Insert snappy 'Butler did it' headline here

We’ve been over the mid-major oxymoron on these pagesplenty of times in the past, so let’s just say that Butler snapping up a spot in the Final Four in a region that featured Syracuse in the top seed was kind of a surprise.

Actually, the real surprise is that Butler was a No. 5 seed, beat the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds back-to-back and had its toughest game in the tournament against No. 13 Murray State.

In other words, the selection committee really messed up the seeding this year.

Hey, it happens from time to time. After all, the chalk pretty much ran through to the bracket the past several years. Last year the top 12 teams made it to the Sweet 16, while in 2008 all the No. 1 seeds got to the Final Four. In fact, over the past two seasons Villanova, as a No. 3, was the worst-seeded team to get to the Final Four.

The committee got it right in 2008 and 2009.

That wasn’t the case in 2010 where three double-digit seeds plus No. 9 Northern Iowa got to the Sweet 16 and a No. 5 or No. 6 seed is guaranteed to make it to the championship game.

Wha’ happened?

One theory is that the selection committee didn’t give much respect to those mid-majors. Butler, obviously, is the prime example of that elitist point-of-view. Seeing as there was no team that was head-and-shoulders above the rest, a team like Butler was given a No. 5 seed even though its RPI ranking was just tenths of points behind Villanova.

Since Butler was 20-0 in the Horizon Conference and Villanova was 13-6 in the Big East, the committee reasoned that the big conferences were infinitely better than the mid-majors and ranked the teams accordingly. That kind of makes sense, right? If ‘Nova and Butler produce the same computer rankings, then the so-called major team would chew up those mid-majors, went the logic.

The problem with that is statistics always lie. Never is there a case were 13-6 is better than 20-0. Never, ever, never. A 20-0 team experiences things that a 13-6 club never goes through, such as how to win games. Winning counts for a lot when its humans and not statistics calling the shots.

Didn’t we learn anything from Larry Bird and Indiana State all those years ago? Did we really need to watch No. 10 St. Mary’s pull apart Villanova like a sadistic kid on the playground torturing a defenseless insect with a magnifying glass? Sure, St. Mary’s had the 35^th best RPI and was 25-5, but they had something Villanova did not—a legit center.

So painting Butler and teams of its ilk as mighty little underdogs fighting against the monoliths is wrong. Butler isn’t a David in the battle against Goliath, nor is it a mom-and-pop shop slaying Wal-Mart before it gets crushed and the organic nature of a downtown is destroyed. Actually, the mid-majors are just that…

Mid-majors.

They are like the regional chain with shops across the region that takes a chunk out of Wal-Mart's market share. Sure, more people shop at Wal-Mart or Target or Starbucks, but that isn't putting Giant or Acme out of business. Not by a long shot.

Down but not quite out

Let’s call this upcoming week the quiet one before it all goes crazy. After all, next Sunday is Easter followed by Opening Day in Washington and the NCAA Basketball Championship on Monday. Needless to say there are going to be a bunch of things to keep us rapt for a very long time.

And that’s just the least of it. When April gets into full swing, not only will the Phillies begin their march for a fourth straight visit to the playoffs, but also the Philadelphia Union play before the home crowd for the very first time (April 10), the Penn Relays descend on the city, the Flyers could (maybe) have some playoff games, and the Eagles will attempt to plug in some players to all those empty spots in the draft.

Yes, it’s going to be busy.

But it’s not like we were just sitting around with nothing to do this past week. Oh no, far from it. In fact, we spent this weekend watching one of the strangest NCAA tournaments unfold as well as what could be a Hindenburg-like ending to the Flyers’ season.

Really, what in the world is going on with the Flyers?

Riding a five-game losing streak at the absolute wrong time to be riding anything, the Flyers have been outscored 18-7. Worse, with just one game remaining in March, the Flyers have scored more than three goals in a game just twice and one of those was in a 7-4 loss.

Needless to say, the Flyers have to get it together very quickly because with seven games to go in the season nothing is guaranteed. The 80 points put the Flyers in the last spot in the Eastern Conference playoff race just two points ahead of Atlanta, a team that swept a home-and-home from Philly last week. If the standings hold up, the Flyers get to play Washington, which might result in nothing more than an extra two home games before the season ends.

Of the six teams remaining on the Flyers’ schedule, only three are locks to make the playoffs. Though the fans and some of the media seem to believe the officials have it out for the Flyers, at least the schedule makers gave them a break. Then again, with the way the Flyers have been playing does it really matter who they play?

Besides, after the loss in Pittsburgh on Saturday the team seemed most wrapped up in a woe-is-us attitude. Goalie Johan Backlund was injured in his first NHL start, while a disallowed goal that would have given the team a one-goal lead seemed to ruin some would-be momentum. Of course they didn't score the rest of the game, but that kind of ruins the story.

The only bit of momentum conjured from the loss to the Penguins was the idea that the league, the officials, that slippery ice and maybe even the Rand Corporation were involved in a conspiracy to “get” the Flyers.

Yeah, that’s it—they’re out to get the Flyers. Maybe they are out to get them because they aren’t good enough, appear to be lacking in heart or character and seem to turtle up when the going gets tough.

Otherwise, this picking on the Flyers must stop!

OK, sarcasm aside, what’s the answer here? Is it simply a matter of trimming some payroll and adding some different players? Were the injuries too much to bear? Is the chemistry all wrong? How about all of the above?

Would a collapse that results in the Flyers not making the playoffs be the best tonic for the long run?

We’ll find out soon enough.

Stop making sense

For a guy who drives great distances to get to work/games, I really don’t listen to sports talking on the radio. There are many reasons for this and none of them are an indictment on the genre itself. Hey, people like to talk about sports and they like to listen to the radio when they drive. It’s a happy marriage.

But it’s not really a mode of communication one can sink their teeth into. That’s not a knock on sports talking radio, it’s just the way it is. See, sports radio happens in real time. It’s a continuous thing that exists for a second and then blows away in the wind, kind of like real life or something metaphysical like that.

However, the topics discussed are singular, static moments. Sports news happens and then that’s it. So in order to discuss certain topics, speculation and referencing “sources” often pushes the conversation. Come on… if you’re just putting the news out there and allowing it to stand by itself, it doesn’t make for a great time, does it?

Still, it all makes my head hurt. It’s like eating Fruity Pebbles all the time instead of going for something healthy. Look, I like Fruity Pebbles as much as the next guy and I could eat it all day. However, if I do that for too long it’s going to have a serious affect. It might even kill me, not unlike that movie where that dude went around eating McDonald’s morning, noon and night. After a day or two it stopped being fun or even funny.

Nevertheless, it’s kind of like when some huge real-life news occurs and everyone dials up CNN or MSNBC or something (I’d say FoxNews, but you know…) to find out what’s going on. Apparently the Eagles were/are on the verge of trading Donovan McNabb, which is kind of like a historical moment for the Philadelphia sporting scene. It’s a really big deal, to say the least.

So I dialed it up for the ride home and strangely it took only five minutes for my head to start hurting.

Again, that’s no fault of the medium, the hosts or the genre. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of real information out there aside from the stuff coming from “sources.” Having spent a large portion of my adult life mingling with “sources,” I understand that those dudes will say anything. Sometimes they even know what they’re talking about, too. In fact, my “sources” are usually more right than wrong, but that’s only with what I tell other people. Some of the crazier things they trot out there are really freakin’ crazy.

Whew! I can’t wait to write that book.

Anyway, my head was spinning from all the teams and speculation on other teams that weren’t named by “sources.” There were the Rams, Raiders and Vikings. There were first-round draft picks and defensive backs speculated upon. Legacies both past and present were bandied about.

It was a big mess and it made my head hurt.

After listening from approximately the time it took to get from the Wachovia Center to the part on the Expressway where it seems like eight lanes converge into one with the Art Museum looming above the psychotic automotive mess, I was done. I tapped out, but not for the reason most would think. It was for another reason of my own creation and one that needed me to quiet things down with some podcasts of Terry Gross’ show, “Fresh Air.”

Has there ever been a radio program so aptly named?

So what was the thought that sent me scrambling for the dial with one hand while using the other to steer into rush hour traffic on the Schuylkill? OK, try this out…

What happens if Donovan McNabb comes back to the Eagles next season? Really, what happens then?

It seems as if we are so resigned to the fact that McNabb will be traded away soon that we could forget the notion that we really don’t know what’s happening. Yes, the guys reporting on the story are doing terrific work and are finding out facts that have helped it all make sense. Still, when sports executives say something in front of recorders, microphones and cameras, it really should be taken with a grain of salt or whatever it is one takes when they converse with someone known for being less than truthful.

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that McNabb will be introduced as the starting quarterback for the Eagles in the home opener next September. And if that happens, what then?

How will the fans react? How will the media types react?

Better yet, what will a return by McNabb mean for Andy Reid and the Eagles? After all, there was a reason why quarterback Kevin Kolb was selected with a second-round draft pick, just as there was a reason why the team signed Michael Vick. If the Eagles are simply going to keep McNabb, what was it Reid and the gang were doing when they got those other quarterbacks?

Really, what were they thinking?

That’s why it won’t be a huge shock if nothing happens. No one really knows what goes through those heads they have over there at the NovaCare complex. Maybe they just really, really like the attention, which is why they are allowing this mess to drag out as long as it has. Actually, it seems as if there ought to be smoke coming out of the top of the place as if they were electing a pope.

Who’s the new (or old) guy? Apparently any guess is as good as anything.

Why the Wall not?

The Phillies just wrapped up the online fan portion of the voting for the team’s Wall of Fame, which is almost like instituting a voting with applause system. With that in mind, it’s too late for anyone to cast a vote for the Phillies Wall of Fame, but not for me to explain why most of you probably voted poorly.

That is if you didn’t vote for Jim Konstanty.

Look, when one thinks of the greatest players in franchise history Konstanty’s name isn’t too high on the list. In fact, Konstanty doesn’t show up on too many of the team’s all-time leaders lists and after seven largely mediocre seasons, he was released by the Phillies and signed by the Yankees and only saved more than nine games in a season twice.

But I have this foolish notion that players should be rewarded for historically great seasons. For instance, the 1961 season should be enough to send Roger Maris to Cooperstown. It’s probably not a popular sentiment, but at the very least they ought to come up with a special wing of the Hall of Fame for anomalies like Maris in ’61 or Don Mattingly from 1984 to 1986.

Dialing that down, Jim Konstanty very well might have been the most important player on the 1950 National League champions and he gets a vote simply for that one year. During that year, as a relief pitcher, Konstanty appeared in a then Major League-record 74 games and was National League's MVP. When the Phillies got to their first World Series since 1915, Konstanty took the ball and started Game 1for his first start in approximately four seasons.

Ultimately Konstanty only won 51 games and saved 54 in 6½ seasons for the Phillies, but he was one of the pioneers in the game as a true relief specialist, yet was also versatile and strong enough to pile up more than a 100 innings.

Don't tell me the Phillies wouldn't like to have a relief pitcher to toss 70 or so innings this season.

Oh, but that wasn’t the best part about Konstanty in 1950. With pitching ace Robin Roberts spent from pitching 10 innings in the National League clincher in Brooklyn on the final day of the season, the Phillies needed a pitcher to step up in Game 1 of the World Series at Shibe Park.

You know, why not throw a guy out there who hadn’t started a game in nearly five years out there in the biggest game of the year? And why not expect him to allow just one run and four hits through eight innings?

Imagine if Charlie Manuel sent Brad Lidge to the mound for Game 1 of the World Series. All we see is the box score and the stats from the 1950 season without the context. At least that’s the way I always looked at it until Robin Roberts talked about the 1950 World Series before the start of the 2009 series. Of all the Phillies’ legends and Hall of Famers, Roberts is the least crazy. He also has a sharp memory and tells fantastic stories along with the uncanny ability to throw 300 innings for six seasons in a row while getting complete games in more than half of his starts for 19 seasons.

So when Robin Roberts talks about pitching, it’s a good idea to shut up and listen.

 “The Konstanty thing was a miracle,” Roberts said about the league’s top reliever making his starting debut in Game 1 of the 1950 World Series. “(Manager) Eddie Sawyer gave him the ball and he went out there like he was doing it his whole life. … That really was a miracle. If he would have won that would have been something they talked about forever, but because he lost people kind of forgot about it.”

It’s funny how that works, huh? Maybe if Konstanty had won that Game 1 he very well might have been enshrined on that brick wall in Ashburn Alley already.

So, yes, Konstanty would get a vote from me. So too would Darren Daulton and Gene Mauch.

I don't think I have to get too into why Daulton should be enshrined. Simply, he may have been one of the most important players—for his time—the franchise ever had. Importance of a player, of course, belies simple things such as numbers on a stat page and in that regard Daulton is both simple and complex. He led the league in both RBIs and knee operations... then moved to the outfield after two decades of squatting.

Better yet, he was the straw that stirred the drink in '93. Go ahead... ask anybody.

Mauch, on the other hand, was regarded as one of the best baseball minds as well as the most star-crossed, perhaps ever. He has managed more seasons without reaching the World Series than anyone else in the history of the game. Worse, Mauch had come so excruciatingly close to getting there so many times only to fall through a trap door.

There was 1964, which people around here remember, but then in 1982 he guided the California Angels to 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series only to drop the final three games to the Milwaukee Brewers. That was the first time such a dubious feat  had ever happened.

In 1986, Mauch's Angels were one pitch away from beating the Boston Red Sox in five games of the best-of-seven ALCS and marching on to face the Mets in the World Series before Donnie Moore served up the famous home run to Dave Henderson. The Red Sox went on to win Game 5 and then games 6 and 7 to further extend Mauch's curse.

Yet for the Phillies, Mauch turned a laughingstock into a contender by winning 646 games in a little more than eight seasons. From 1962 to 1967, Mauch's Phillies finished .500 or better in every season, which was a rarity for the franchise.

After 26 seasons as a big-league manager and 1,902 wins, Mauch’s longest tenure was spent in Philadelphia. No one managed more games or won more games for the Phillies than Mauch and, bygolly, that ought to count for a plaque on a wall at Citizens Bank Park.

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 6

Remember how it was when you were a kid just trying to get that first job or internship? Filled with cock-eyed optimism and enough enthusiasm to provide power to an entire city if properly harnessed, these youngsters keep us old dudes on our toes.

See, I remember being young and how difficult it was to wedge out even the tiniest bit of space for myself in the hard-scrabble world of pro writin’. Back then kids like me were to be seen and not heard. We were told that any idea we had was a bad one or required too many resources and/or money or, simply, there were dues to be paid and I didn’t have enough capital yet.

Now that I’m older and been around the block once or twice, I’ve been able to reflect on how things were at the beginning of this bumpy ride of writing sentences for a living. You know what? The old dudes were wrong. The old dudes are always wrong.

Youthful exuberance is infectious. Sure, the kids coming up these days need guidance and some nurturing, but the best thing for a workplace caught in a Groundhog’s Day spin of banging its heads against the wall is to feed off that energy. Bring in the kids and try to see things the way they see things for a change. While you’re at it, mix your old ideas up with some new ideas. Not only does it keep a guy young, it makes everything feel and look better.

There’s nothing wrong with calling the kids up from the minors and letting them push the veterans a little bit. It’s good for everyone and, frankly, it may be one of the reasons why my former medium of choice has been in the dumps for the past decade. Progress and technology are supposed to make your product better… if you allow it.

Anyway, we had a kid named Christian in the office today for an interview. Fresh faced and with nothing but high hopes and big dreams sparkling from his eye, we thought it would be a neat thing to bring Christian into the room where we recorded The Podcast of Awesomeness and put him on the spot. You know, see how the kid could handle a little pressure from a bunch of old dudes who subscribe to the theory that youth is not wasted on the young, but wasted away by old curmudgeons.

Sarah Baicker led Christian right into the fray and the kid knocked it right out of the park. I’m not saying he got the internship yet, but if his poise and sharpness displayed in front of a firing squad that has taken aim at plenty of coaches, managers and GMs in Philadelphia over the past 10 years, well, he’s going to be OK.

And get this, Christian told us that someday he would like to write columns and host a show of some sort. That sounds like he’s coming after me, doesn’t it?

Here… listen to what the kid has to say:

P of A NO. 6

Of course we take our time getting to the meat of the program. We sandwiched it up in a menagerie of chatter about college hoops, the Flyers and the Eagles. We also invited the newest member of the team to the show as Enrico Campitelli joined in.

Don’t know Enrico? Well, have you ever heard of The 700 Level? Yes, that’s him. Enrico runs the show at the popular sports site that is now part of the CSNPhilly.com family. He’s going to fit in quite well…

Or else.

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Do people still care about Tiger Wo... zzzzzzzzzzz

Be honest: do you care about Tiger Woods or are you just watching for the jokes? It's OK to tell the truth. It's funny, right? All of it. Especially the part where he has to talk to the media about his whatever it is he feels sorry for getting caught at.

But really, is there anything more boring than Tiger Woods and the media coverage of whatever it is the story is at this point?

There are plenty of people to feel sorry for in the Tiger saga, and they mostly are the folks in the media that have to cover it as if it matters. Imagine having to waste precious lean tissue and brain matter in order to come up with something cogent to say about Tiger Woods. Watching the media coverage of Tiger the last day or two is like something come up by Jon Stewart or seen on Monty Python. The funny part is that the folks coming up with the bits and stories are being serious. They’re actually doing that stuff earnestly and without irony.

That’s hilarious!

I saw the transcript of Tiger’s interviews with ESPN and the Golf Channel, but figured Beavis & Butthead episodes on YouTube or maybe a Steven Seagall movie might be more intellectually stimulating.

Oh, but it’s not like there wasn’t anything interesting at all to come out of the Tiger interview roll out. Not at all. In fact, it came out that PR maven Ari Fleischer quit as the puppet master because, as FoxSports reports Fleischer “fell on his sword because he felt he was becoming the story.”

“Fleischer’s legacy, whether fairly or not, remains propagating Bush/Cheney myths — like Saddam Hussein attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001 — which Americans don’t want to hear. Having him in behind the curtain gave the impression Woods had something to hide, and that words were being fed to him.”

So there’s that. Still, the timing of it all should come as no surprise. Tiger trotted out there on a Sunday after a weekend where the NCAA Tournament produced more crazy upsets than any first two rounds ever. In fact, Ivy League champ Cornell became the first team from its conference to win two games in the tourney since Penn went to the Final Four in 1979.[1] In fact, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, this very well might be the wackiest tournament since the 1986 NCAA Tournament where No. 7 Navy—with underclassman David Robinson—beat No. 2 Syracuse at the Carrier Dome before facing No. 14 Cleveland State in the Round of 16. That was the year No. 11 LSU got to the Final Four and freshman Pervis Ellison helped Louisville beat up No. 1 Duke in the championship game.

Good times.

Of course Tiger went out there at about the same time Congress was “debating” the historical passage of the health-care reform bill, too. That conjures up the up the biggest question of all:

Who cares about Tiger Woods? And if anyone cares about Tiger Woods, why?

Seriously, Tiger Woods plays golf. That’s it. Sure, he makes a lot of money and has charities and all of that stuff, but when it’s broken down to its essence, he is a golfer. That’s it. I never heard any stories where Tiger Woods rushed into a burning building to rescue some kids. No, he's not Spider-Man. He hits a little white ball, chases it down and then hits it again.

He also plays a sport in which a 60-year-old man (Tom Watson) came a centimeter away from winning the most-storied of all golf tournaments just last summer. It’s a sport where Phil Mickleson and John Daly can lumber and giggle around the course and win majors. Hey, I love golf as much as the next guy. I love playing it and watching it, but let’s be serious here. It’s golf. It ain’t cool.

At all.

Name another sport in which a 60-year-old man can beat the best in the world.

Why do we care about Tiger Woods again?

---

[1] Interestingly, Penn had to win four games as the No. 9 seed to get to the Final Four in 1979 (before getting destroyed by Magic Johnson and Michigan State). The Quakers knocked off No. 8 Iona, coached by Jim Valvano with Jeff Ruland in the low post, before slipping past No. 1 North Carolina. UNC had four future NBA players, which set the table for a victory over No. 4 Syracuse and No. 10 St. John’s. That’s right… Penn beat a 10-seed to get to the Final Four and tore through an ACC plus two Big East teams to get there. Cornell has the A-10 and Big Ten in its book. Is the SEC next?

Pigs fly, hell freezes over and the Ivy League wins in the tourney

It was the damndest thing watching the Ivy League champsCornell eviscerate Temple in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday in Jacksonville, Fla. It was almost as if the Cornell team morphed into the college basketball version of the Harlem Globetrotters where every shot they tossed into the air from beyond the three-point arc splashed through the nets.

The crazy thing about Cornell’s 13-point victory was that Temple shot nearly 52 percent from the floor, committed just two turnovers in the second half and still never really had a chance. No, Temple wasn’t as bad as the scoreboard indicated, Cornell was just that good.

Great shooting, as they say, can cure a lot of ills. In that regard Cornell wasn’t quite like Villanova against Georgetown, but they were pretty darned good.

The significance of Cornell’s win in the first round goes a little deeper than simply sending poor Temple and its 29-win season packing to give coach Fran Dunphy a 1-12 record in the first round of the tourney, though those are nothing to sneeze at.

No, the significant part about Cornell beating Temple was that an Ivy League team actually won a game in the NCAA Tournament. That’s a bigger deal than one would believe.

For the past three years I had been harping on the notion that Ivy League teams should forego a bid in the NCAA Tournament and sign on for the NIT, or, if academics are the true priority at those schools, call it a season.

Though there have been plenty of so-called “upsets” in the first round of the tourney this year, Cornell beating No. 5 Temple is the only real “Cinderella” of the bunch. Oh sure, the NCAA likes to paint its basketball tournament as the most egalitarian of college sports championships, and for that organization it’s as close to a truth as we’ll ever get. That means it’s almost true, but not really.

Sure, the selection committee lines up all the teams based on some sort of secret formula and allows them to settle it on the court. In that sense the NCAA Tournament is cool, and, of course, it generates those ubiquitous brackets that used to infiltrate every office copier this time of year before such things as copier machines and paper became anachronisms. Now, every so-called “bracket challenge” or whichever cliché gets tossed around like the equally cliché office hoops know-it-all with multiple brackets in all of the pools, is online.

The Internet, believe it or not, turned the NCAA Tournament bracket into cultural wallpaper.

Nevertheless, every year at this time the NCAA, CBS and its corporate sponsors trot out the notion of the mythical Cinderella turning up at the last minute to be the babe of the ball and steal the show. CBS touts upsets and defines its coverage with a dizzying array of highlights and cut-ins at venues around the country in order to capture the faux notion that something in line with Chaminade knocking off No. 1 ranked Virginia in a tiny gym near the beach in Oahu. Instead, these “upsets” come from teams that play in the so-called “mid-major” conferences.

You know… the conferences the tournament selection committee looks down on because they don’t make it as much money as the teams from the Big East or ACC.

Typically, these mid major teams run out of upsets by the second weekend of the tournament. That's when the big basketball factories reclaim the tournament and follow the proper path assigned them by the selection committee. After all, CBS wants ratings for its tournament and knows that the alums and fans from Duke, Kentucky and Kansas tune in at numbers than the handful of folks that follow the basketball program at Ohio U. or Butler.

But occasionally a team like George Mason breaks through to the Final Four, which isn't as surprising as it sounds. Sure, George Mason plays in the Colonial Athletic Association, which slips through the cracks of the coverage bestowed on the big conferences, but the CAA isn't exactly chucking the ball into the stands every time they touch it. They can play some basketball, believe it or not.

For one thing, painting George Mason and teams of its ilk as mighty little underdogs fighting against the monoliths is wrong. The mid-majors are not a David in the battle against Goliath, nor is it a mom-and-pop shop slaying Wal-Mart before it gets crushed and the organic nature of a downtown is destroyed. Actually, the mid-majors are just that — mid, majors. They are like the regional chain with shops across the region that takes a chunk out of Wal-Mart's market share. Sure, more people shop at Wal-Mart or Target or Starbucks, but that isn’t putting Giant or Acme out of business.

Still, there are true underdogs in the NCAA Tournament except for the Ivy Leagues. But if you think Cornell has a shot to get to the Final Four or past the round the Round of 16, just put that thought out of your head right now. It’s not going to happen.

There, I said it.

What's the point of having those teams in the “Big Dance” when all we get to read about come March is how no Ivy League school has won a tournament game since Princeton beat UNLV in 1998 or how Princeton upset UCLA in 1996 or almost beat No. 1 Georgetown and Patrick Ewing way back when.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Penn made it to the Final Four, and I think I know the reason why. Ready? Get in really close so you can hear this...

BECAUSE IT WAS 31 YEARS AGO!

That’s why Cornell beating Temple is a bigger deal than a No. 12 seed beating a traditional basketball school.

Here are some handy dandy facts from an New York Times story published last year about Ivy League schools in the NCAA Tournament from 2007:

2009

No. 3 Missouri 78

No. 14 Cornell 59

2008

No. 3 Stanford 77

No. 14 Cornell 53

2007
No. 3 Texas A&M 68
No. 14 Penn 52

2006
No. 2 Texas 60
No. 15 Penn 52

2005
No.4 Boston College 85
No. 13 Penn 65

2004
No. 3 Texas 66
No. 14 Princeton 49

2003
No. 6 Oklahoma State 77
No. 11 Penn 63

2002
No. 6 California 82
No. 11 Penn 75

2001
No. 2 North Carolina 70
No. 15 Princeton 48

2000
No. 4 Illinois 68
No. 13 Penn 58

1999
No. 6 Florida 75
No. 11 Penn 61

The average margin of defeat for the Ivy League teams: 15.5.

Until Cornell came along this season, I had always hoped that the Ivy champ would tell the NCAA Tournament, “thanks, but no thanks. We're not going to travel across the country to be a first-round hors d'oeuvres for a potential national title contender. We're going to take our chances in the NIT where we have a chance to win. We don't need to play the No. 3 seed and lose so everyone can call us ‘scrappy,’ or laud us for being, ‘student-athletes.’”

Yeah, I know this probably isn't a popular sentiment, but I can't understand the logic of a team going to a tournament that it has no chance of not just winning, nor being competitive. And who knows, after this season the Ivy teams could restart the losing streak in the tourney. Sure, Cornell beat Temple, but it had to shoot 68 percent and get nine turnovers from a typically steady team in which to do it.

Will the same thing happen against Wisconsin on Sunday? We’ll see.

Nevertheless, I'd like my odds of winning the Powerball over Cornell’s chances to win two games in an NCAA Tournament.

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 5

We fancy ourselves a knowledgeable bunch here at ThePodcast of Awesomeness. We’re a diverse bunch who comes from different places, with different backgrounds and an array of educational resumes. More importantly, we’ve been around. We’ve seen and done things and when we mix it all up it makes for some good conversation.

Did you know that Dennis Deitch worked on a dude ranch in Wyoming before deciding to give writing a try? Does it seem as if Sarah Baicker was a debutante who went to the best finishing schools in the land until she realized she wanted to hang around the dingy and sullen atmosphere that is an NHL dressing room?

It’s all true.

Dan Roche was a backyard wrestling announcer who doubled as a nightclub crooner. He seems to have been born into a tuxedo and ruffled shirt. Mike Radano rode the rails as a country western singer before he got caught up in the fickle world of corporate downsizing.

Me? Well, I had a lot of jobs before turning to spinning a phrase or two… where do you think I met all of those folks?

Nevertheless, we put our knowledge and experiences to the test during Thursday’s recording of EPISODE NO. 5. That’s because we had a couple of guests on the show who have seen more than all of us. Better yet, one of them has the answer sheet.

Oh yes, Johnny Goodtimes, the official quiz master of Philadelphia, came in for a visit. And yes, he brought the knowledge. Then again, go see for yourself and check out Mr. Goodtimes in action at the Quizzo Bowl VI at the TLA on South Street on Saturday. You really ought to go.

Meanwhile, we dialed up Chris Wilson of Ted Leo & The Pharmacists to check in on him and the rest of the gang as they make their way across the country. In fact, we caught up with Chris in Missoula, Montana before the gang piled into the van to drive to a gig in Spokane, Wash.[1]

Here, take a listen:

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 5

If I had my druthers, I’d be out at the Quizzo Bowl VI on Saturday night at the TLA. But since I have to raise my kids and that kind of stuff, I’ll probably get on the internet and watch the appearance by Chris, Ted and the rest of the Pharmacists on The Onion’s A.V. Club. What happened was each band showed up in the offices at the A.V. Club in Chicago, picked a song to cover, and got at it.

For TL/Rx, that number was Tears for Fears’, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

It’s gone downright viral on these internets.

http://media.avclub.com/assets/flash/video/widescreen_player/bin-release/widescreen_player.swf

So we’ll be back with another show next week. It’s doubtful that it will be as funny (or as much as a train wreck) as No. 5, but whatever.  

P.S. There was a portion of the show sliced out because it may have been slightly over the edge. Problem is it's really, really funny and we don't quite know what to do with it yet. Stay tuned.

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[1] Apparently I mispronounced both Spokane and Minneapolis in succession during the show. Smart.

Phillies sell out

The Phillies PR staff sent out an email this morning announcing an unprecedented moment in the team’s history. Approximately a month before the season is to start, the team says it sold more than 3 million tickets to its 81 games and has a few seats left for just 73 other games this season.

Three million tickets sold before the season even starts is a huge deal. More notably, the Phillies also announced in the very same release, that they will cap season-ticket sales at 28,750 with just approximately 250 packages left.

That’s very impressive, to say the least. Considering that Citizens Bank Park holds a little more than 43,000, tickets to Phillies games are going to be a hot commodity this summer. Actually Phillies games might turn out to be more of a happening or an event than an athletic competition. That’s the way it has been in Boston at Fenway Park during the past few years. It used to be that a guy could call up the team on the day of the game and order tickets to see the Red Sox. In fact, we did just that plenty of times during the mid-1990s.

Those days are long gone at Fenway and they could be on the way out in Philadelphia, too. Times are tough, financially speaking, and with other forms of entertainment failing to pack as much bang for the buck as they once did, a night out at the ballpark isn’t so bad. It still costs more than it should, but there’s a lot available for the dollar.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the average ticket price for a Phillies game was $28 back in 2008. Based on those figures along with the current attendance figures and the team is putting more than $1.3 million into the coffers every game. And that doesn’t even include parking, food, novelties or whatever else it is folks have to pay for at a baseball game. Certainly those totals make the $1.3 million per game figure just the tip of the iceberg.

Obviously, there are operating costs for a big league team. Just imagine what the electric bill is for a place like Citizens Bank Park. But when a club is raking in millions of dollars each time it opens its gates, well, it must be a good time to be with the Philadelphia Phillies. I hear the staff money fights are wild!

Nevertheless, since the Phillies are raking it in these days when, not so long ago folks stayed away from The Vet in droves, one has to wonder where that cash is going. Specifically, how is the team reinvesting in ensuring that it will have the best players to continue annual trips back to the playoffs?

That seems like a pretty good question considering what has developed in the past few months. Just last night I wrote that since the Phillies are operating under the guidelines of an expandable salary cap, maybe they ought to consider dealing Jayson Werth. The fact is, I don’t think they should do that at all. I think the Phillies should re-sign Jayson Werth to a three-year deal and move Dom Brown into the outfield rotation when Raul Ibanez’s deal expires.

Based on the e-mailed press release from the Phillies, Werth’s future with the team shouldn’t be a question. In fact, based on the numbers presented by the Phillies, Werth and Cliff Lee should be signed up for a couple more years.

Why not? They sent out an e-mail explaining how well they are selling tickets. Nowhere did it indicate that they are giving away 43,000 seats for each game.

On one side the Phillies are bragging about how much money they are making in a depressed economy, no less, but on the other hand they don’t have an unlimited budget to get the best players?

Something doesn’t make sense here?

Let’s give the Phillies the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are saving all that cash for a rainy day? Perhaps they believe they are so good right now that they can get by without a roster loaded like an All-Star team and when Ryan Howard, Roy Halladay, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley move on, they can tap into those reserves.

That has to be it…

Right?

And since we're talking about bold trades...

Since we like to be progressive and forward thinking here, and since we’ve been discussing wacky trade ideas over the last couple of days, maybe it’s time to discuss a topic that a lot of folks aren’t keen on talking about.

Yeah, leave it to me to be a buzz kill. Seeing as we’re in the midst of one of the two greatest eras in Phillies baseball history, it makes sense to want to sit back and enjoy the ride. After all, baring a major catastrophe the Phillies are going back to the playoffs for the fourth year in a row this October. That’s significant considering the franchise has more losses than any pro team in this hemisphere.

But citing that progressive, forward thinking and general manager who views his job as one in which he has to keep the team competitive even after the stars of this bunch have moved on (and the fact that he traded Cliff Lee in order to rebuild the farm), it just might be the time to do something extreme.

And by extreme I mean trade Jayson Werth.

Look, I know he’s a popular player, who very well might be coming into his prime and slated for a big season. Then again, Werth also has completed just one season where he didn’t have to share playing time with anyone, or spend time recovering from an injury. Of course he bashed 36 homers, had 99 RBIs and went to the All-Star Game in that one season, but that’s kind of beside the point.

There are a few interesting variables that make trading Werth now seem not so foolish. The biggest reason to do, of course, is his contract. Werth is in the final year of his contract and will be paid a salary of $7 million this season. This year, if he posts numbers even remotely close to the stats he produced in 2009 then he could command a pretty hefty deal as a free agent. Considering that Werth already has a World Series ring and had to wait until he was 29 until he played more than 102 games in a season, he might want to cash in.

One of the topics that were most on the minds of the fans and the scribes last winter was Werth’s potential affordability. Working under an obvious salary cap, GM Ruben Amaro Jr. will have to get very creative in order to re-sign Werth to a deal greater than the $7 million he’s getting in 2010.

But Amaro has options. In fact, he has a 22-year-old star in the making that was just sent back to the minors after going 3-for-3 with a pair of home runs in a Grapefruit League game against star Justin Verlander and the Tigers. Oh yes, Domonic Brown has the type of talent that can make folks forget about Jayson Werth very quickly.

Though he hit .417 in his first big league camp, Brown was slated to spend the season at Triple-A in 2010. The guy needs to get his at-bats more than he needs to be sitting on the bench watching Raul Ibanez, Shane Victorino and Werth play. Still, if there is an injury or a slump expect the Phillies to get a police escort to get Brown down the Turnpike from Allentown.

Of course the fear is rushing the kid, who very well could match the speed and power numbers of a young Darryl Strawberry or Reggie Jackson. Hey, there was a reason why the Phillies didn’t get Roy Halladay in July at the deadline and that reason was Dom Brown.

Conversely, the Phillies are notorious for making their top prospects sit in the minors longer than they should. Chase Utley didn’t stop looking over his shoulder until Placido Polanco was traded in 2005 and manager Larry Bowa, against his will, was forced to send him back to Triple-A in 2004 so Doug Glanville could take the last bench spot.

When he wasn’t being mentioned in trade talks with whatever pitcher Pittsburgh felt like trading away at the moment, Ryan Howard had to wait for Jim Thome to get injured before he got a legit shot in the big leagues. Yet when that day finally came, Howard was closing in on his 26th birthday.

There’s no way Brown is going to be in the minors when he’s 25. Shoot, there’s probably not much chance that he’ll be in the minors when he’s 24, either. I imagine if Brown was in any other organization that hadn’t been to the World Series two years in a row or had three outfielders in last summer’s All-Star Game, he might already be playing in the Majors.

So here’s the idea: since Amaro said he traded Cliff Lee was to replenish the minor league system that saw seven of its top 10 players traded, maybe Werth could be dealt for a prospect or two. Of course if he leaves via free agency and is labeled as Type A, the Phillies will get a compensatory draft pick(s), which will help. If Werth is gone for 2011 and Ibanez is headed for his last year on his deal, the Phillies are going to need some reinforcements in order to remain competitive.

At least in the meantime, Brown is nearly ready to take over and he’ll cost perhaps $10 million less than Werth.

The madness is about the money

“As soon as you come to terms that it’s all about the money and that merit often does not matter, then your frustration will subside.”

That’s what a psychologist friend told me the other day when we were just chatting about life and basketball. We tend to talk a lot about those subjects, but this time we both were particularly down and whiny.

Of course these things about "the way it is" are subjects that I already knew much about and had come to terms with, but it’s always does the soul good to hear it from someone with some true knowledge. No, it didn’t make it feel any better to know that essentially people who have to work for a living are nothing more than a number on some Excel spreadsheet. But whatever...

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Actually, that goes for the people associated with basketball teams that play in the NCAA, too. In a bottom line driven world, there are none shallower than the folks who run the NCAA basketball tournament. If we have learned anything through the years it’s that the feudal system is still at play in the United States and the overlords are the guys who run college sports.

This is not to say the NCAA Tournament isn’t a great event. Far from it. In regard to sports playoff systems—both professional and amateur—it’s tough to top the annual basketball tournament the NCAA puts on for its top Division I teams. Each team is assigned a spot on a grid that corresponds directly to its strength in the field, a venue and a game time are decided upon and the players are given a ball to hash it out.

It can’t get any purer than that.

And as long as no one peaks behind the curtain than no one will be the wiser. Actually, the selection committee is kind of like how author Eric Schlosser describes the meat industry in his book, “Fast Food Nation” and the people will close their eyes and open their mouths for anything as long as they aren’t told how the animals are slaughtered.

In this case it’s how the teams are chosen. Look, every year someone or some group is disappointed about being left out or underrated. It’s a cliché at this point because it happens, every single year.

But that doesn’t make it right. Since there is no oversight or even direct knowledge of how the process comes together, it seem OK to assume that teams are placed in the venue and in a matchup that will get the most money for the NCAA. That’s fine as long as it’s explicit. The trouble is it is not. Just like the NCAA wants to make billions off the backs of teenagers playing a game in exchange for free classes and room and board, I’d love to know how the NCAA selection committee arrived at the fact that Temple is only good enough for a No. 5 seed in its tourney and Villanova is a No. 2.

Perhaps I’d even ask why some of the so-called “mid-majors” were left out when they very well might play more entertaining basketball than a “major” school team, but I already know the answer. Though perennial powers like UCLA, Connecticut, Arizona, Indiana and defending national champion North Carolina, are out of it this year, the committee chose to bump up the prestigious basketball schools instead of giving others at some marquee matchups.

The NCAA hears the complaints and brushes it off as one would expect, saying there are complaints every year and the tournament is always good. Still, that’s not the point. Apparently Toyota made a quality, affordable and an efficient car until the brakes stopped working on a few of them. What if the CEO of the car company said, “Yeah, I know the brakes don’t work, but look at the wax job on that thing… It’s sparkly!”

The NCAA basketball tournament is as shiny as the most precious diamond, but beauty has its price and no one is going to watch a basketball game just because it’s exciting. Oh no, people are far too shallow to figure out on their own what is good or not. That’s where the NCAA selection committee comes in with acronyms like RPI and formulas for measuring the strength of a team’s schedule or its quality wins. For instance, Temple finished the season as the top team in the Atlantic 10 conference and won the tournament championship for the third year in a row. That’s a pretty impressive feat and when coupled with an RPI ranking as the No. 8 team in the country, Temple should be looking at a No. 2 seed at best and a No. 3 at worst.

Right?

Conversely, Villanova checked in as the No. 4 best team in the Big East, a one-game exit from the conference tourney and an RPI of 11. Based on that, the best-case scenario puts Villanova as a No. 3 seed or a comfortable No. 4.

That was easy… or was it.

Well, it’s easy until the intangibles are factored in. Stray too far from North Broad Street and there aren’t too many people who can name a single player on the Temple team. Hell, most folks probably believe John Chaney is still the coach of the team and only know him as the guy who wanted to strangle John Calipari.

Meanwhile, Villanova got to the Final Four last season by winning one of the most exciting games of the tournament. Plus, coach Jay Wright is as genuine, stylish and as affable as they come in college basketball and his top player, Scottie Reynolds, is one of the all-time greats for a school with a proud basketball tradition. He’s been written about in Sports Illustrated and everything. Maybe that’s why a lot of the top college basketball pundits say Villanova will get to the Final Four on a route that is not nearly as difficult as last season.

So is this starting to make sense now? And if it is why do we even bother with things like RPI and strength of schedule and all of those other crazy metrics? Why not start with UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Duke and set it up around those teams? Then, if those teams are having a bad year, just bump up the second class or the better teams from whichever glamour conference (Big East, ACC, Big Ten, SEC or Pac-10) is playing well.

See, there doesn’t need to be all this frustration and depression about wrong and right. They already sold all the commercial time so just close your eyes and open up wide.

Oh, so you want to talk about crazy trades...

SARASOTA, Fla. — OK, here's one for you...

What if the Phillies traded both Kyle Kendrick and Jamie Moyer to the Mets and got back Johan Santana? Huh? How's that one grab you?

Alright, that doesn't sound fair. Let's say the Phillies throw in some cash, too. Why not? Maybe then they could flip Santana to Seattle to get back Cliff Lee.

Then we'd be getting somewhere.

Look, as far as outlandish and ridiculous ideas go, the Kendrick, Moyer, cash, and Santana for Lee deal I just proposed is not any crazier than the one ESPN put out there when they floated the always mysterious "sources" rumor that had the Phillies dealing away Ryan Howard to St. Louis for the game's greatest player, Albert Pujols. Actually, my idea is a lot less crazy than the Howard-for-Pujols bit because at least it makes sense. No, neither deal is ever going to happen.

Never, never, never, never.

In fact, Phils' general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. called the very notion of it, "irresponsible," on the record to Insider, Jim Salisbury.

So there's that.

But what the hell... at least my idea is reasonable.

Let me explain:

You see, to a team like the Mets — one that stinks and is going nowhere, post-haste -- a pitcher like Santana is a luxury. Better yet, it's like living in a trailer park with an Escalade parked out front. Those are some mixed up priorities and financial irresponsibility. If the Mets can remove Santana's salary quickly, it would be wise.

That doesn't mean they'll do it, though. Wise and baseball GMs are two terms that rarely appear in the same paragraph, let alone right next to each other.

Kendrick makes barely above the minimum and Moyer gets a nice salary so that's what the cash is for. Essentially, the Phillies would be doing the Mets a favor in all aspects. And since the Mariners appear to be spending some cash and rebuilding their roster, maybe they’ll go for the Santana for Lee deal, too.

See how easily that came together? Now someone take me to Bellevue. I want the ESPN suite/

Oh yes, there are many reasons why the Howard-Pujols idea is nuts, and most of them are quite obvious. Yes, Howard was born and raised in the St. Louis suburbs and is revered like a hometown hero. When the season ends Howard goes home to Missouri to hang with his friends and family and uses his home base for his off-season workouts before heading to Florida.

Here’s the thing about that… Pujols is from Missouri, too. Sure, Howard is a hometown hero, but Pujols is a hometown god. Not only is he the best player in the game right now, but he might be the greatest Cardinal ever, too. That’s saying something since Stan Musial (the man who should have gotten the same hero worship and publicity for being one of the greatest hitters the way Ted Williams has) is synonymous with the organization. Just nine years into his career, Pujols is poised to own every major hitting record if he doesn’t get bored with it all. Last spring after the Cardinals visited Clearwater for a Grapefruit League game, I asked hitting connoisseur Charlie Manuel his take on Pujols and he dropped a line on me like he was Yoda or something.

“He can be whatever you want him to be,” Charlie said. “Home runs, ribbies, slugging, average, he can do whatever you want.”

Yes, that was the manager’s way of saying Pujols can do it all.

Look, we know Pujols is really, really good. No needs Charlie Manuel’s explanation to see that. Just watch the guy, for Pete’s sakes. If there is one snake the is out of the can of peanut brittle it’s that maybe the idea of trading Howard (and Pujols, too) means the Phillies see a day when they won’t be able to afford him. Coincidentally, Howard and Pujols have contracts that expire after the 2011 season. By then, of course, both men could have another 100 home runs and 300 RBIs tacked onto their stat sheet.

Even scarier, both players will have their Hall-of-Fame credentials stamped and ready for induction despite the fact that they will just be coming into their athletic prime. Imagine that… born months apart in 1979 and 1980 (Pujols is two months younger), both sluggers are on an unprecedented path and they just now are beginning to enter their prime.

Wow.

But with that kind of talent comes a high price. Howard gets $19 million in salary this year and $20 million in 2011, while Pujols gets $16 million for the next two years. In fact, he’s not even the highest paid player on his team.

Sure, Pujols already has more money than he’ll ever be able to spend, but there is pride, ego and all of that stuff. Maybe at the end of his deal Pujols will want to cash in for all the years he was a relative bargain for the Cardinals. Shoot, if Howard is looking for a deal in the A-Rod range (an average salary of $27.5 million over 10 years), what’s Pujols worth?

Does the treasury even print that much money?

Now try this out—and understand we’re just riffing here… maybe the Phillies might believe that if they have to pay upwards of $30 million per season for one player, why not go all in and get the best guy out there. Hell, if you’re already spending $30 million, what’s another $5 million?

Could that be the logic in all of this?

Who knows? Chances are it was just a way to get a few extra clicks on the ol’ web site and to get people talking about baseball again. Certainly there is no harm in that, is there?

Still, the idea of Howard and Pujols both with expiring contracts looming and the potential salary both men could command is quite intriguing. What makes it even more interesting is the notion that if the Phillies can’t afford to keep a guy like Jayson Werth beyond this season, how in the world are they going to be able to afford Howard and/or Pujols?

Thome not ready to hang 'em any time soon

CLEARWATER, Fla.— It doesn’t matter what it says across the front of the jersey or even what color the whole ensemble is because Jim Thome always looks good in a baseball uniform. For one reason or another, the guy was born to wear the uniform.

The Twins makes it a cool 5-for-5 for Thome, who showed up today at Bright House Field in a dark blue uni with grey pinstriped pants, and, of course, those trademarked bloused pants showing just enough sock. You know, old school.

Hell, Thome is a ballplayer and he makes any uniform look the way it should.

Maybe for Thome it’s enough to leave out the “school” in that last phrase. After all, he’s going to turn 40 in August and is pretty much just a pinch hitter and a DH these days. He’s not the threat he once was during his two full seasons with the Phillies or the first couple of seasons with the White Sox. In fact, Thome has not hit a home run since last Aug. 21 and had just five singles in 22 pinch-hitting appearances with the Dodgers. Even with 564 career homers, there weren’t too many takers for Thome’s services last winter before he caught on with the Twins.

But you know what? Thome is cool with all of that. He understands that he has to make some changes.

“I think it’s difficult, but sometimes it’s the reality,” he said before batting cleanup as the Twins DH on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t want to say you aren’t young forever, but you play the game and you work hard and you do what you gotta do to prepare, but there is a time you’re body feels different. My body doesn’t feel the way it did when I was 30. I’m going to be 40 this year and I’ve come to grips with that. I’ve had to work hard to stay where I’m at, but you try to approach it as it comes.”

It’s tough to imagine what would have happened to the Phillies if Thome had not left Cleveland before the 2003 season, just as it’s difficult to see how things would have been different had he not been injured during the 2005 season and played out his contract in Philadelphia. Had Thome not been injured it’s pretty reasonable to think that Ryan Howard would have been traded.

Nevertheless, don’t write off Thome as simply being a brief exit point until Howard was ready. Not at all. Thome really got the ball rolling for baseball in Philadelphia. He legitimized the notion that the Phillies could be a competitive ballclub in the NL East.

“We needed to do something at the time,” Jimmy Rollins said. “He brought excitement back to Philly baseball.”

Now the end is creeping ever so closer, though Thome warns that there is still plenty of baseball left for him to play. For now at least, Thome says he isn’t taking one last lap around the track.

“I don’t think so,” Thome said when asked if 2010 will be his last season. “For me, not yet. Maybe soon. I have kids and I want to be with my kids, but I think you know it [time to retire]. When the time is right maybe I’ll wake up and say, ‘You know what, maybe this is it.’ It’s not there yet. I love the game and I have an appreciation toward the game and I respect what’s been given to me.”

Perhaps two more seasons puts Thome at 600 career home runs, but of course that depends on how many chances he gets to swing the bat for the Twins this season. As it stands now, lefty Jason Kubel is tops on the Twins’ depth chart at DH and he’s coming off a season in which he hit 28 homers and got 103 RBIs.

Don’t expect Thome to play much at first base, either. Not only do the Twins have perennial All-Star and the 2006 MVP in Justin Morneau playing there, but also Thome has been at first base four times since leaving the Phillies in 2005.

But you know what? Thome has accepted the fact that the Twins’ offense isn’t going to lean on him too much. Call it aging gracefully.

“You try and look at your career and you realize you’ve played a long time. It’s one of them things that you want to keep playing and your heart is there, but this is probably going to be a little bit of a different role for me,” Thome explained. “But I still wanted to play. I still wanted to go out and compete. It’s a great situation, it’s a great organization and it has great people — the manager is great. I’m happy. I’m really just happy. You look around here and see Morneau and [2009 MVP Joe] Mauer and they are good people and I think that’s a reflection on the organization for sure.”

Then again, Thome always says things like that. It’s why he’s been beloved wherever he’s played and why everyone will miss him when he’s gone.

Just don’t expect him to go anywhere too soon.

Good day, Sunshine

CLEARWATER, Fla.—Same time, same spot. Big difference. Much nicer day today in Clearwater for Saturday’s game against the Twins and Jim Thome at Bright House. For the first time in a long time, the sun is out here...

Well, technically, the sun is out every day. Let's just say there is not a cloud in the sky. It's almost too sunny.

'I don't think the heavy stuff's gonna come down for quite awhile'

CLEARWATER, Fla.—When I went to sleep last night, the area behind the hotel was a parking lot. After a soaking rain that is expected to last all day and drop up to two inches of rain on us, that parking lot is now a nicely manicured pond complete with a walking path.

There’s also a family of alligators that have claimed the spot as a home.

OK, none of that is true, but it is raining a lot here in the Tampa Bay area. They’ll try to play baseball again tomorrow when the weather is expected to be pleasantly sunny and temperate.

Arrrggghhhh!

CLEARWATER, Fla. — So I get to this ‘burg yesterday afternoon and immediately my sinuses exploded. At least I think it was my sinuses. It was (and is) a tightness around my head, some achiness around my eyes that makes it feel like I’m squinting even when I’m not.

I can feel it in the back of my head, too, but that’s not as annoying as the squinting sensation or the pressure on the temples.

Truth is it’s put a damper on the trip already. Usually, it takes a smart-alecky retort from the GM or a drive out of Clearwater and to some weird, backwoods outpost like Lakeland or Port Charlotte before I want to go back home. As it stands, the thumping in my head has already started.

It should be noted that I’m a hypochondriac of sorts. I’m a lot like George Costanza that way in that if I have a headache with symptoms that correspond to stress, tension or sinus trouble, I immediately think it’s cancer. I usually start with the worst possible diagnosis and work my way backwards to something reasonable. Trust me when I say it’s no fun.

So it goes without saying that I would have no idea how I could have handled the sinus infection Ryan Howard had last June. Remember that one? Twice in the span of 24 hours Howard was rushed to the hospital with a fever of 104 and no clue as to what was causing it. The crazy thing about that was Howard—more or less—climbed out of his hospital bed to slug a pinch-hit, three-run homer off then-Orioles’ reliever Danys Baez to spark a rally.

Unfortunately, the Phillies ended up wasting Howard’s heroics, which were a little too cliché to begin with. Seriously, a high fever and a clutch, late-inning pinch homer over the center field fence… oh, he couldn’t set off fireworks by smashing one into the light fixtures?

Anyway, it was later learned that the source of Howard’s problems that June day was a sinus infection. Make that one whomper of a sinus infection because Howard is a big fella. You know, one of those rawboned strong men the type Grantland Rice and Heywood Braun would compose lyrical poems about because not only could he knock over walls with a line drive, but also he could chop down a redwood with his trusty ox JRoll by his side.

Nevertheless, if Ryan Howard was knocked to the deck by a sinus infection, I figured he must know a thing or two about fighting the dastardly symptoms. Hey, I was about ready to drop to one knee, but fought it because everyone knows you can’t show weakness in a big-league clubhouse. The vultures are circling even on the best days so the instant anyone lets their guard down, it’s over.

I learned that Howard still has some minor sinus trouble from time to time, but nothing remotely close to the incident last June.

“Mostly it’s some nasal congestion and some post-nasal [symptoms],” he said. “But it has never been as bad as it was last year.”

Like the rest of us, Howard is not immune from some aches, pains and sniffles. He is human, after all. But unlike most humans, Howard can go from the hospital, whack a monster homer and then get dropped off back at the emergency room.

“Yeah,” Howard said with a wry smile and shrug of the shoulders. “Sometimes that’s the way it’s got to be done.”

Nope, it wasn’t exactly, “Just get me to the plate, boys,” but to those of us who seem to have chronic sinus issues, it may as well have been like FDR’s first inaugural address when he told Americans beaten down by The Great Depression that, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Better still, no one had to shove a rubber hose from a Neti Pot up the ol’ schnoz. Hell, Howard did everything but have outpatient surgery where he was given a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite down on to serve as an anesthetic. If that guy can knock one 420-feet after getting knocked down, I guess I have to nut up and take the vice-like pressure on my melon like I have a pair.

What would Ryan do?

He’d hit a three-run homer, Shirley.

Poll numbers strike out

One of the funniest moments from writing about thePhillies for all those years came back in 2002 in the midst of Larry Bowa’s reign of error. It had just come out in one of those ubiquitous Sports Illustrated polls in which the players voted the then-Phillies skipper as the worst in the big leagues.

Sure, it was an ambiguous poll to say the least, but the point was players from around the league saw what was going on inside the Phillies dugout during games and wanted no parts of it. Hell, the team even asked that shots of the manager in the dugout during games be limited. No sense putting the dysfunction out there on the airwaves.

Anyway, Bowa said he didn’t care about what the Sports Illustrated poll indicated when asked before a game at the Vet during the 2003 season. In fact, he didn’t care so much that he spent a good portion of the pre-game meeting with the writers talking about how much he didn’t care and how dumb the players were for not seeing his brilliance. OK, he didn’t say it like that in so many words, but he clearly was bothered by his status in the poll.

The funny part wasn’t Bowa’s reaction to his No. 1 status, but the reaction by the players in the Phillies’ clubhouse. When asked about it, most of the players treated the question as if it were a flaming bag of dog crap on the front porch. Rather than jump on the bag to put out the fire, and thus getting soiled shoes, most of the players just let it smolder itself out. They said all the right things, peppering the writers with a steady barrage of jock-speak clichés.

That is except for Mike Lieberthal, another Bowa foil, who gave the best answer of all.

“If I played on another team I’d hate him, too,” Lieberthal said, before explaining how it must look in the Phillies’ dugout to a bystander. Gotta love Lieby… he had trouble figuring out how to use those clichés knowing that his true thoughts were much more fun.

So what’s the point? Who cares about that cantankerous era of Phillies baseball where one never knew what type of land mine rested just around any corner? How about this… maybe there’s something to those polls Sports Illustrated conducts?  After all, in a recent issue, the Sixers’ Andre Iguodala was voted to be amongst the NBA’s most overrated players and the Phillies’ Ruben Amaro Jr. was rated as a middle-of-the-pack general manager in Major League Baseball. Make that, second-division, actually. Ruben came in 19^th while ex-Phillies GM Ed Wade was 29^th out of 30.

Those ratings seem to be a bit off… at least for Wade. Taking his full body of work into account Ed Wade might be a vastly underrated as a big league general manager.

Really? How so? And why does it appear as if I’m talking to myself?

Here’s why Wade is underrated:

·         Hilarity

Don’t sleep on this factor. In a business where hubris and self-absorption are the norm (see: Amaro, R.) and a sense of humor is viewed as a determent, Wade’s unintentional comedy is nothing to sneeze at. Really, do you have to ask? Wade was the guy who parachuted out of a plane—a ballsy act in itself—only to get all tangled up in a tree in South Jersey. You can’t make that up, folks. Wade just hung there in a tree with a parachute strapped to his back. That’s hilarious on so many different levels. If comedians told jokes about big league GMs, Ed Wade would be like George W. Bush.

Plus, Wade has some sort of fetish (yes, it’s a fetish) with former Phillies players/employees. Now that he’s with the Houston Astros, Wade was signed and hired countless dudes he had in Philadelphia. For instance, not only did Wade trade/sign Randy Wolf, Tomas Perez, Jason Michaels, Geoff Geary, Michael Bourn, Matt Kata, Chris Coste, Mike Costanzo, Pedro Feliz, and, of course, Brett Myers, but also he took former Phillies PR man Gene Dias to the Astros with him.

With moves like this and a run-in with pitcher Shawn Chacon where Wade ended up getting choked, the Astros did the only thing they could… they gave Wade a two-year extension.

·         Patience

OK, we don’t know if this is masterful foresight or just dumb luck, but Wade should get a ton of credit for not trading minor leaguers Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels when he has the chance and everyone pleaded with him to do so. Remember that? Of course you don’t because you don’t want to admit how dumb you were. Still, it’s hard to believe a few folks got all lathered up because Wade refused to make deadline deals involving Howard that would have brought back guys like Jeff Suppan or Kris Benson from Pittsburgh.

With the core group of Howard, Utley and Hamels, Wade’s successors could be bold enough to do things like trade for Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay as well as sign Pedro Martinez, Greg Dobbs and Jayson Werth. In fact, it was Wade who swiped Shane Victorino away from the Dodgers in the Rule 5 draft in 2005. Sure, the Phillies eventually offered him back, but sometimes it counts to be lucky, too.

Make no mistake about it, Wade’s fingerprints are all over the Phillies’ roster. Maybe as much as Amaro’s, who has the strange honor of being one of the only GMs in the history of the game to trade and sign three Cy Young Award winners in the span of five months.

Oh yes, Amaro’s moves have been solid, considering the trades for Lee and Halladay and knowing when to cut bait on guys like Pat Burrell. However, he loses points for giving Jamie Moyer a two-year deal worth $13 million. With that money on hand, the Phillies probably would have had a rotation with both Lee and Halladay at the top and Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton and J.A. Happ filling out the other three spots.

Imagine that… Amaro got all those Cy Young Award winners, but would have had two of them in their prime at the top of his pitching rotation if he had allowed then 46-year-old Moyer to walk away.

Hindsight. It has to be a GM’s worst enemy...

Or best friend.

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 4

Part of the reason why we started The Podcast of Awesomeness was because we like to talk about people who do things. No, I’m not talking about driving to the store for a six-pack and a carton of Viceroys,though that can be a full day for most. Instead, we’re talking about people who contribute to our culture.

Artists, sculptors, inventers, authors. Those are our people.

Call us professional appreciators, to steal a phrase from John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity. In a media age where it’s cooler to be all snarky and critically, we decided it would be more fun to just like things.

Truth be told, we didn’t actually sit down and have a conversation about this, because God knows we all have things to do. But if I could speak for the rest of the gang — Sarah, Boonie, Dennis, Radano our MVP, Tom — I’m gonna put it out there that it’s nice to be nice.

So in three of our first four shows we’ve been lucky enough to have on people we like and want to celebrate. In our Episode No. 4, Todd Zolecki (pictured, right), the scribe from MLB.com who writes about the Phillies came on via the telephone to chat about a whole bunch of stuff. Better yet, we were able to figure out a way to hook up a telephone to our recording system. Being all nerdy and Internet-y and stuff, we wanted to have Todd on via Skype, but it didn’t work out. Give Todd credit for not being as dorky about that stuff as us.

But the point is Todd wrote a book. It’s called The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly and it’s all about the different parts of the Phillies’ history. We even talked about it on the show. Here, take a listen:

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 4

Meanwhile, in Episode 3 we had on Mike Sielski whose book Fading Echoes is the tale of two rival high school football players from Bucks County who went to Iraq together. Like I wrote before, it’s a real book.

Of course in Episode 2 we had on Chris Wilson, the great drummer from Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. It just so happens that Chris and the band will be on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon tonight, which means you have to tune in to watch. Better yet, the group’s latest record hits stores (of all kind) on Tuesday, so get it. It just might be the finest collection of songs released by the band yet, which is saying something. No, it doesn’t capture the energy and ferocity of their live shows, but that would be pretty much impossible. It also means you should get the record and then go see the band play when they come to a town near you.

Here's the song the band will perform tonight:

http://o.aolcdn.com/videoplayer/AOL_PlayerLoader.swf

Yes, we like our guests and you should, too.

Otherwise, Deitch didn’t make it to Episode 4 because he was on his way to Las Vegas so he could play cards. Episode 5 will not hit the streets until March 18 because of travel plans, etc. for the working scribes of the Podcast of Awesomeness.

Sorry, this one will have to do for about 10 days.

The Dude abides

If there is an actor who plays down-and-out, beaten and burned up better than Jeff Bridges, I haven’t seen him. That’s the reason why I didn’t like watching the movie Seabiscuit, which starred Bridges, and wasn’t totally convinced of his portrayal as the President of the United States in The Contender.

No, this has nothing to with Bridges’ acting chops. The fact is, the guy can act as well as he can grow hair and put on weight. Hell, he even made Tron watchable, and there is something to be said about a dude who was nominated for an Academy Award as the best supporting actor following his first movie, The Last Picture Show. That came when he was just 22 in 1971. Now he’s 60 and nominated for a fifth time.

Baring an upset, Bridges will get his first Oscar tonight.

Strangely, though he’s had one of the best Hollywood careers ever, Bridges is “The Dude.” Who doesn’t love The Dude? Even Bridges loves The Dude. I read an interview where he said The Big Lebowski is one of the movies that just sucks him in and he watches it as if it wasn’t even him up there drinking caucasians, bowling and getting to the bottom of a tangled caper. Bridges says if he finds the movie on TV he tells himself he’s just going to watch a little bit.

“Often I’ll be watching TV and I’ll be hitting the clicker, and if a movie of mine will come on, I’ll rarely get hooked in cause I’ve seen the thing. But The Big Lebowski, when that gets on, I’ll always say, ‘I’ll just watch Turturro … I’ll hang in until Turturro shows up.’ And then once he’s there, I’ll say, ‘I’ll just watch until he gets to the part about sticking the gun up his ass.’”

See, a guy who gives interviews like that should have multiple Oscars. Better yet, he should have won just because he used his own clothes for wardrobe and that wasn’t even the first movie where he wore his own gear for one of his characters. Watch closely the next time The Big Lebowski and The Fisher King is on because you will see Bridges in some cartoon-y Japanese baseball shirt in both pictures.

But whatever, right? Bridges doesn’t need an Academy Award as some sort of validation. Still, it’s his turn. After nearly 40 years in the game and five nominations, he has to get one just like Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese had to get one. So just put it down on the trophy for Bridges playing a used up and alcoholic country singer, Bad Blake, in Crazy Heart. Surely The Dude would approve, too.

Nevertheless, there are many, many things that I just don’t get. The list is vast and long enough even to fill all the space available on this server.

Hey, I’ve written this before, so bear with me as we go over it again. But before we dive into the mysteries of chemistry, calculus and why hockey fans bother to care why the rest of the sporting public doesn't care much for their sport[1], I hope there is someone who can explain the allure of the television broadcast of the Academy Awards.

I get the Academy Awards as much as my wife understands the appeal of a 162-game Major League Baseball season, the three weeks of the Tour de France or why I sit on the edge of my seat to watch people run for 26.2 miles. No, it's not insanity or some sort of self-mutilation. Far from it. Instead it's an appreciation of nuance and ...

Wait, no, it's insanity.

So tonight I will join in some good, old-fashioned insanity and watch the Super Bowl of glamour (nice sports metaphor, huh?), debauchery and depravity with my old lady (it's a term) and tune into the Academy Awards. I will also comment on the fashion choices of the stars in attendance without irony. The fact that the accessories worn by Angelina Jolie will likely cost more than my house isn't the issue. Instead, I will just act like the Academy Awards are oh so important and are rightly celebrated at a level higher than the Nobel Peace Prize.

So as America attempts to dig itself out of its cultural and economic abyss, we might as well handicap it. Oh yes, I know there is no way to judge art or acting unless all of the actors play the same part. I also know that the Academy Awards are inherently a big pile of BS. But whatever. As long as Jeff Bridges gets recognized we’ll sit there and take it.

Supporting actress
Mo’Nique, Precious
Didn’t see this one, but it sounds like the feel-good story of the movie scene. Besides, I couldn’t go for Vera Farmiga in Up in the Air, or Maggie Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart. No, it has nothing to do with their abilities or performances. As far as I can tell they are both worthy nominees. However, one character’s plot line was too predictable and the other was too unbelievable. Hey, the movie should matter, too.

Supporting actor
Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds
Going against the theory that an acting award can only be given if all the actors are playing the same part, Christoph Waltz was better than the other nominees. So there.

Actress
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Oh why the hell not? The Yankees won the World Series last year… why shouldn’t Meryl Streep get another Oscar.

What, could Sandra Bullock win it? Really?

Actor
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
We already explained all this. You mean you made it this far and weren’t paying attention?

Director
Quentin Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds
Going with Tarantino here strictly for the speech he would deliver. It could be one of those flighty, rambling, fun things where he thanks everyone from Wim Wenders to Vincent Price to Fiona Apple. Who doesn’t want to hear that? Plus, there is an outside shot he could curse on live TV. I’m for that, too.

However, by all accounts it seems as if Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron are neck-and-neck here. I can stand behind The Hurt Locker, but not Avatar. No way.

Best picture
The Hurt Locker
Actually, my choice should be, “anything but Avatar,” which totally ripped off the story line from Dances With Wolves. Besides, where do they get all the money to give James Cameron to make those thin-storied movies he makes? Did they just print it up and give it to him?

***

You know what will be the best part about the show tonight? Do you really have to ask?

Well, OK then… Twitter. It’s Mystery Science Theatre 3000 come to life. Make sure you follow funny people who won’t mix in silliness like spring training baseball play-by-play.

---

[1] This is incredibly baffling. Tell a hockey fan you really aren't hip to their sport and get ready for the dissertation, and, worse, an invitation to a game. Seriously, these people (yes, I wrote these people) just don't understand why everyone doesn't see what they see. Yet, they still have that, "Why can't we just be different like everyone else," attitude. Yes, I generalize because I can. Here's the thing. I'm a huge fan of track and field, long-distance running and professional bicycling. I just love it. It's a tough, grueling sport that just gets me all wound up just anticipating a big race or meet. But here's the thing... I don't want the mass populace to get it because that way I don't have to share my passion for some dumbed-down mass audience. So please, folks, let me have my geeky endurance sports with all my dork friends. Here's an idea: go watch some hockey. They really seem to want you to.

Remembering Hank Gathers' last shot

Sometimes there are moments of time that actually exist outside of reality. It’s almost as if the moment stands out as if it were a square sliced out of the epicenter of a giant cake. Usually it’s tough to decipher one day from the next as time steamrolls past, but every so often there are times when things pop out that it’s easy to remember just how the way the light hit the room or the way the air felt or smelled.

Life is funny like that. Ask me what I did last Thursday and I’d have to dig through some notes and calendars in order to figure it out. But ask me where I was on March 4, 1990 and I can explain it as if it happened just moments ago. It’s weird how that works, isn’t it?

Aside from personal achievements and milestones, large common moments are few and far between for us children of the 1970s. We were too young to remember Watergate and Nixon’s resignation and the fall of Saigon, but not quite old enough to put things like the Iran Hostage crisis in a proper perspective. We saw the Space Shuttle blow up, Reagan get shot and wondered why anyone would want to kill John Lennon.

Later, for those of us who followed sports, Thurman Munson’s death in a plane crash was a common memory, while Len Bias’ overdose death was a defining moment. That’s when we learned life can be cruel and vengeful if it’s trifled with. It doesn’t matter if a guy is just coming into his own as the best player taken from the NBA Draft and the one player that had the ability and mean streak to measure up to Michael Jordan.

But what we learned on March 4, 1990 was that in addition to being cruel, life can be unfair, too. That was the day North Philly’s Hank Gathers, while playing in a basketball game for Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, caught a lob pass with two hands in front of the rim, slammed it through, took a few more strides up court and then collapsed and died at midcourt.

Gathers’ death on the court set off a chain of events that led to one of the more implausible NCAA Tournament runs by a team, ever. Missing its captain and leader, Loyola Marymount, rallied behind Philly kid Bo Kimble and coach/St. Joe's grad, Paul Westhead, who guided the Lakers to an NBA title before Magic Johnson ran him off. Among the most lasting images in NCAA Tournament history was Kimble shooting a foul shot with his left hand as a tribute to his dearly departed pal.

Then, of course, Loyola Marymount hit the court on poured on 149 points against defending champion Michigan.

Obviously, the world was different 20 years ago. Aside from Gordon Geko, no one had a cell phone and even ol’ Gordo had to carry his around in a suitcase. There was no ESPN News or HD TVs mounted to the wall in every public space. The Internet? Nope, that was just for the government at the time. So when Hank Gathers died we heard about it as if it was a rumor. We got the news at 11 p.m. and in the early hours of the morning back in those arcane days, so Gathers’ death spread like a sadistic game of whisper down the lane.

At the Palestra, where we sat watching the Atlantic-10 Tournament, word spread like the building was on fire. Thing was, no one knew what to believe. How could Hank Gathers die in the middle of a game? He was so strong and fit. He wasn’t even a month past his 23rd birthday and had an NBA career looming in the not-so far off distance. Here was a kid from North Philly who was about to live the dream and then just like that, he was gone.

Later, we learned he had a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which is a condition where a portion of the myocardium (the muscle of the heart) is thickened without any obvious cause. It’s the same thing that killed Celtics star Reggie Lewis and American marathoner, Ryan Shay. Coincidentally, North Philly’s and former Cardinal Dougherty and Houston Rockets star Cuttino Mobley had his NBA career short by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

But back at the Palestra in 1990 when didn’t know it was real until we saw the TV where Lionel Simmons checked out of the game and get the news. No, we didn’t hear what Simmons was told because it whispered to him, but we knew from the jolt that weakened his knees and the tears that flowed that it was all too true.

Hank Gathers’ basketball career likely would have ended a while ago had he lived to have one. He’d likely be involved with something important in Philadelphia as a 43 year-old with his life experience and background. Instead, 20 years after he collapsed and died on the court we hold that sliver of time and our hands with memories that are so vivid and alive.

Like it was just a moment ago.