, she pointed out, she was often the slowest player on her sporting teams.

"I once hit a ball to deep center and was thrown out at first base," she admitted.

Sadly, she's not making that up.

***
The Nationals are one of those teams that always seems to give the Phillies fits no matter where they are in the standings. But noting where the Phillies are in the standings and the fact that the Nats have won nine of their last 13 games, it should be an interesting three games at good ol’ RFK this week.

Perhaps more questions about the Phillies will be answered... or asked.

Adding on

Lots of stuff going on around here and none of it has to do with the Phillies or baseball. In fact, with a couple of days off and the regular holiday busyness going on around here, I think the last thing I saw from the Phillies was Pat Burrell smacking a home run.

How’s that for a lasting image of the 2007 Phillies?

Anyway, here’s a prediction kind of regarding the Phillies – if someone backs out of the All-Star Game for the National Leaguers, Ryan Howard will be selected as a replacement. Certainly his numbers aren’t stupendous, but Howard is fourth in the league in homers despite spending some time on the disabled list. Howard still projects to 43 homers and 133 RBIs, which is a decent season… think the Phillies are disappointed with that?

Nope, me either.

***
I’d like to leave homeboy Floyd alone for a little while, but it just seems so impossible…

Firstly, Lance Armstrong spoke to a group in Aspen, Colo. this week and told the audience that he thinks Floyd is innocent of the doping charges levied against him, but it appears unlikely that the steamroller of (un)justice that is USADA will not agree.

In fact, it seems as if Armstrong, I and other correct-thinking folks agree that the testing in cycling far exceeds the system in the American pro sports.

Quoth Armstrong: “If you went to Major League Baseball and said, ‘We're going to have random, unannounced, out-of-competition controls,’ they would tell you, ‘You're crazy. No way, we're not playing another game.’ The NFL, they would never do that. NHL, no way. Golf, forget it. Tennis, forget it. Of course, cyclists get tested more than anything else, and perhaps that's why they get caught more than anyone else.”

Interestingly, there is a report that Armstrong may race at Leadville with Floyd on Aug. 11. Perhaps if they can coax Jan Ullrich to join them the last nine surviving Tour de France champs could be doing a race at 11,000-feet in Leadville, Colo. instead of climbing the Alpe d’Huez.

How much fun would that be?

Speaking of fun, there is a report that a verdict from USADA on the Landis case could come as early as tomorrow.

Maybe that’s what has kept someone from USADA from returning my phone calls or e-mails.

***
Speaking of ignoring me, David Walsh’s publisher has not acknowledged my request for a copy of From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France.

Perhaps it’s the crazy holiday week? Or maybe they don’t want me to read what’s in that book? Who knows? All I know is that the so-called anti-doping groups seem to have a low level of credibility when it comes to answering calls or emails.

Also, the podcast from The Competitors radio show featuring a 60-minute interview with Walsh won’t load onto my iTunes. Don’t make me listen to the pudcast again!

***
I dropped my Pat Burrell/Saddam's hanging line on Mike Gill of The Mike Gill Show this afternoon... I think it went over well.

Putting it to bed

Phew! What a crazy few days it’s been around here. Firstly, as was well-publicized here and other places, I did the whole Landis thing last weekend, which culminated with an appearance with Floyd on the Daily News Live show on CSN yesterday. That was crazy enough until one throws in all the e-mails I received (all positive, which I wasn’t expecting, but thanks), mixed with normal life, marathon running and work.

Truth be told, I am horrible at multitasking so a normal day for most people wipes me out… so bookended between a 15-mile run in Lancaster and a 9-mile run along the Schuylkill in Philadelphia was a 30-minute outing on TV. In that regard, everyone says it went well (of course it did – would anyone tell you if you sucked… well, some might but most have a semblance of couth) but it definitely could have taken the entire 90-minutes and there are a few more things I would have liked to say.

One is that if Floyd Landis played baseball or football instead of being a professional cyclist, he never would have tested positive. Never. That’s a fact.

Conversely, if Barry Bonds were a cyclist (and what a huge cyclist he would be), he would have been banned from the sport a long time ago and he could even be looking at personal bankruptcy.

As written here before, it’s lazy, stupid and irresponsible for journalists to write how cycling (or running) cannot be taken seriously when the doping issues in baseball and football are perhaps more rampant and yet they can somehow take any of those games seriously. My guess is a lot of them used to cover baseball and football regularly and either missed the steroids stories, ignored them or were a decade late in coming to the table and have now decided to take it out on sports that have no unions and pro-active and Draconian doping policies.

During the 1990s, the only thing differentiating Major League Baseball from professional wrestling was the script.

Anyway, I think it would have been neat to talk about Floyd training and crazy stunts, such as how he decided to ride to France from Spain before the 2004 Tour de France. I could talk about training and racing stuff all day long.

OK… one last time. Here are a few snippets from Floyd on DNL:

* Floyd Landis talks about why he decided to write a book
* Landis talks about spending the past year trying to clear his name
* Landis on what happened with the testosterone tests
* Landis says he is still planning on racing in the future

And here are the links to the Landis stories:

More: Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

I also added it here: Finger Food: Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

And here: Finger Food Columns: Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

And now I’m done. Thanks for indulging and we will return this to its normal lunacy as soon as possible.

OK… here’s stage 17 from last year’s TdF:

And of course...

And then...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIbmhqSiME]

***
Here’s a funny one – I was catching glimpses of the Phillies game from Houston on television last night while having dinner at John Turner’s resplendent U.S. Hotel in Manayunk, when I quipped, “Geez, watching Burrell walk up to the plate to hit is like watching Saddam’s hanging. You’re sitting there the whole time thinking, ‘are they really going to go through with this? This is not going to be pleasant to watch.’”

Then sure enough, he smacks a home run. Take that, me.

On another note, it’s nice to see Aaron Rowand get an All-Star nod. Kudos to him.

***
Not that anyone else cares, but the only proper way to top off yesterday’s action-packed day would have been to roll down I-95 to Washington, D.C. to see Joe Lally and The Evens show at Fort Reno Park. I don’t want to even think about it because I know it was probably a really good show and I’m bummed that I couldn’t be there.

***
I'm not sure where I read it, but it is worth a note...

According to someone (not me and I'm upset I wasn't smart enough to come up with it, but I wasn't watching anyway), Florida basketball player and newly drafted Joakim Noah showed up at the NBA Draft in a suit and look that made him look like, "all of the villains from Batman rolled into one..."

Can you see Joakim getting dressed before heading off to the draft? I imagine him looking in a full-length mirror, tugging at his lapels and saying, "Wait until they get a load of me..."

Hey, if he can get away with it, let your freak flag fly.

Punching a dead horse in the mouth

Based on what’s shaking baseball-wise in the local papers, it seems as if the piling on Pat Burrell has begun in earnest. It’s either that, or there really isn’t any new news coming out of the Phillies’ clubhouse these days aside from Jon Lieber potentially heading for season-ending surgery.

The big news is still a couple days away when the New York Mets come to town for four games in three days.

It really is hard to believe that even though the Phillies’ pitching staff has been decimated and the bullpen sometimes works with smoke and mirrors, the team very well could alone in first place by the end of the weekend.

How does that happen?

Not to punch a dead horse in the mouth as Larry Bowa used to say, but the truly amazing part is that the Phillies are challenging for the lead in the NL East even though the team has just one right-handed hitting threat in Aaron Rowand and Pat Burrell could be the worst player in the National League right now.

Anyway, here’s my little rip job on the much-maligned left fielder.

Certainly anything can happen between now and the end of the season, or even until the end of Burrell’s deal following the 2008 season, but as it stands now it’s fair to say that Burrell is nothing more than wasted talent.

He is wasted talent that isn’t in the lineup again tonight for the third game in a row.

***
Tonight’s starting pitcher Jamie Moyer is one of just seven 40-something pitchers taking the mound, which is the first time that has ever happened in baseball history. Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Kenny Rogers, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Woody Williams are the other 40-year old hurlers working tonight.

More impressively, Moyer was named the softest-throwing pitcher in the Majors in an anonymous poll conducted by Sports Illustrated.

The other soft-tossers? Try Maddux, Glavine, Rogers, etc.

Not bad company.

***
Speaking of Sports Illustrated, expect writer Austin Murphy to make a little bit of news with his latest story in which Lance Armstrong is, once again, implicated in doping news.

Here’s the thing about cycling that I don’t think many people understand… USADA, WADA, UCI and the brass of the Tour de France are just as corrupt and power hungry as any other group of bureaucrats or politicians.

Do you think there is a reason why the commissioners and union presidents of MLB, the NBA and the NFL don’t want those groups anywhere near their sports? Sure, the leagues all have their problems with performance-enhancing drugs, but to call in corrupt, money and power-hungry egomaniacs from the alphabet-soup groups of regulators isn’t going to help.

Still, it’s pretty explosive stuff from Austin Murphy and it will be interesting to see how Lance Armstrong snuffs out another fire. Plus, we never knew SI was in the business of hyping agenda-driven, insinuation-laden tawdry books that read like bad talk radio... good for them for branching out, I guess.

Excuse me while I go take a shower.

Buying or selling?

As we enter the last week of June, thoughts typically turn to things like training for a fall marathon, the summer road racing circuit and the Tour de France (me); or the big Fourth of July picnic, the family vacation and which players from the local team will make the All-Star Game (normal people).

But the start of July also means selling and buying in the chic parlance for certain baseball clubs. In that regard, are the Phillies selling, buying or both? Even though they enter the homestand against the Reds and the hated New York Mets just three games off the pace in the NL East, it seems like a fair question.

Clearly the Phillies need pitching help and that fact has nothing to do with the statistics or anything else. It has to do with other types of numbers, such as the Phillies only have three starting pitchers with any real Major League experience and that glut in the rotation that once saw Jon Lieber and Brett Myers moved to the bullpen is gone.

It’s funny how that happens.

Nevertheless, the Phillies are facing a crucial portion of their schedule with Cole Hamels, Adam Eaton, Jamie Moyer and Kyle Kendrick holding down spots in the rotation. With 13 games in 13 days and just one day off between now and the All-Star Break, the Phillies can probably get by with one of their arms in the minors, but chances are that won’t get them to the playoffs.

That means if the Phillies are serious about breaking the streak of Octobers spent at home, a trade should be in the offing.

But there are a lot of other teams looking for the same type of pitching as the Phillies, too. The Mets, for instance, are said to be looking to add an arm or two and will spend what it takes to do so – after all, simply making the playoffs is not an accomplishment for the Mets.

The Red Sox and Yankees will probably be foraging for some pitching as well, which means that if the Phillies want someone, say, like Mark Buehrle, it will cost them.

Maybe it will cost them something like Aaron Rowand.

Trading Rowand for pitching help didn’t seem like that huge of a deal at the beginning of the season, but now things have changed. For one thing it’s hard to say what type of pitcher Rowand could get for the Phillies, and for another thing, the centerfielder is the only right-handed hitting threat the team has.

If only they could trade Pat Burrell for something like reimbursement on the transportation to get him out of town…

While Rowand has rated at the top of the list amongst National League outfielders in batting average, on-base percentage and OPS, Burrell has been simply horrible. In 71 games Burrell is hitting .205 and is on pace to hit just 18 homers with 69 RBIs and to strike out 111 times. Since the start of May, Burrell is 21-for-133 (.158) with 13 extra-base hits and 31 strikeouts.

Worse, against lefties the right-handed Burrell is hitting just .155, so why Charlie Manuel continues to put him in the lineup is simply foolhardy.

Aside from the $13.25 million salary for this season, Burrell’s nearly non-existent production could end up costing the Phillies someone valuable like Aaron Rowand.

***
If you're looking for the Phillies to go after Rangers' reliever Eric Gagne to shore up the bullpen, stop right now. According to published reports, the Phillies are one a handful of teams on Gagne's do-not-trade list.

***
Our current obsession, Floyd Landis, kicks off his book tour tomorrow with an appearance on the CBS Morning Show and Late Night with David Letterman. From there Floyd stays in Manhattan for a reading/signing at the Bryant Park Reading Room along with one-time CSN.com columnist John Eustice on June 27.

Also on the 27th, Floyd hits Ridgewood, N.J. before going to Huntington, N.Y. on the 28th.

Then comes the big stop... Lancaster!

There is a reason Led Zeppelin never came to Lancaster and it has nothing to do with the fact there wasn’t a venue big enough to accommodate them…

***
Speaking of the Tour, if I was pressed right now I'd predict Alexandre Vinokourov will win, but don't sleep on Montana's Levi Leipheimer.

Notes and stuff

During the late innings of the Phillies’ victory over the Giants last night, an announcement was made in the press box informing the media that actor Danny DeVito would be available to answer questions regarding his TV show, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” in the basement conference room before Sunday’s game. At the same time it was announced that the Phillies’ director of scouting, Marti Wolever, would also be available to talk to the press about the upcoming amateur draft after DeVito was finished.

How about this: Could we talk to DeVito about the draft and Wolever about TV shows? Maybe?

DeVito was at the park to toss out the ceremonial first pitch prior to Sunday’s game and will be in town working on the show until June 11.

***
I defy any manager at any level of organized baseball to top Phil Wellman’s hand grenade bit…

Compare Wellman to Lou Piniella:

Lou really needs a hug. There have to be some deep issues there. Meanwhile, it appears as if the Cubs have gotten worse.

Try this out Philly fans: In the time since the Cubs went to their last World Series (and lost), the Phillies have been to the World Series four times.

***
After last night’s game Charlie Manuel said something that sounded so basic, but was really telling:

“When Howard’s hitting we become a totally different team,” Manuel said.

Based on the seventh inning of Sunday’s game, it appears as if Howard is hitting.

Meanwhile, before Saturday’s game Manuel said something that was even more interesting in that he wants to use certain pitchers in his bullpen more, but, well, he wants to win games, too.

“In order for the bullpen to get better, we've got to pitch them,” Manuel said. “At the same time, I say to myself, ‘We're trying to win the game.’ It's a double-edged sword.”

Manuel also said that one way to build a pitching staff was from the “back to the front.”

Sounds like someone is leery about overusing his starters.

“If your bullpen's weak, it puts a lot of strain on your starters,” the skipper said on Saturday. “We need to put a limit on our guys. We'll be pitching our whole staff more than they've ever pitched, or close to it.”

The Phillies starters are 14th in the league in ERA (4.68) and fifth in innings pitched (340 1/3), while the relievers are 13th in innings (152 2/3) and 14th in ERA (4.72).

Manuel also said that he plans on sticking with Pat Burrell (six homers, 24 RBIs, .226 avg.) even though his left fielder is having another disappointing season. However, it sounds as if Burrell is getting most of the playing time right now because he’s the guy with the big, multi-year contract that hangs like an anchor on the club.

“When you sign somebody for a long period of time to a big contract, there's a commitment there. When's the cut-off point? I don't know. When you sign him, you commit to him.”

Though Manuel says otherwise, it’s my opinion that if the skipper benches Burrell for an extended amount of time, he’ll hear about it from his bosses.

***
One pitcher no one should be leery of overusing is Cole Hamels whose outing on Saturday night was just another spectacular chapter in a burgeoning career that should put him amongst the greats in franchise history.

You can have Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Brett Myers, Jimmy Rollins or whomever else… Hamels IS the franchise player.

If Jake Peavy wasn’t turning in a Bob Gibson in 1968-esque first half of the season, Hamels would be the early favorite for the league’s Cy Young Award. As it stands at this moment, the Phils’ lefty is a shoo-in for the All-Star Game next month.

“I've seen him get better even this year,” Saturday’s catcher Rod Barajas said. “I caught him earlier in the season, and he would get emotional sometimes. He'd try to throw too hard. Now, he gives up a home run, and he stays relaxed. He was happy to quick outs all game. He's as good as anyone I've ever caught.”

The best part about Hamels? He has an arrogance that isn’t overbearing or obnoxious and knows how good he is. He also knows his changeup is a killer.

***
The Astros' Roy Oswalt is on pace to pitch approximately 260 innings this season, which is up there for this age in baseball. In fact, since Mike Scott went for 275 in 1986, no National Leaguer has gone over 270 and only two American Leaguers have reached that plateau in that time.

Any one have a guess who for who the last pitcher to deal 300 innings in a season was? Don't cheat by looking it up...

Mike Schmidt statement on Pat Burrell

As a former Phillies player, I'm honored to be a guest at this camp. As a guest I want to do my best to steer clear, and put to bed any issues that may lead to controversy. With regard to the past article where I commented on Pat Burrell and Adam Dunn, understand the article was about the propensity of power hitters to strike out. As you all know, I'm pretty well versed on that subject being in the top five of all-time, having K'd almost 1,900 times.

I believe a goal of any hitter should be to make contact, especially in crucial at-bats, by understanding how to hit defensively with two strikes, something that me 14 years to learn. My use of the term "mediocre" was in poor taste, and I'm sorry if it offended, but it was not intended to label Pat Burrell or Adam Dunn, or their accomplishments, but to point out that at some point, as a result of reducing strikeouts, their future accomplishments will make their past seem "mediocre."

Since meeting Pat six years ago, I have re-lived my career through him, as we have so many similarities. I root for him every game, and feel that in 2007, given good health and 600 at-bats, Pat will assert himself as one of the top run producers in baseball.

The return of Kelly Leak

When asked about the most realistic baseball movies, my answer is simple – there are two that hold up. Unless you have a couple hours to kill the others aren’t quite up to the reality challenge.

The two: Bull Durham and the original The Bad News Bears.

At least from my point of view from spending the last seven years around a professional baseball team as well as a childhood and adolescence playing the game, those two films best captured the essence of the game.

It’s probably me, though. I don’t like the sappy side of baseball simply because I’ve never seen it in real life. People strike out, coaches and parents push too hard, there’s always someone bigger, faster or better. The best way to deal with it is to enjoy it and not take it so seriously – that’s what they learned at the end of The Bad News Bears, and what Crash Davis taught everyone on the Durham Bulls.

Although I do have that romantic, NPR, baseball-as-a-metaphor-for-life buried deep in the locus of my mind, I only bring it out when I'm killing time and watching The Natural or Field of Dreams… alone. Maybe that's because I've seen the real side of baseball and know that the romanticized view doesn't exist except for on Old-Timers Day or in Cooperstown. Baseball is curse words, a hot grounder that misses a glove and turns the shin purple, spitting and an obstructed-view, upper-deck seat next to a drunk who just spilled another beer on your shoes.

It’s also a bit of a metaphor for the life of Jackie Earle Haley.

Haley, as most remember, played Kelly Leak – the hard-hitting, motorcycle-riding badass in The Bad News Bears. He also played Moocher in Breaking Away, the coming-of-age movie that first made Dennis Quaid a star. I remember watching it on TV – before the proliferation of HBO etc. – in the 1980s and being mesmerized by the story and the bicycle scenes. Maybe that’s where the fascination with endurance sports started… who knows.

Either way, in two of the best movies released during the mid-to-late 1970s, Jackie Earle Haley was front and center.

And then he disappeared.

The transition from child star to adult actor appears to be a slippery slope that has claimed many – count Haley as one who didn’t make the transition from potential star to working actor so well. But in one of the great redemption stories that has caught the eye of just about every mainstream media outlet, Haley not only is back, but also will be in the running to win an Academy Award this Sunday night for his role in adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel Little Children. Prior to that, Haley had a significant role in the re-make of the adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.

Not bad for someone who had spent the previous 15 years as a limo driver, pizza delivery man, construction worker and infomercial producer.

Check out his story:
from Salon.com: “I felt like it was supposed to happen this way”

from The Washington Post: A Former Child Star's Grown-Up Reward

Certainly, Haley doesn’t need a trophy to validate his work. And as we all know, the Academy Awards are the biggest bunch of b.s. out there. But if there is anyone up for the award who has paid more dues than Haley, then, yes, give them the trophy.

Let's hope Tanner Boyle can make a comeback, too.

Elsewhere...
Pat Burrell's engagement pictures are floating around on the Internets. Could the pending nuptials be the linchpin to a big season?

All that and brains, too
Chase Utley has joined a "virtual march" to help raise awareness about Global Warming. Let's hope that he can start his march by taking a sledge hammer to Jon Lieber's stupid truck.