At the quarter pole of the 2012 season, the Philadelphia Phillies find themselves in unfamiliar territory—staring up at the rest of the National League East. And while the Phightins are off to their slowest start in the last five years, there’s still reason to believe Philadelphia can claim its sixth consecutive division crown.
Here are five good reasons to believe.
Hey Phillies fans. Have you heard the news? The Washington Nationals are taking back their park. From you, that is. Like dogs and winning baseball, Phillies fans are no longer welcome at Nationals Park.
Maybe you missed the news. It is Super Bowl week. You have likely spent the last few days trying to figure out who to boo the loudest at the party on Sunday, Tom Brady or Eli Manning. Forget about it. The “Gnats” deserve your attention.
They tried to avoid it. They announced their new “Not Friendly to Phillies Fans” policy with great stealth. It came on a Friday afternoon, the eve of Super Bowl weekend and a day when Philly sports fans were preoccupied with Wing Bowl, an annual Buffalo wing eating contest.
Sneaky those “Gnats,” like a Cole Hamels changeup. They are making single game tickets for the May 4-6 series against the Phillies available via an exclusive presale for season ticket holders and residents of Washington, Maryland and Virginia.
Phillies fans looking to attend can take their cheesesteaks and go home. “Gnats” chief operating officer Andy Feffer told mlb.com, “Frankly, I’m tired of seeing the Phillies fans in our ballpark in Washington more than anything else.”
Where’s the brotherly love? Phillies fans are an amicable bunch. They might belt out the occasional “Chooch” to recognize favorites such as Carlos Ruiz, but there is little to fear. These are not your father’s Phillies fans. They rarely even boo anymore.
Just prior to embarking on their current streak of winning the National League East five years in a row, the Phillies became the first baseball team in history to lose 10,000 games. That is a whole lot of heartbreak.
It has now turned to joy. An organization committed to winning will do that. Even last year’s early postseason dismissal, as disappointing as it was, has failed to damper the optimism about spending summer nights in south Philly, or to follow the team on the road.
This was once, not long ago, unmentionable. Maybe you took the transistor to the Jersey Shore, but that was as much to listen to Harry Kalas and Whitey Ashburn call the games as it was to keep up with the Phillies.
It’s different now. Phillies fans are proud of their team. They are pleasantly surprised to find thousands of their kind, wearing Utley and Howard jerseys, bonding with one another on the road.
Phillies fans are not hitting the road to hate on the fans of other teams. They’re doing so because they just can’t get enough of their Phillies. They are relishing the moment and they are sharing it with one another. It simply doesn’t get any better.
This all began with the winning, of course. Still, loyalty to the Phillies runs deep. Millions of Phillies fans endured bad baseball for years, whether at Shibe Park, Connie Mack Park or at Veteran’s Stadium. Throughout, they sat next to plenty of other teams fans who cheered as the Phillies got pummeled.
Attempting to keep out Phillies fans can mean only one thing. The “Gnats” are nuts. This is not a surprise. It’s been apparent for awhile. They broke the bank, remember, to sign Jayson Werth. Werth is a good player on a great team. The “Gnats” are not that.
And maybe, that is the problem. In announcing his “Take Back the Park” initiative, Feffer informed mlb.com that, “For several years now, our fans, everybody have been screaming about the number of Phillies fans that invade our park when we have a series here at Nationals Park.”
Aiming ire at Phillies fans is misplaced. It’s a smokescreen that obscures the real problem facing the “Gnats,” bad baseball. Phillies fans who visit Nationals Park in droves are doing Nationals fans a favor.
Their presence pressures the “Gnats” ownership to put a team on the field worthy of fan support. If the Nationals are better this year, they should thank Phillies fans, not work to ban them.
Especially for a team engaged in our national pastime, playing in our nation’s capital, keeping out Phillies fans is not only ungrateful, it is un-American. Like betting against Rocky Balboa.
Cheesesteak anyone?
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Philadelphia has had its fair share of interesting athletes throughout the years. Along with interesting characters, Philly sports figures have also been known for their infamous quotes.
Whether it was directly after a loss, or a miraculous fourth down reception or at a World Series parade, some Philly sports stars really knew how to blow a gasket or pump up a crowd.
No matter if it’s the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, 76ers or Big 5 basketball, these quotes will definitely bring back some memories.
So without further ado and/or eloquence, here are the best/most ridiculous/most passionate quotes in Philadelphia sports history.
Warning: Some quotes have rather distasteful language
Since its opening season, in 2004, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has completely changed the face of the Phillies organization.
In 2003, the Phillies ranked 24th in the MLB in attendance. After the inception of Citizens Bank Park in 2004, they rose all the way to fourth. The Phillies have now led all of baseball in attendance for the past three seasons. They are now working on a 204-game sellout streak going into the 2012 season. The stadium sells out every single night, and the atmosphere is perpetually electric.
Not only does this state-of-the-art, $336 million stadium draw in massive crowds, but it supplies them with everything that a baseball fan could possibly dream of.
The Philadelphia Phillies have created a model of success for other teams to follow in Major League Baseball. Over the past decade, they have gone from the basement of the National League to a perennial powerhouse. This turnaround all began with the introduction of the baseball paradise that is Citizens Bank Park
The 2012 Philadelphia Phillies look strangely similar to the 2011 version. All of the biggest contributors to the team’s success will be back in the City of Brotherly Love for at least another season.
Of course, this logically leads to the question as to whether or not the same top performers will have equally productive seasons. That’s what I’m trying to address today.
Here are my statistical projections for each of the top-six players on the Philadelphia Phillies. This is kind of a power ranking because the top five are in order, but I am also predicting each of their individual stat lines.
When baseball isn’t busy being mired in steroids scandals, it’s a hyper-entertaining sport of men who face off against one another with leather gloves, tight pants, and more superstition than the average human can handle.
That, of course, is the opinion of your average baseball-obsessed super fan (ahem). To many, baseball is a boring game that requires some sort of stimulant to enjoy. For some players, it’s no different. Baseball requires a ton of stop-and-go performance, which, despite naysayers, is the No. 1 reason for major injuries.
It’s probably also the No. 1 reason that players make the choice to chew tobacco during games. With all that standing (and for many, sitting) around, players often choose to let their minds wander with some smokeless tobacco resting in their lower lip or inside their cheek.
In a sense, you can’t blame them: there are really only three guys playing at a time in baseball, which is truly unlike any other sport. On the other hand, it’s a little unsettling when you see Tim Lincecum throw in a huge dip after tossing eight shutout innings (not to mention the health risks involved).
On August 18 of this year’s MLB season, the Colorado Rockies suspended farmhand Mike Jacobs for 50 games when he tested positive for HGH. Aside from the obvious implication, this story provided us with a perfectly nasty photo (pictured above).
Things can get out of hand (See here: Nyjer Morgan throws his chew at St. Louis’ Chris Carpenter) at times. With Morgan’s Brewers currently trying to battle back from a 3-2 deficit in the NLCS, we take a look at MLB’s current top 10 most obvious tobacco chewers.
The Philadelphia Phillies‘ offense have been a puzzling bunch for most of the 2011 season. For a while, on Opening Day as the team struggled making contact with Houston Astros‘ starter Brett Myers, it looked like the lineup picked right up where it left off following the 2010 National League Championship Series—standing at the plate looking at strike three.
On that day though, John Mayberry Jr. delivered a clutch base hit off of the bench, where he sat next to Greg Gross, one of the greatest pinch-hitters of all time, Greg Gross, now Phillies’ hitting coach, for most of the game. From that at-bat onward, it seemed as though the offense was going to reach down inside and deliver some of that potential we had been waiting for.
A few weeks later, Phillies’ fans were demanding a trade for a legitimate offensive superstar as Chase Utley sat out with Patellar Tendinitis and the rest of the lineup sputtered through a rough patch, headlined by tremendous offensive struggles like Raul Ibanez’s 0-for-35 slump. At that moment, it became painfully clear that this offense may not live up to its potential and was going to be a very streaky team throughout the season.
So for those reasons alone, I took to Citizens’ Bank Park last week to try and get to the bottom of the Phils’ offensive struggles and how they planned on breaking free of those streaky shackles. Needless to say, from one hitter to the next, from coach to coach, the Phillies’ clubhouse echoed like a cavernous hall about staying consistent and not trying to change their approach at the plate. (I summarized my findings in this piece earlier in the week.)
Continuing with their streaky ways, as soon as I posted that article about breaking out of the well documented slump, the Phillies’ offense caught fire. The date I posted my piece coincided with the date that the team activated its All-Star second baseman and catalyst, and even though he didn’t do much to support the cause, the Phils’ pounded Bronson Arroyo and the Cincinnati Reds for 10 runs.
As much as I would like to believe that my fingertips hold some sort of voodoo like magic and I propelled the Phillies to a big offensive night by putting a jinx on their offensive struggles, I think it’s much more likely that Utley’s return provided some sort of spark—or maybe not. Be it Utley’s return or a return to consistency, the Phils’ have certainly played better baseball since.
The Phillies as a team have scored 34 runs in five games since Utley’s return last Monday. Prior to his return, it took the Phils’ 14 games to score a total of 34 runs. There are critics out there that won’t be keen on giving Utley credit for providing a spark to a slumping offense, but the results are undeniable—with Chase Utley playing second base, the Phillies are scoring runs at a rapid pace, and that bodes well.
Heading into the season, we knew that if they could put runs on the board, they’d win games behind this rotation, and that’s been exactly the case.
After shutting things down in spring training, there is finally good news coming out of Florida in regards to Phillies’ reliever Brad Lidge. After missing close to two months of the regular season with a partial tear in his rotator cuff, Lidge is scheduled to pitch an inning in an extended spring training game. It’s a big first step for the Phils’ right-hander.
Pitching in an extended spring training game may not seem like a big deal for a major league reliever, but for Lidge, this marks the official restart of his spring training. Barring any setbacks, Lidge will probably make 10 to 12 appearances, including an official rehab assignment. If all goes well, he could rejoin the Phillies sometime in June.
Though he won’t be closing games initially upon his return, he gives the Phils’ impressive depth at the back end of the bullpen. Along with Jose Contreras and Ryan Madson, whom opponents are hitting a combined .179 against and have allowed just five earned runs, Lidge will join breakout relievers Mike Stutes and Antoino Bastardo, who’ve been better than advertised through the end of May.
With the way those four have been pitching, the rest of the bullpen is on notice upon Lidge’s return. In his role as a long reliever, Kyle Kendrick has pitched well, inspiring Charlie Manuel to use him in a couple of spot starts (one of which didn’t go very well, thanks to Jason Giambi).
He seems to be safe. Danys Baez’s stellar outing in that 19-inning marathon seems to have garnered him some respect amongst the organization, so it may very well be JC Romero, who has the worst K:BB rate of all relievers over the last three seasons, who is on the way out.
With Chase Utley’s return to the lineup, the Phillies regulars are almost, well, regular. With the infield intact in its entirety, only Shane Victorino is missing from the starting lineup and not for long. The speedy center fielder will begin his rehab assignment this weekend, and the plan is to have him test his legs in the minor leagues for about a week.
He’ll play for the Lakewood BlueClaws on Saturday and Sunday, followed by an off day on Monday. If that goes according to plan, Victorino will join the Reading Phillies on Tuesday and play there through Thursday, rejoining the big league Phillies by Friday.
With a full lineup finally intact, I’m somewhat curious as to what Charlie Manuel plans on doing with his lineup. He seems to be comfortable with the duo of Chase Utley and Placido Polanco anchoring the 2- and 3-spots in his order, and Raul Ibanez is hot enough to hit fifth.
The real question may be who becomes the right fielder when Victorino is activated. Team officials seem to be infatuated with Michael Martinez’s skill set, though he hasn’t contributed much to the team yet, and Domonic Brown, Ben Francisco and John Mayberry Jr. all have at least one minor league option.
From a baseball perspective, cutting ties with Martinez may be most beneficial for a team that is trying to win now, but from a gut feeling, we may be seeing the last of Mayberry for a while.
Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
To view the article this rant is based on, click here.
Take a look at this video. Yankees fans should get a warm feeling inside; Sox fans, not so much.
I don’t mean to incite nostalgia, good or bad. Or maybe I do, but not in the way that you might think.
I’ve harped on this quite a bit, but I am going to continue to harp on it for quite a while. It may not be a fixable issue, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t constantly irritate me for the foreseeable future.
While you’re either basking or melting in the glory of this video, take a hard look at the stands whenever the camera pans away from the field. There’s hardly an empty seat in the house.
Yes, this is one of the most thrilling moments in the history of the sport. Not only that, but it took place in extra innings of perhaps the biggest game between the two franchises that constitute sports’ most tenuous rivalry—and at the apex of that rivalry, no less.
So no, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the stands are full.
But let’s think about this. This was a four hour playoff game, meaning it ended after midnight. I looked it up, and it turned out that this was a Thursday. I would think there would be plenty of people on hand that night who had work early the next morning. Or who had kids who had school that Friday. Or both.
But they all stayed. There might be a few who walked out that night, but there sure weren’t a lot.
Transport this moment to the new Yankee Stadium in 2011, and I would think it would have unfolded quite differently.
The crowd on hand would surely be delirious. There would be plenty of fans who remained. But there would also be plenty of fans who didn’t.
How do I know this? Well, I think anybody who’s spent enough time at either of the two venues would vouch, but let’s quickly jump in the DeLorean once more.
I attended Game 1 of the 2009 World Series at the Stadium, easily the biggest game in the Bronx since the Yanks collapsed in ’04 against the Sox. It was a close game, but a miserable one. Cliff Lee blanked the Yankees. They looked so hopeless offensively that Chase Utley’s solo home run in the first felt like a debilitating punch to the crotch. You didn’t even get hit that hard, but you also couldn’t manage to bring yourself to your feet after collapsing in a heap. When he homered off CC again in the sixth—another solo shot—it felt more like a visit to the guillotine than a punch in the groin. The Yankees simply weren’t recovering from that. At least on that night.
So yes, it was a bleak game, and the crowd’s mood was understandably somber. I was too. But if you looked around the stadium that night, there were clusters of empty seats everywhere. The stadium wasn’t even full when the game started, with visible vacancies in sections all around the ballpark (except the bleachers, naturally). But when Utley went deep that second time, people started leaving. In the World Series. In the sixth inning. Of a two run game, for christ’s sake.
Part of what made the Boone home run so special was that it served as the culmination of a massive comeback.
In that game, the Yankees trailed by four after three-and-a-half innings. After six innings, they had managed just three hits off a still effective Pedro Martinez. Yankees fans had no reason to think Grady Little’s bullpen phone didn’t work—those first 5 innings were as bleak as they could possibly be. Even after Little left Pedro in for the 8th, the right-hander managed to get Nick Johnson to pop out to lead off the inning. As Derek Jeter stepped into the batters’ box, baseball-reference’s win probability chart had the Red Sox having a 94% chance of winning the game, meaning the Yankees had just a six percent chance of survival.
When Chase Utley went deep for the second time in 2009, the Yankees still had a 25 percent chance of winning the game.
They were far from dead, and the thought of losing that game could not even compare to the dread Yankees fans would have experienced if Grady Little had even had a shred of sense in him.
You have two big games in October. Two playoff games in the Bronx where the opposing team had a knife to the collective throat of the Yankees and their fans.
In one game, the home team and their faithful spectators stuck around, standing and sweating for four hours with 50,000 compatriots, feeling defeated until their fears were vindicated as bedlam was unleashed in the Bronx.
In another, 35,000 sat in their seats, lamenting their favorite team’s fate long before it was sealed. Thousands more put the WCBS broadcast on their respective car radios, and turned the volume down as they drove home on the turnpike or highway of their choosing.
For a full-length and explanatory rant on this phenomenon, click here.
Jesse Golomb is the creator and writer of Soap Box Sports Byte. He currently works for Baseball Digest. If you enjoyed this article, or want takes on the rest of the Major Leagues, the NFL and more, you can read the rest of his work on soapboxsportsbyte or follow @SoapBxSprtsByte
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At this point of the season, all the high risk-high reward players are either sitting on someone’s bench or on their DL. But there are still some guys out there who can make a difference on your league’s standings, both short-term and long-term. As we pass the quarter-way point of the season, here are some moves that could pay off big time if you make them.
Short-term difference makers:
Long-term difference makers:
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For the past decade, the All-Star teams have been highlighted by the same players year after year. Players like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Ichiro, Albert Pujols, and Chipper Jones have appeared in the starting lineups every year and it’s starting to get old. Between now and 2014, a new generation of faces will emerge as baseball’s best and brightest and the old ones will begin to fade. Four All-Star Games from now, a few of the old faces will still be there, but many new ones will shine on one of baseball’s biggest stages.
We all know that in 2014, many of these players probably won’t be on the same teams they are on today, but for the sake of the article, let’s imagine they all stayed put. Since the 2014 All-Star Game will take place in an American League stadium, there will be a Designated Hitter in each lineup Enjoy.