The Philadelphia Phillies need to take a page from the New York Yankees handbook. Given a home series with the floundering Florida Marlins, the Phillies proceeded to screw the pooch over the weekend and watched a seven game division lead fade to four after a three game Marlin sweep! Meanwhile, the Yankees strangled their bitter rivals, the Boston Red Sox, taking four from the Sawx with timely hitting and fabulous pitching and taking a firm hold of the division lead. Speaking of pitching, what has become of Phillies Ace Cole Hamels who got lit up again this weekend and fell to 7-7 on the year???
The California Goldenboy who brought back Rocktober to Philadelphia by leading the Phillies to a World Championship last season has been remarkably pedestrian thus far this season. What’s up?!?
Is Hamels satisfied after signing for $20.5 million guaranteed this off-season? Yes, he avoided arbitration and got his money earlier than expected, but one expects his next contract to be a monster as compared to the $6.6M he gets next year and $9.5M in 2011.
Is he pissed off that the Phils signed fellow lefty Cliff Lee to be another horse in the rotation? Hamels was making some progress over the last few games before the Lee signing and went all to Hell ever since. However, one can’t imagine that Hamels minds having another stopper in the rotation to take some of the pressure off?
So what is it? Wife Heidi Strobel has a baby on the way and they just bought a new $2.2M mansion to house the newest Hamels, is that it? Or is it, too much time on the banquet rounds after winning his NLDS and World Series MVP trophies as Cole alluded to earlier in the season. One thing is for sure, if the Phillies can’t get the Cole Hamels of October 2008 back sometime soon, a back to back World Series dream will fade into never never land.
Sunday marked the 30th anniversary of the untimely and tragic death of Yankee Captain and catcher, Thurman Munson. Munson died when the plane he was piloting crashed while practicing touch and go landings in Ohio. While Munson himself is not enshrined in Cooperstown, his legacy is forever cemented in the hearts of all Yankee and baseball fans that had the privilege to watch him play.
All my life I have dreamt about a career in Sports; player, broadcaster, executive, any would have been great. In retrospect, I think I may have passed on GM of a major sports franchise. I wrote earlier about Roy Halladay and the need for Toronto and Philadelphia to make a deal and GMs Ruben Amaro of the Phillies and JP Ricciardi of the Bluejays (both seen above) went toe to toe to make it happen.
It appears that Ricciardi either dramatically underestimated Amaro or overestimated his market position. Ricciardi has been widely speculated to be a “dead man walking” with his only chance of survival being a drastic salary purge of the Bluejays bloated budget. Plus his current wishy washy handling of the Halladay affair and wide spread use of the local and national media in trade “negotiations”, did nothing to endear himself to already jaded Toronto fans. By asking for a king’s ransom for Halladay and not budging, Ricciardi watched the trade market shift gears and blow right by him, most likely cementing his fate as a casualty of the trade wars this coming off-season.
So it appears that Buster Olney of ESPN has his thoughts on why the Philadelphia Phillies need to sign Toronto Bluejay ace pitcher Roy Halladay, effectively trying to steal my thunder. Thankfully, while his opinions are solid they do not quite emulate mine and make my case even better! As ex head coaching great Herm Edwards stated (okay so Edwards was not great as a head coach; he was a fine motivator and defensive expert, but didn’t have a great eye for talent and was too soft on his players, but I digress…) “You play to win the game!” or in this case, the World Series. How would Halladay help the Phillies? Well…
It appears Anaheim has more to crow about than Disneyland and the Mighty Ducks. They can lay claim to one of the finest baseball teams in recent history as the Angels have won three of the last four division titles and look on their way to doing so again. Why all the love for the Angels who haven’t been to a World Series but for their one Championship in 2002? This is a franchise that has had to live in the shadow of the Los Angeles Dodgers since their inception and this year has had to overcome the losses of Mark Texiera and Francisco Rodriguez in free agency and Nick Adenhart in a tragic car accident just days into the 2009 season. 
Wow! That is all I can say about blogger Jerod Morris, who in his infinite wisdom, openly opined that Raul Ibanez must be on the juice due to his great start this season. I guess accountability has gone by the wayside in deference to the shock factor in today’s blogs. When did it become okay to say anything about anyone?!? Thankfully Raul did not duck or dodge his accuser, he went back at him with both barrels, calling Morris’ comments ”pathetic and disgusting” and offering to “give you back every dime” he’s earned via baseball if he ever tested positive for PEDs. 
Perhaps the pedigree of being a World Series Champion can finally get Ryan Howard off the All-Star snub list. The former MVP and fastest player to 100 (and soon to be 200) home runs, was leading the league in home runs and RBIs last July. That still did not stop him from watching the game at home and becoming the first player in history to not make the All-Star team while leading in those two offensive categories. 
This week, we learned that Manny Ramirez, a current-day MLB icon and one the best right-handed hitters of all time, is being suspended for reportedly having hCG (a female fertility drug) in his system. Is he trying to get pregnant or hit Vegas with another Manny-bomb? He’s been in LA for several months now; is this Manny’s way of telling us he’s buying into the liberal West Coast culture? Do the ‘Mannywood’ tabloids put this in the ‘just Manny being Manny’ section?
In the movie Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones tells Kevin Costner that “the one constant in America has been baseball.” “Baseball has marked the time” as America rolled by, been erased and rolled by again, baseball is a part of our past and is what reminds us all of what once was good. 
Hurry back Alex! New York Yankee fans rejoiced today with the breaking news that Alex Rodriguez took his first slide into a base since his March hip surgery. Playing 0.500 ball at a lackluster 13 and 13 record, things in New York are getting desperate. Generally Yankee fans don’t pay attention this early in a season as the Bombers are traditionally slow starters. But missing the playoffs last year and starting the season 0-5 against the Boston Red Sox has started the faithful grumbling into their beers. 
