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Welcome to Citizen’s Bank Park. We want to remind our audience that August 5th is Motrin IB Ladies’ Night, so take your menstrual cramps out to the ballgame and keep your eyes on the Jumbotron while we hear the Phlailin’ Phils describe in their own words exactly how they plan to secure the disappointing third place spot in the National League East.

• Jimmy Rollins: “As the leadoff hitter, it all starts with me. I’m gonna keep swinging at first pitches. I won’t get on base too often and that’s just the fizzle we need to get off to a bad start. “
• Brett Myers: “Everything’s great. I’m very happy with my performance.”
• Ryan Madson: “I think I speak for the entire bullpen when I say that we’re going to give up more homers and big hits, especially when we have a lead.”
• Kyle Kendrick: “I’ll just keep throwing my limited repertoire of poorly located pitches with predictable velocity and make sure no batters feel intimidated when they step in against me. All I can do is put us in a position to lose. If the team can score less than three runs, I’m pretty sure I’ll be a bust the rest of the way out.”
• Pat Gillick: “I’ve set up the pitching rotation with a bunch of guys who are either too young or too old. 40-year-old perpetually injured Tom Gordon is the key to our bullpen. We’re always depending on 45-year-old Jamie Moyer to give us seven innings. Hamels’ chiropractor(who gets paid more than Hamels, HA HA HA!) says his astrological chart looks pretty bad for August, so that helps us lose. Enough of the duct tape and pocket lint have fallen off of this B-list staff that we’re headed for the bottom of the division. You won’t hear anybody saying ‘Cy Young’ and ‘Phillies’ in the same sentence, thanks to me.”
• Ryan Howard: “You’d think 55 homers and 150 RBI would help us win, but if I can keep up my throwing errors in crucial situations, we’ll probably lose enough to just miss the wild card. “
• Charlie Manuel: “If you’re a player, I used to be your best buddy. Rasslin’ and jokin’ around. Now I’m General George S. Patton. They used to have fun, but now our clubhouse is like a bunch a long-tailed cats in a room full of rockin’ chairs. Just gotta keep ‘em real tense like a drought waitin’ for the lady rain. Heck, the Phil’s will probably drop the club option next year and I’ll be back makin’ La-Z-Boys in Virginny.”
• Adam Eaton: “I either pitch great or I’m horrible. I can’t seem to get right in the middle. See, that’s what we need from me: a mediocre start that keeps me from getting yanked early. If the guys help me out by keeping their bats real quiet, I can turn my ‘quality starts’ into losses. I don’t want to pitch too well, you know. It’s not like I’m getting A-Rod money or anything. If I pull a Burrell next year and win 20 in the final year of my contract, somebody’s gonna throw $14 mil or so my way, and it’s not gonna be these cheapskate Phillies owners.”
• Chris Wheeler: “Hoo, baby! Did you see that pitch? He got right up in his kitchen. I mean the guy’s lookin’ for a pitch to hit, you know, something right in his wheelhouse, so he could just turn on that baby and rip a laser into the gap. But instead, he’s on his back chokin’ on dust. That pitch was in his outhouse, maybe even in his powder room and it broke the mirror and knocked the air freshener right into the trash can. Then he throws the next pitch right up into his home theater entertainment room and it ended up stuck in his Miele stackable washer and dryer. Yeah, he was trying to go middle-in with that hard slider and have it tail in on the hands of the lefty and he just left it up belt-high and I mean it got crushed. That ball was surf and turf served up on a gold platter with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. He had to put on a bib and a pair of cufflinks to hit that baby.”
• Harry Kalas: “Wheels is going to go into the back room and hyperventilate for a few minutes. I give the Phillies two chances to win the division: slim and none–and slim just left town. Watch this season go….outta here!”
• Carlos Ruiz: “Mas pagas doble”

Last night at Van Colln memorial fields where the Fairmount Sports Association baseball games are played, there was lots of discussion about a thread on Phillyblog regarding controversy in the championship of the boys 6-9 little league. I was hoping to read the thread on PhillyBlog, but found that PhillyBlog was down this morning when I visited. I did a search and found that there is a pattern of this site being down in the morning.

My son plays on one of the teams that played for the championship and I’m hoping I can contribute some of my observations to the discussion.

PhillyBlog is back online and it feels good to get this off my chest.

Philly radio loudmouth Michael Smerconish openly advocates the use of torture (in case you’re wondering if he has softened his position, he has reaffirmed his vows recently). In fact, the CIA has a secret program that uses Smerconish’s shiny bald head as an inverted hyperbolic magnifying device for its new satellite gamma radiation terrorist confession program. The super-secret-spy satellite (no, not the one that’s going to crash to Earth, silly!) shoots devastatingly powerful, yet highly accurate, gamma rays that scorch the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution beyond all recognition. The rays are then bounced off of Smerconish’s pate (where they are re-energized) and beamed to Geneva, Switzerland (if sunspot activity is light, they stop off in London and wipe out Amnesty International’s bank accounts) where they annihilate United States’ signatures from the Geneva Convention documents with the precision of the finest Swiss watch. A specially modified CIA AWACS plane flying above Lake Geneva splits the liberated torture rays and broadcasts them to every U.S. “black site” where they attack the central nervous systems of terrorism suspects. Once locked onto their targets, their energy can be modified to suit the interrogator’s needs. Options include severe pain in any area of the body, the sensation of drowning, root canal, watching an old recording of Bob Dole trying to say “Indonesia” (“Indian-EE-juh”), a Moe Howard hologram that can poke and kick the subject, and the sensation that Dick Cheney is about to shoot them in the face with a shotgun. If you feel that we are now safer than we were seven years ago, this is why. It works.

Yes, there really is a Philadelphia Pen Show.

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb missed practice today due to inflammation of his right ankle and right thumb as well as atrophy of his Trade Value. McNabb is focusing on rehabilitating his shrinking Trade Value by resting and playing only against teams with weak defenses. “Look, you get two interceptions in a game and the owners in Chicago and Minnesota starting having second thoughts,” McNabb said. “I need to walk that fine line between playing enough to keep my numbers up and keeping my injuries and interceptions down. Minor injuries that swell up and down at conveniently random intervals allow me to optimally regulate my Trade Value.”

Head Coach/Vice President of Football Operations/Minister of Information Andy Reid cited remarkably similar sentiments about McNabb’s injury status. Reid told reporters at his Wednesday news conference, “Look (throat-clearing), uh, we could just release Donovan (throat-clearing), uh, at the end of the season and let him sign wherever he (throat-clearing), uh, wants, but why not keep him healthy and get some value (throat-clearing), uh,  for him? It would be a good (throat-clearing), uh, opportunity for us to ignore our weakness at the (throat-clearing), uh, linebacker position. If a guy goes out and throws four touchdown passes, then the other owners (throat-clearing), uh, will sit up and pay attention and maybe (throat-clearing), uh, pick up that $100 million contract and we’ll get an extra draft pick to screw up (throat-clearing)(another throat-clearing). When Donovan hits the two-interception mark, it’s like when they stop trading on the New York Stock Exchange to (throat-clearing), uh, avoid a crash. We’re getting him out of the game in a way that minimizes the damage to his Trade Value. The nice thing about having two different minor injuries is that you can pick either one and you can switch from one day to the next. I just wish Donovan would study the media spin playbook a little more. I told him ‘Tuesday it’s the thumb, Wednesday it’s the ankle’, but he got it mixed up. That’s what he gets for hiring that PR guy that we canned last spring. Time’s yours.”

Birdseed: Reid’s royalty deal with Pro Sound Effects pays him the SAG minimum for each high-fidelity, “right-into-the-microphone” throat-clearing, also known as his exolabiodental fricative clause. Actually, I just wanted an excuse to write “exolabiodental fricative.”

I happened to be listening to the Eagles game today on WYSP-FM, when the commentators announced one of those contests that you could only enter if you were listening to the broadcast (you had to enter the hint they gave out-it was the Herr’s Crunch Time play of the game). While I was on the contest page I decided to look at the other contests. I followed the link for the Hyundai Super Sunday Fiesta Football Frenzy contest. As one who designs web forms all day, I usually find all the flaws when I’m filling out web forms, such as form fields that don’t have a “tabindex” attribute, making it hard to tab from one field to the next (not to mention making the form inaccessible to people with disabilities). However, the registration form for Football Frenzy takes the cake. Here’s my favorite field:

Hey, I’m an open-minded person. I figure that there must be a reason for the N/A choice. Maybe their market research showed a high number of hermaphrodites in their target market? Earthworms might want to enter? If I win the trip to the Super Bowl, I’ll wear a dress.

One night last spring I arrived at Penn Station in New York City only to find that my Amtrak train to Philadelphia was, as was too often the case, delayed indefinitely. I began wandering slowly, trying to figure out how best to occupy myself. At 10:00pm in Penn Station, the shops have closed and drunks and con artists come out of the shadows. If I know the delay is going to be two hours, I can get out of there and get a coffee. If it’s half an hour, maybe I’ll sit in the Amtrak ticketed waiting area where overweight men prop their feet upon their luggage and snore as if they were sleeping in the Great Bed of Ware.

I decided to spend the first ten minutes or so just pacing the boarding area, waiting for an announcement. About three steps into my sojourn I look up and see Phil Martelli walking in my direction. For those of you who aren’t from Philly or aren’t basketball fans, Phil Martelli is the head coach of the St. Joseph’s University men’s basketball team. In 2003 his team won 27 straight games and was ranked #1 in the NCAA polls. When we passed I said, “Hi Coach.” He replied with a quintessential Philly, “How you doin’” and we both kept going our separate ways.

I didn’t think much of it until I found out that he just published a book and the title is Don’t Call Me Coach. Geez, coa–I mean, Mr. Martelli, I’m really sorry. For four years at Penn State, I would yell out, “Hi Coach” to Joe Paterno when I would see him standing in line at the Uni-mart to buy a gallon of milk; it never seemed to bother him.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. Martelli is a great coach mentor basketball ambassador person. I just hope the book gets a new cover when the paperback comes out. What is the deal with photo of Phil and the St. Joe’s Hawk standing at the blackboard? Phil, I have Chip Kidd‘s number if you want to spruce up the jacket.

Who I think deserves to be the National League MVP and who I want to be the NL MVP? : Jimmy Rollins. Rollins carried the whole team (even Charlie Manuel with that big beer gut) on his shoulders into the playoffs.

Who is going to be selected as the NL MVP? Matt Holliday. With his team down 8-7 in the bottom of the 13th inning in the one-game play-in vs. the San Diego Padres, Holliday stepped up to the plate. I thought to myself that one at-bat would determine whether the MVP goes to Rollins or Holliday. Had Holliday popped-up or struck out and had his team failed to get the winning run home, Rollins would be a shoo-in. All Holliday did was smash a triple to right field to score the runner and tie the game. The next batter hit a sac fly and Holliday himself scored the winning run. He wins the National League batting title and the RBI title. Now his team is in the playoffs. He’ll get to go head-to-head with Rollins when the Rockies play the Phillies in the first round.

It’s not that voters can’t find reasons to give the title to Rollins (that list is as long as your arm), but that the voters can’t find reasons NOT to give it to Holliday. Holliday has the gaudy numbers. He won two legs of the triple crown.  And he had the clutch hit that put his team into the playoffs.