God … I’m so so very tired of Winter. More snow today … but only about five inches. Fine. Dealt with it. But I am tempted to leave my car running overnight in an attempt to speed Global Warming.
At the Phillies game watching them get eviscerated by the Milwaukee Brewers …
Went to Federal Donuts and find out the only chicken they serve now is on a roll!!!!
WTF!!!
Used to be … Federal Donuts would give you a halved breast (2 pieces) and a drumstick accompanied by their delicious donut. EVERYTHING was delicious! Now it’s a chicken sandwich, take it or leave it. So I left it.
Got two donuts and stomped off in crushing disappointment. Procured an Italian sausage sandwich to ease my pain. Never a disappointment … #wheresthechikin
OK … not so much today with temps in the 30s. But somewhere they are playing Major League Baseball, and that should be close enough to prove that the Spring has sprung.
With this baseball season, comes many conflicted emotions for Philadelphia Phillies fans. After two seasons of barely watchable baseball, the organization has turned over a good chunk of the roster, including highly-respected, World Series contributors (Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley); opened the gates to its minor leagues prospects of the Future; and hired a manager – Pete Mackanin – befitted to let the Future develop under an appropriately watchful and instructive eyes.
Led by an infield of Maikel Franco, Freddy Galvis, Cesar Hernendez with the compromise platoon of Ryan Howard and Darin Ruf, the Phils should bring the enthusiasm and hunger of youth ready to prove to all they belong in The Show. And at some point this season, the Phillies look to get even younger and – as a result – LESS experienced.
Manager Pete Mackinin
As Phillies fans, we just have to be patient, understanding, resisting the urge to be overly critical or incessantly accommodating like Little League helicopter parents. There will be bumps, lumps, and frustrations along the way.
The Future looks bright if the organization’s prospects pan out, especially on the pitching mound. And the Phillies will have to find out who can play, who can hit, and who can pitch. It’s a process that can alternate between Promise and Disappointment.
Now, the 2016 Phillies might just surprise us all and jump out to a fast start … Yesterday’s come-from-ahead loss aside. They could make a run at contending or at least make a run at looking like contenders. But those odds are long and smaller than a Kerwin Danley strike zone!
Pitching prospect Jake Thompson
For the 2016 season, Phillies fans should fall back on the tried and true concepts of baseball as the best way to spend a Summer’s evening or a Saturday afternoon. Harken back to days when you visited minor league stadiums and marveled at how hard hungry young men playing a kid’s game can be as you watch this young flock of Phillies go through their growing pains. Maintain perspective when young mistakes and journeyman veterans kick away a Win. Look at each Loss as a learning opportunity that just might make 2017 or 2018 a bit more interesting … and promising.
As the saying goes, it takes a few broken eggs to make omelet.
And who knows, maybe these kids might surprise us all!
Not often do I feel genuine admiration for professional athletes. It’s rarer still that I become a dedicated fan.
If you give a twit about professional sports, you quickly learn that pro athletes come and go, sometimes on a whim and always regardless of your affection. Pro athletes are a special kind of mercenary … Keen to their value and the limited horizon of their earning potential, they tend to move where the financial grass is greener after a few years in any one city for any particular team.
There are of course exceptions; but the best approach to avoiding repeated disappointments and that goofy fan version of “loss”, when a favored player departs, is to remain a distant and objective fan, dedicated only to statistics and the calculus of how individual players will – or will not – help your preferred team addiction.
Jimmy Rollins is one of the few players to so ingratiate themselves in my view of the professional athlete should represent to become a player an individual I respect. As a partial season ticket holder, I have enjoyed watching Rollins play the shortstop position in the cozy confines of Citizens Bank Park. But now that he will move on in an unsurprising trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers, it’s time to look back at his 15-year Philadelphia Phillies career.
He had his faults, don’t get me wrong. He could have been a better hitter (.267 career average); never walked enough (averaging just 50 BB/season); and had fleeting issues with the concept of hustle on the base paths.
Through all of that, Rollins was still able to earn what I like to think is my difficult-to-earn Sports Admiration by what he accomplished in 2007.
That season he set career marks in Games, At Bats (716), Plate Appearances, Runs (139) and Triples (20). With 17 games remaining in the regular season and the Phillies facing a 7.5 game deficit in the National League East, Rollins batted .309 with multiple hits in 15 of those games, 3 Homeruns, 12 RBI. Leading the Phillies past the Mutts and grabbing the first of 5 consecutive NL East crowns!
But what really set that season apart in my mind was what he said a few weeks before the first meaningful pitch of 2007 was thrown, before a single at-bat, even before spring training started. Following a season where the New York Mets dominated in winning the NL East by 12 games, James Calvin Rollins declared the Philadelphia Phillies “the team to beat in the National League East” for that upcoming 2007 season!
Certainly I wasn’t alone in finding Rollins’ proclamation cringe-worthy for a team that hadn’t shown much life or distinction in preceding seasons. But that’s what impressed me most in 2007, that Rollins had the confidence to proclaim how good his team was, and then have the career season to make sure it happened. In the end, Rollins won the National League Most Valuable Player Award, a Gold Glove (his first of four), and a Silver Slugger (his only) in what was the best season of his career.
From that 2007 season forward, I could overlook those isolated hustle-related incidents because of the confidence – even cockiness – and Leadership he provided a team that would win just its second World Series MLB championship a year later.
In his 15 years in Philadelphia, Rollins set franchise career marks in Hits (2306) and Doubles (479); appeared in 3 All-Star Games; and finished 3rd in Rookie-of-the-Year voting (2001). At the crucial position of shortstop, he won the aforementioned four Gold Gloves; but even more impressively he ranks 3rd in Fielding Percentage (.983) among all shortstops in modern Major League Baseball history.
No doubt this places him among the best defensive shortstops ever to play the game.
However, from this day forward Jimmy Rollins will provide his special kind of Leadership and defensive play in a uniform other than the red pinstripes of a Phillie. It will be weird seeing him play in another uniform, let alone the blue of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But such is the nature of the tenuous pro athlete-fan relationship.
You only get to enjoy watching them play for your team for only so long. Hopefully for Phillie fans, 15 years was long enough.
May the baseball gods be fair to you, Jimmy Rollins! May you have the chance to recapture that elusive championship feeling once again. Just please, not with the Dodgers … or the Mets, Braves, Yankees, Nationals or Red Sox …
I was all of eight years-old, riding home from a family visit to relatives on my father’s side of the family. It was a different time then, illustrated no less than by the way we stood on the floor of the back seat – unbuckled – to watch as Dad drove us home with all the windows rolled down in a car that knew not of air conditioning on a hot, humid Sunday afternoon.
The date is – in the interest of honesty – seven days short this Fathers Day of a full five decades of baseball history … June 21, 1964
Dad decides to spend the trip homeward listening to the Philadelphia Phillies playing the lowly New York Mets at Shea Stadium, which had opened for business just two months before. Jim Bunning was on the mound that day in a game already in progress, the first game of a double-header.
For those baseball fans not born or baseball-aware before the turn of the century, a double-header is a scheduled event on a Major League Baseball team’s game calendar deliberately requiring the play of TWO games of baseball in one sitting.
Baseball used to actually schedule double headers as a normal part of every team’s calendar, repeated several times a year … until they caught on to the concept of gate receipts and their effect on earnings and profitability. You only see them nowadays when rain outs and tight scheduling require doubling up; and even then, they almost always require the fans to leave the stadium and buy additional tickets to see the second game.
They call this the Day-Night Double Header. But you can refer to them as Double-Dipping-the-Fans-Because-You-Can Header!
It was late that afternoon … around 4:00 when Dad turned the game on. I was yet to reach the point of my full Phillies awareness. That would be – rather traumatically – that following September when the renown ’64 Phillies would spiral in flames from 1st place in the National League with 12 games remaining …
Oh hell, I don’t want to go there!
My point being, I was hardly paying attention to the game as I bounced around the back seat, most likely in some sort of competition or conflict with my younger brother, Pat. So I remember very little of the actual game, except for the conclusion when Dad mentioned that Jim Bunning had pitched a PERFECT GAME!
I knew not what that even meant at the time.
Bunning’s Father Day feat was most appropriate. He was the father of seven children at the time (eventually having 12!!), only one of which was there in New York that day.
Bunning’s performance still goes down as one of the Top 10 perfectos in Major League Baseball history. He threw only 89 pitches to complete the game, only 21 pitches were thrown as balls. He struck out 10. It was the first perfect game in the National League since 1880! And Bunning became only the second pitcher at the time to throw a no-hitter in both the National and American Leagues.
The other pitcher to throw no-hitters in both leagues? Cy Young
Bunning tortured his dugout mates by constantly talking about his developing perfecto, breaking a major baseball superstition. He later recounted losing a no-hitter three weeks before against the Houston Colt .45s after keeping silent and decided he would not avoid the subject this time around.
What I remember most about Bunning was his wild follow through. When he threw his hardest, he would fall off on his left side, often finishing with his left arm on the ground, his body almost parallel to the pitching mound. Not exactly how the youngin’s today are coached.
Other interesting trivia from Bunning’s Very Special Fathers Day celebration:
Bunning’s first no-hitter was pitched on July 20, 1958 against the Boston Red Sox. He was pitching for the Detroit Tigers and remarkably enough the game was also the first game of a scheduled double-header.
After the game, Bunning negotiated an appearance on TheEd Sullivan Show for all of $1000., but it was enough to build a pool and pool house at Bunning’s Kentucky home!
Bunning struck out pinch-hitter John Stephenson for the last out throwing nothing but curve balls after recalling a similar game earlier in the season when Phils manager Gene Mauch told Bunning in at on-the-mound meeting that Stephenson “… can’t spell curve.”
Bunning went on to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. His post-baseball career took him from local Kentucky political offices to an unsuccessful run for Governor to successful campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives and eventually to a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Bunning left the Senate in 2011. He continues to reside in Kentucky at the age of 82.
Much angst has plagued Philadelphia sports fans the past several weeks over the words or behavior of some the city’s biggest sports stars. As with just about every other situation in Life, there are lessons to be learned and subtle insights into truths that can lie just below a stormy surface.
Two recent cases-in-point need no introduction to any Philly sports fan not lying in coma the past month.
The first incident was the very public benching of Phillies shortstop, Jimmy Rollins.
Rollins was benched – somewhat stealthily – by new manager Ryne Sandberg, a Hall of Fame player who earned his plaque from both Production and Effort. Although it was obvious that Rollins had wandered into Sandberg’s doghouse, it was only slightly less obvious the likely reason was Rollins “Who cares?” remark to questions about his slow start to the Spring Training season.
I have always been a big Jimmy Rollins fan. Even more so since his 2007 statement that the National League East Championship passed through Philadelphia. Not only was this an aggressive statement in a season following several where the NL East was dominated by the Atlanta Braves, Rollins walked the talk; won the 2007 National League MVP; and ensured the Phillies first Division Title in string of division titles!
Yet, no one found fault with Sandberg’s public – though muted – benching of the team’s senior statesman during the spring lead-up to Sandberg’s first full season in the Phillies captain’s chair. He needed to set a positive attitude, including a mindset where caring mightily about wins and losses would be paramount. So even though it was “only Spring Training”, Rollins was sent a message about Leadership, Substance, and Mentoring.
Now read the views on Spring Training ’14 as uttered by Chase Utley, the Phillies second baseman in The Philadelphia Inquirer’s April 5 article on Utley’s hot season start in contrast to his quiet spring.
“Obviously, you’re looking for results in spring training, but being around for a while, I know that’s not the most important thing.”, Utley said. “The most important thing is getting your rhythm going into the season.”
First off, no one is going to confuse Utley and Rollins in either personality or demeanor on the field. Utley is all business all the time. Rollins enjoys the game and is not afraid to show it. Personally, if blessed with the ability to play the game at their level, I would prefer Rollins approach to enjoying the game as much as possible, if not necessarily his undervaluing the Power of Words.
In reality, Utley was expressing the very same mindset Rollins expressed when it comes to Spring Training success … or lack thereof. The difference is that Utley’s quote was not issued in the midst of a slump – even if only a spring training slump. Secondly, it’s not like Utley to be so flippant as to reduce his well-stated sentiment into two words certain to curdle the milk in Ryne Sandberg’s corn flakes!
Moral: It ain’t so much what you say as how – and when – you say it.
Photo from the source.com
Sometimes what’s not said that says all you need to know …
When I first heard the rumors about the Eagles shopping Jackson, I chalked it up to off-season football beat writers being a bit bored waiting for the April college player draft. No way could I see the Eagles wanting to jettison a skilled player that yielded 1300 yards and 9 TDs in just the previous season.
How could they be so stupid?!?
But then the stories – or rumors for all we really know – began to come out. A lot of it was disturbing from a team unity/distraction-avoiding point-of-view … The most incriminating pieces of evidence coming from Jackson’s own Instagram account.
Until the whole story comes out – if it ever does – no one will really know what the Eagles knew and when they knew it.
The Big Aha! – for me however – was not what was being said; it was in what was NOT being said … by those in the Eagles locker room.
Where were the players when “one of their own” was being pilloried in the press and set adrift by a team that lives or dies by the profligacy of its Offense?!? Why was there no circling of the wagons, no outward signs of support from those still with the team? Where was the All for One and One for All?
Only LeSean McCoy came out in tacit support of Jackson, but that was only after the deed was done.
To me, that said so much more than all the stuff that was being said about the character of Jackson. It was apparent that his standing among his team and teammates was lacking significantly. It was obvious that there was certainly something behind what was being said, even if we never really know for sure what it was.
(In celebration of Opening Day 2014, a trip down my baseball memory lane …)
My first recollections of Philadelphia Phillies baseball came during that Season From Hell – 1964! You really do not have to explain that reference for most Philadelphia baseball fans, especially those over the age of 55. Most long-time Phillies fans and – due to generations of legend sharing – even many of those newer to the game can recite the scenario that played out that year.
Gene Mauch
What I remember is my father sitting at the kitchen table; the radio playing; listening to By Saam, Bill Campbell, and Richie Ashburn (in just his second year as a broadcaster with the Phils); smoking cigarettes with a quart bottle of Schmidt’s or Ballantine’s beer, a glass sitting on the table beside him. He would sit there throughout the game listening and visualizing the game being played. In those days games were rarely televised during the week.
So some of my first Phillies memories were the turmoil and angst being lived and endured – one game after another – as the Phillies frittered and fumbled away a 6 1/2 game lead over the rest of the National League with only 12 games to play.
(Of course none of this in any way led me to feel sorry for NY Mets fans who went through two straight years of this in 2007 & ’08!!)
It was difficult watching Dad going through that September. He lived for his Phillies, much more so than the football Eagles. He would just shake his head, when he wasn’t yelling at a botched play or a wasted at-bat. But he was hardly the only one suffering from Phillies Depression in my young 8-year-old universe. Neighbors – both young and old – could find little else to talk about.
When the end finally came, there was a sense of disbelief, then anger … anger at Phillies manager Gene Mauch especially.
That was a HUGE part of my introduction to Phillies baseball.
The Phillies didn’t make it easy for their young, impressionable fans in the 1960s and early ’70s. From 1965-1974 the Phillies posted just three seasons with winning records. Among the more abysmal campaigns were losses that totaled 99 (’69), 95 (’71), 97 (’72) and 91 (’73). It’s hardly the kind of performance that builds loyal fan followings in most cities.
And yet they remained Our Phillies … Dad in particular never lost his love for the game, especially his affection for the Home Team.
Back in the day, we only saw baseball and all our sports on TV in black & white. I can remember sitting down next to Dad as he watched a football game (most likely Notre Dame) and asking him which team he was rooting for, the “white” team or the “dark” team? Whichever one he picked – for some contrarian reason – I would say I was rooting for the other team. Maybe my sense of fairness demanded someone root for the ‘other guys”.
Clay Dalrymple
That night at Connie Mack I can remember entering the stadium bowl from the tunnel and being absolutely stunned by the colors. The bright green grass especially … the red and white uniforms … the grays of the visiting team … the colorful billboards … the right field “spite fence” … the brown dirt of the infield … When you are used to seeing an event purely in blacks & whites & grays, you suddenly realize what you have been missing; what color and natural sound add to the spectacle.
To top it off, as we took our seats in the upper stands along the third base line, I was horrified at the steepness of the grandstand seating. For the first three innings I was so afraid that, if I leaned forward too far in my seat, I would go tumbling down the rows of seats and be thrown from the grandstand to my untimely – though spectacular – death.
The images and sounds are memories still so vivid I doubt they’ll ever fade. For me, there was no turning back. I was hooked. Hooked forever …
For that, Dad, I cannot thank you enough!
(Joseph Vincent Shortall passed away in August 2001.)
A tribute to the only reason I ever watched a Sixers game
Now before I disappoint, I must warn you that this is not a treasure trove of Cranky Man’s various sports accomplishments. Many though they are, I was a child born before the Age of Electronics-at-Your-Fingertips. Sadly there is no video, films or even a decent grainy photo of those numerous magical moments from my past.
No video of those broken field runs on cold, snowy days with a well-worn pigskin under arm as I danced through flailing arms or plowed through helpless tacklers on makeshift gridirons along Ashton Road. No snapshots of my gazelle-like grace as I tracked down a moonshot homerun fail on a sun-scorched softball field at Thomas Holme School at Willits and Holme Avenues. No montage of my patented top-shelf, net-filling wrist shot during ridiculously hot and humid summer night street hockey games in the parking lot of the old Crown, Cork and Seal factory at Angus and Ashton Roads.
Sadly those magical moments are lost forever to the public except as they reside in my somewhat refracted long-term memory, exaggerated somewhat perhaps – like photo-shopped wedding pictures of an imperfect bride. However, I might be able to find a few witnesses, given enough time and access to a sufficient supply of memory jogging altering alcohol.
No, what we have here are those distance moments and recent events in Philly sports history that shaped my psyche as a Philadelphia sports fan.
Some of the moments I have selected may surprise you. In many cases they are not those iconic moments when Championships were sealed for the Ages. Instead, they might be the plays that made that Championship seem probable, maybe inevitable.
Some are simply those indelible feats of personal accomplishments from which heroic sports memories are made. Several memories are those of epic failure, that as an early sports memories many recall those long stretches of Philly sports futility.
Needless to say, your list of memorable Philly sports moments will include some of these, and others as well. So feel free to offer your own, and maybe it will show up on a future trip down Memory Lane!
The Earliest Baseball Magic – Fathers Day 1964: The family is bundled into the car driving home from an afternoon Fathers Day visit. I am eight years old. Dad turns on the radio just in time to catch the last few innings of Jim Bunning‘s perfect game for the Philadelphia Phillies against the futile New York Mets in the first game of a sun-baked doubleheader.
Bunning was an all out, full-body thrower; often finishing his follow through his left forearm on the ground. He would retire from baseball in 1971 and would be elected a U.S. Senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1999. He still serves in the Senate,
The Night Superman wore a “P” – June 23, 1971: It was an ungodly hot day in Cincinnati as the Phillies prepared to take on the Reds that night. Pitcher Rick Wise was not feeling well on the back-end of a bout with flu-like symptoms. When he stepped out onto the Riverfront Stadium Astroturf field, the on-field temperature was close to 120 degrees.
Wise recalled that his warm-up pitches seemed like they could barely reach the plate. Yet after the Reds went down in order through the first nine batters, Wise started to feel stronger figuring the heat had sweated the last of the flu from his system. When he batted in the fifth inning, Reds starter Ross Grimsley left a slider up in the zone and Wise hit it out of the park for a homerun.
At some point after this, a bored fifteen year-old heard from a friend that Wise was pitching a no-hitter. The Phillies weren’t much better – if better at all – than the 1964 version. So not many 15 year-olds spent their time inside the house during the Summer watching them struggle in their mediocrity. But a no-hitter is a no-hitter, so we all ran into the house to catch the last innings.
In the eighth inning, with a no-hitter a very real possibility, Wise came to bat against reliever Clay Carroll. When he looked down at the third-base coach for the sign on a 2-0 count, George Myatt simply turned his back to Wise. He could swing away. Carroll layed one out over the plate and Wise drove it for his second homerun of the game.
In the ninth, Wise got two outs and none other than perennial hit machine, Pete Rose, stood between Wise and no-hit, two homerun immortality. Rose worked the count to 3-2 then …
In one of those romantic twists that makes baseball such an interesting game, Rick Wise was the starting pitcher in that second game of the doubleheader in which Jim Bunning pitched his perfect game 7 years before!
Favell’s Big Flop … April 2, 1972: It’s the last game of the Philadelphia Flyers 1971-72 regular season. The hometown hockey club, which I had just started to follow, needed to simply avoid a loss to grab the last playoff spot. A win or even a tie against the Sabres in Buffalo would do the trick.
Doug Favell was in the nets. Favell was known as a flopper, who loved to flop and flail in the crease.
As the third period ran down into its final seconds, the Flyers clung to their first playoff berth in stubborn defensive hockey and a 2-2 tie. With just 15 seconds left in the game Sabres defenseman Gerry Meehan – a former Flyer himself – collected a puck inside the Sabres zone and made a pass in the neutral zone. As he cleared the blue line he got the puck back …
I was devastated and for months broke into nervous twitches every time I heard the name Doug Favell.
Clarke and The Hound: Of course much better Flyers memories were right around the corner!
Bobby Clarke‘s overtime goal in Game 2 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals didn’t clinch The Cup, but it convinced this Flyers fan that they would inevitably bring Lord Stanley to Philly for the very first time!
Then in 1975 the Flyers won the Stanley Cup again. But it was Bob “The Hound” Kelly who set the table just 11 seconds into the 3rd period of a scoreless Game 6. He absorbed a hellacious hit from Buffalo defenseman Jerry Korab; controlled the puck behind the net; and with a little help from Bobby Clarke nudging Korab out-of-the-way …
Current Flyers and NHL broadcaster, Bill Clement scored the second and final goal to wrap up the Flyers successful Stanley Cup defense.
Boone to Rose: Any Philadelphia sports fan knows the date,October 21, 1980. On this night the Phillies would win their first World Series. But it was this iconic play between Bob Boone and Pete Rose from the clincher that seemed to represent the hand of the baseball gods to anoint those Phillies as World Champions.
Wilbert romps through Cowboy-land: It was January 7, 1981. The Philadelphia Eagles had been improving steadily since Dick Vermeil had been hired as coach in 1976. By 1978 – and the Miracle in the Meadowlands – the Eagles were playoff bound over the next several seasons. Then, on a bitterly cold day in January 1981, they were facing the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship Game and a chance to go to their first Superbowl.
On their very first drive of the game, the Eagles drove down to the Cowboys 42-yard line and Wilbert Montgomery set the tone for the rest of the day.
Wilbert’s romp and an unbreakable defense won the game 20-7. The Eagles lost the Super Bowl however, to Jim Plunkett and the Oakland Raiders.
J & J … No, I was never a big Sixers fan; but there have been times I watched, enthralled to see some of the best athletes to ever play in Philly.
In 1983, when the Sixers won their last NBA title, it was Julius Erving, Bobby Jones, and Moses Malone – the final piece to the puzzle – who made it possible. Jones playing the perimeter and stout on defense; Malone backing up his “fo’, fo’, fo'” playoff series prediction; and Julius simply being Julius.
Shane, Stairs and Utley’s Gambit: When the Phillies finally broke through again in 2008, their ascendency to World Series Champion was no sure thing. Yet it was a collection of plays that eventually convinced me that it could, should, then would happen.
Victorino did it again, with the Phillies down 5-3 in the 8th inning of Game 4 of the National League Championship Series at Chavez Ravine against the Los Angeles Dodgers. I always though Victorino’s home run off Cory Wade was even bigger than Matt Stairs‘ game-winning deep space launch off Jonathan Broxton, because it changed the entire Dodgers relief strategy as well as tied the game. Both were unforgettable moments that convinced me the Phillies should win the whole enchilada.
But it was Chase Utley‘s play in the rain-delayed Game 6 of the 2008 World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays that proclaimed to this fan that the Phillies would win their second World Championship.
And finally, I leave you with this little gem that slightly pre-dates my own backyard football career. How exactly we are able to reach all the way back to 1928 to watch a sandlot game of football is amazing!
Rich Dubee will not be back as Phillies pitching coach next season.
The Phillies announced this morning they will not renew his contract. Dubee had been pitching coach nine seasons, which is tied with Cy Perkins (1946-54) and Ray Rippelmeyer (1970-78) for the longest run in that position in franchise history.
The Phillies could make more coaching staff changes, although they said those announcements could come at a later date.
“Rich was a big part of a wonderful era here and in his nine years he served our organization very well,” Ruben Amaro Jr. said in a statement. “We believe it is time for change as we move forward. We thank Rich for his professionalism and contribution to the Phillies.”
Dubee’s fate seemed set the moment the organization fired Charlie Manuel on Aug. 16. He knows how the business works, and he probably figured new manager Ryne Sandberg wanted his…
The day they decided to fire Charlie Manuel was another Black Friday in Philadelphia Phillies history!
The other Black Friday most Phillies fans my age remember was Game 3 in the 1977 National League Championship Series, when the home team lost a collapse-from-ahead game to Tommy Lasorda and the Los Angeles Dodgers after relief pitcher Gene Garber gave up three runs in the 9th to blow a two-run lead with TWO OUT!
The lasting image from that day was watching Greg Luzinski desperately trying to glove a drive off the bat of Manny Mota, the result of a puzzling defensive move manager Danny Ozark failed to make in replacing the lugging Luzinski with Jerry Martin, something which he had done all season long in the late innings.
But this Black Friday was different. It’s one thing to have disaster strike in the Heat of Battle, to have Defeat snatched from the jaws of Victory as the result of athletic plays made – or not made. This one however was self-inflicted.
It happened suddenly with little warning to fans settling in for a tough weekend series against those Black Friday Dodgers. Aside from the usual water-cooler and talking head speculation revolving around another lost season, there were few signs of a pending change.
A hastily called news conference was the chosen method on the same day the Phillies had intended to honor Charlie Manuel’s recent 1000th victory in red pinstripes. Reports also had leaked through on-line media that Manuel was out as the Phillies manager.
No sadder image exists for Phillies baseball (Photo by: Chris Szagola, Associated Press)
It was a very odd, very unfair way to yank the ejection cord on a World Series Champion manager. At times like these that goofy sports reputation of Philadelphia seems so totally well-earned.
Charlie was a winner. He was the Right Man at just the right time. He was down-to-earth. Charlie was baseball classiness with backwoods common sense and a reassuring confidence.
And although it was clear that a change was needed and that lovable Charlie should not return next year, the Phillies were foolish to jettison Manuel before October.
Many fans felt he deserved better. Charlie had earned not only the right to finish out the season free from blame, but the opportunity for the fans to show their appreciation and affection for a well-respected member of the Phillies community and the Philadelphia region!
Instead, the forever-to-be-popular manager was unceremoniously and uncaringly dumped by an organization that has lost its Baseball Way under the management Amaro.
Black Friday was a real eye-opener for those of us who live Phillies baseball.
For Phillies fans it was not hard to recognize that Manuel’s tenure was coming to an end. But the team’s slide in recent seasons from NL East powerhouse was hardly his doing. Bad free agent signings, key injuries to core players, and a lack of young talent in the minors ready to help had so much more to do with it.
But NONE of that were the product of Charlie Manuel!
Before and after Black Friday pics
My reaction, as shown above, was predictably emotional like many Phillies fans. I’m getting too old to suffer the ignorant actions of men making a living at silly games. You earn my unbridled loyalty only to a point. Once you go way past Stupid, I tend to stop caring.
The defrocking we witnessed Friday was a self-inflicted wound of the worst kind. For the Philllies showed their true colors, and Ruben Amaro, Jr. showed us HIS.
Amaro’s tears were there. His insistence that Charlie Manuel meant so much to him. The claims that this was not an exercise in finger-pointing, despite the fact that Amaro’s finger was on the trigger and that gun was pointed squarely at Manuel’s center mass.
Now no doubt, there are plenty of baseball reasons for which one can justify the firing of a manager with just 42 games remaining on the schedule and the team is 20 games out of first.
Certainly it seemed that the team had stopped caring enough to pay attention to detail. Maybe Charlie should have turned over a few post-game buffet tables in the Phillies’ locker room. In a perfect world, maybe we could understand Amaro’s stated desire to give interim manager, Ryne Sandberg an audition.
But Uncle Charlie deserved a far better ending than this. And in my opinion none of those baseball reasons outweighed the respect the Phillies owed him!
That Amaro was the one doing the firing was particularly galling. Afterall, this team was much more the product of Amaro’s foibles than it was of Charlie’s managing ability and effort.
Amaro was the one who admitted to doing a horrible job of putting together the Phillies 2013 bullpen. He was the one who brought in Delmon Young; who told us Mike Adams was a good bet; who gave us an outfield without much “field”. Amaro was the one who stocked the less-than-stellar bench.
New Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg
Ryne Sandberg is exactly who I wanted to see get the next chance to move the Phillies back to the top of baseball. But not like this, not now.
As partial season ticket holders, we have been prepared for a long, slow climb back to the top. But now the total disregard for a once successful and well-respected face of the franchise has left a bitter taste on top of an embarrassing season.
If Amaro gets to ride this out, it’s difficult to see how the Phillies get better regardless of who’s managing in the dugout.
Cranky Man's Lawn 