Game Five Roundup

As Published on CrossingBroad.com

THE FOUL BUNT

Too much is being made of this foul bunt called fair.  FOX couldn’t stop talking about it and Ken Rosenthal led off his post-game interview asking coyly for an admittance of a foul ball from Roy Halladay. Obviously that was a foul ball whether Doc admits it or not, but the result of the play was no better than had Doc just laid down a fair bunt: runners are moved over, one out. Had Doc been safe at first then that would’ve resulted in an extra out and baserunner for the Phils. Bases would have been loaded with no outs, but Doc stayed in the box and was out at first anyway.

Had Kungfu Panda not missed the bag at third, the Giants would’ve gotten a double play out of a foul bunt. The Phillies would’ve been screwed. So back off, FOX. That bunt was not a game changer as much as it was a hairy situation for the Phils that turned out neither as good or bad as it could’ve been.

ANGRY ROY AND HIS GROIN

Roy Halladay was visibly mad after a 1st inning showdown with the artist formerly know as “Trade Pat Burrell”. He was seething. Red in the face. The angriest Mitch Williams had seen him this year- that's angry, man. This was very uncharacteristic of Roy, who is normally all-business, cool as a cucumber. 

Ken Rosenthal, the only reporter who fits in Tim Lincecum’s pocket, asked Roy how he succeeded without having his best stuff.  Roy said he “battled”, and he did. He struggled, going deep into counts, but got all the outs he absolutely needed. Overall he pitched well, despite some booted balls, an unfavorable home plate umpire, and a Giants team that was having an unbreakable chain of quality at-bats. He did this while battling an injury, in an elimination game, on a rainy night, against the two-time reigning NL Cy Young winner.

 THE HOME RUN

Werth’s home run in the 9th inning, a towering opposite field poke, was gigantic. Some may look back and say it wasn’t necessary because the Giants failed to score in the bottom of the inning, but its impact on Brad Lidge’s confidence and freedom in the save situation can not be underestimated.

That extra run opened up the pitching bag of tricks for Lidge in the 9th. He could throw his regular slider and his dirty one. Perhaps more importantly, it served to deflate the Giants, who had been quite at home in the anti-home run dimensions of “The House that Steroids Built”. That long poke just may turn out to be the turning point of the series.

Share this:

The Season is in Joe Blanton’s Hands

As published on CrossingBroad.com

Panic Button time? Not yet, but you should get it out of the closet and dust it off. It’s probably right next to your collection of “Relentless” t-shirts and T.O. bobble figurines. You don’t have to get it now, but come 11pm EST Wednesday night, you might need quick access to that panic button.

With the series hanging in the balance, and with Joe Blanton set to take the mound on Wednesday for his first start since September 29, the Phillies faithful are a justifiably nervous bunch. Blanton hasn’t been the most trustworthy starter this year (not even close), and here he is with the keys to Ruben Amaro’s $145 million Red Lamborghini. Ruben promised he’d take us all to Disney World again this year, but he didn’t say Joe was gonna drive for the scary parts.

This season, when Joe Blanton was set to make a start, Phillies fans could be seen grunting their way to the ballpark. They cursed Joe Blanton, the Phillies rotation and the rotation of the planet itself for landing Joe Blanton on the tickets they bought three months earlier. But more often than not these pessimists left the park eating crow, having seen a Phillies “w”, and an offense come to life.

Despite Blanton’s 9-6 record, his 4.82 ERA, and his general inability to go deep into games this season, the Phillies won the vast majority of his starts, going 17-11. Contrast that with a 22-11 record in Roy Halladay’s starts, and an 18-15 record in Hamels’ starts, and maybe you’ll start to think that Blanton is almost as good as those guys. You’d be wrong, but you’d have some numbers to back your stupid case.

The truth is that the Phillies’ bats had just a little extra pop with Joe on the hill this year. The numbers bare this out, as Blanton received more run support of any Phillies starter, 5.7 runs per game. Comparatively, Hamels got only 3.3.

What was the cause of the disparity? Who knows. Maybe Joe seldom faced a top flight starter. Maybe Joe pitched on hotter days where the ball carried more. Maybe Joe has an extra hot wife and the everyday players tried extra hard to impress when she was around. A quick trip around the internet would probably disprove all of these theories, but we can’t worry about any of that right now, and neither can the Phillies.

The bottom line is the Phillies need a win in game 4. They need to hit a guy named Madison Bumgarner. They need to hit the ball. With runners on base. And they need to do that more than the San Francisco Weird Beards. Victorino needs to get on base, and then steal bases. Raul Ibanez needs to do something, anything, even if what he does is change his name to Ben Francisco. Jimmy Rollins needs to get the back end of the order going. Joe Blanton needs to hit another moon shot. Howard needs an RBI or ten. Polanco needs to go 4 for 4. Utley needs to sit on an inside fastball and drive it into the bay. Werth needs to swing at strikes, and hit them, hard. The Phillies need to score runs, in bunches. I know this all sounds odd, but this type of thing used to happen, all the time, not all that long ago.

Think back to a Joe Blanton start against the Dodgers on August 12th. He gave up 3 quick first inning runs that night, settled in for a few more, and left the game in the 5th with the Phillies down 4-2 and not hitting a lick. And then with the Phillies buried 9-2 in the bottom of the 8th, they woke up. Scored 4 in the 8th, and 4 more in the 9th to win the game. That’s the type of magic that never happens with Cole Hamels on the hill, but that’s exactly the type of thing the Phillies do for Joe.

Maybe a Joe Blow start is just what the doctor ordered. Maybe a 3 run San Fran first inning is just what these Phillies need to see to remember that pitching can’t beat pitching. Maybe just seeing a guy on the mound not named Lincecum, Cain or Sanchez will be enough to wake the bats from their postseason slumber, but one way or another, if the Phillies are going to play for another championship, they have got to score runs.

For one game only, it’s not about pitching. But if it does turn out to be about pitching, well then, you can go ahead and hit that panic button

Doc, a Day Later

As published on CrossingBroad.com

How many watchable Super Bowls have there been? How many times has Lebron James ended up not being Michael Jordan? How many times have Crispy Chicken Nuggets been all that crispy? How many times have things just fallen so far short of expectations that we have all instinctively learned to keep our expectations low?

Let’s think about that.

Think about all the steroid-driven home runs and Photoshopped models. Think about all the comedies we’ve seen that just weren’t very funny. Think about a much touted running back named Ricky Waters, who rode into town on a high horse named For Who For What. And then let’s think about Roy Halladay, the real deal, the genuine article. A man who allowed us to expect greatness, and who delivered something even better in return.

Roy “Doc” Halladay took a postseason mound for the first time in his illustrious career on Wednesday, with all the bloated hopes of the franchise that traded for him resting squarely on his shoulders. Pile on top of that, his own expectations of getting a World Series ring after so many years of toiling in Toronto without an opportunity. Add to that the fever pitch expectations of a demanding fan base desperate to cry out “Dynasty”.  Add to that the fact that Doc found himself in this pressure packed spot as a the man who precipitated the exodus of 2009 postseason hero, Cliff Lee, a move that left fans across Phillies Nation asking a lot of questions.

“An ace for an ace,” they all asked. “It makes no sense. Why not keep both? Don’t they want to win. I’m sure Roy Halladay is a damn good pitcher, but how could he ever top what Cliff did?” A good question to anyone who watched Cliff Lee a year ago. You can’t pitch better than that. Yet somehow Roy did. What’s better than Perfection? I have no idea. You’ll have to ask Roy Halladay.

Consider this: on a team that finds itself with three Aces at the top of the rotation, Halladay was a no-brainer to start game one, even though he is the only pitcher of the three with zero postseason experience. Even though, of the three, he seemed to be the one running out of gas at the end of the year. Even though he pitched more innings than anyone else in baseball this year, and should be a little tired. But we’re talking about Roy Halladay here, an Ace among Aces.

He took a rain slicked ball on a chilly day, and turned it into something transcendental, a postseason no hitter. Something that until now has only been done by Don Larsen. Once. In dusty history books, and on decaying film reels, not live and in HD, not in real time for your eyes to see. The second no-hitter in Postseason history. Against the NL’s most potent lineup. A lineup containing the NL’s likely MVP. I’m sorry, Schill, but that bloody sock has nothing on this.

No matter what else happens this postseason, we will always have this, and Doc will live the rest of his life as the only pitcher in MLB History to pitch a perfect game and a postseason no-hitter in the same year. I can guarantee that.

Even as we bathe in the afterglow of his outstanding feat, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t half-expect that Roy would pitch exactly how he pitched in Game One.

Historically dominant in his MLB Postseason debut. Fair? No. Realistic? Not at all. After all, a postseason No Hitter is something that just never happens. But with Roy, hell, I expect him to do it again. Why not? That’s like expecting it to rain frogs, but we’re talking about Roy Halladay here. I bet if you asked Roy Halladay to make it rain frogs, he’d be mad at himself if it only rained tadpoles. Now don’t we owe it to this guy to bring him a ring? I think he’s earned his already.  Phils 1 – Cincy 0. I can’t wait to see what’s behind Roy #2.

NOTE: It was said during the broadcast that Charlie Manuel called Roy Halladay a “big Greg Maddux”. That is indeed high praise. I couldn’t think of anything scarier for a hitter to face than a big Greg Maddux, unless of course you’re talking about a regular sized Roy Halladay. Now that’s Halloween scary. Or should I say, Doctober Scary?

Playoff Preview: Good to Go

As published on CrossingBroad.com

The playoffs are finally here. I would say “Red October”, but I don’t want to give these Reds Fans any more confidence than they already (kinda, maybe) are pretending to have. This postseason is different from the previous three for the Phillies. They are no longer the team that was just happy to be there (2007), or the team that got hot at the right time and won the whole thing on the backs of a young World Series MVP (2008), or the team that was poised to get back to the World Series, but would have to knock off the “best team” in baseball and a guy named Godzilla to repeat (2009).  These 2010 Philadelphia Phillies are entering the postseason, for the first time in their history, with the best record in baseball and as the prohibitive favorite to win it all.

Everyone from Bridgeport, CT to Vegas pretty much agrees, the Phillies are the team to beat. Even John Smoltz is on the bandwagon. And for good reason. The Phillies’ All-Star lineup is finally healthy and intact.  

Charlie Manuel (my candidate for manager of the year), can now, if he so chooses, write it down like this: J. Rollins, SS; P. Polanco, 3B; C. Utley, 2B;  R. Howard, 1B; J. Werth, RF; R. Ibanez, LF; S. Victorino, CF; C. Ruiz, C; Cy Young, P. That’s a pretty picture, isn’t it? Especially in a season where it often looked like this.

On the mound the Phillies are downright scary, showing Trip Aces before the flop. But this is no time to talk about gambling. This is a rotation that’s as close as it gets to a sure thing, flashing Roy Halladay in game one, winner of 21 games, perfect game hurler, and early runaway favorite for the NL Cy Young. Then there’s our newest RoyToy, Roy Oswalt in game 2, who has been dominant since joining the Phillies, dominant at Citizens Bank Park, and dominant against the Cincinatti Reds (23-3, 2.81 ERA) for his career. And then comes the resurgent Cole Hamels who is even better against the little red machine (6-0, 1.18 ERA) in his comparatively brief career.

These three will attempt to shutdown the NL’s most potent (on paper) lineup. Everyone agrees that they will.  Meanwhile, the Phillies bats will do just what they were built to do, bring nine guys to the plate every inning, eight of which are proven Major League hitters, stars.  

But with all this confidence, there is still a sense of quiet unease in my bowels. Maybe that’s the 2 for $3 Sizzlis speaking, but I can feel it. And deep down you can too. I know it.

As Philadelphia fans, we can’t help it. Too many disappointments. Too many visions of Joe Carter, sweeping Red Wings, Lakers, and Patriots OH MY! But don’t worry, B-West can’t fumble this one, Donovan can’t throw three picks on the same play, and Mitch Williams is safely in the press box. Michael Leighton’s legs are still oddly open … but that’s between him and his “health professionals.” After years of playing the underdog, you can trust your gut on this one. The Philles are that good. Have fun, be confident. This is the golden age of Phillies baseball, and it’s only gonna get “funner”. Now let’s just go out there and HIT!

The Oil Trap

It's been nearly 2 months since the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers, sunk,  and began spewing a seemingly unstoppable gush of crude oil into the into the Gulf of Mexico. During that time I have read many articles on the accident, listened to many talking heads, politicians, and water cooler conversations regarding the spill, the political role, the folly of the human race, and the failures of technology to help us.

One thing almost everyone agrees on is that we, the American consumer, are partly to blame because of a presumed demand for cheap oil. TIME magazine, which I subscribe to, never fails to mention that we all share a blame in this crisis whenever it decides to criticize BP or any of the legislative failures that led to the crisis. I just listened to a Congressman on CSPAN talk about how if oil production ceased in the Gulf, American consumers would speak nostalgically about the days of $4 gasoline. I suppose that's true in the same way we reminisce $4 movie tickets, or the days when asparagus cost less that $5 per bushel. Why is it that our cheap fuel needs are not considered to be as adaptable as our need for other cheap products? Why are we such ravenous oil consuming people in the first place? Is that something we all chose for ourselves, or is that something that was forced upon us? And why is our access to cheap fuel guarded in a way few other "rights" are in this country? Why is cheap fuel an apparent inalienable right, but a living wage is not.

The presumption is that the American consumer demands cheap fuel. It’s true that nobody likes it when things get more expensive, but that does not necessarily mean we demand things to be cheap. Cigarettes were $1 or so per pack not very long ago. Last I checked they are somewhere around $6-$10 now. I'm sure many smokers demanded cheaper cigarettes each time they saw a price increase, but those complaints were never heeded. No one ever said, our consumers demand cheaper cigarettes. But for some reason when fuel prices increase, it is assumed that the American consumer will be outraged. And that that outrage is what drives our energy companies to search so far and wide and aggressively for more fossil fuels to sell to us “cheaply”. To me this seems a false presumption. Why would consumer demand for cheap goods have such a direct and profound effect on one specific industry, while virtually having no effect on most others.

Today I was at the supermarket buying some groceries so that I could make dinner. I bought 2 artichokes, a pint of blueberries, an apple, a cucumber, a pepper, a baguette, a quart of mineral water, ice cream, an angel food cake, and some pineapple juice. All in all that cost around $30. I wish it were cheaper, but it’s not. The woman behind me in line was buying pork chops and I thought, mmm pork chops, those are tasty and cheap. And they are cheap, is it because people demand cheap meat? Not really, it’s because the people of Iowa demand corn subsidies. Without government subsidies to corn farmers, those corn fed pork chops would be considerably more expensive. If the price of meat were unsubsidized, she might decide to buy some vegetables instead. I ate artichokes for dinner, she ate pork chops. I'm sure her meal was less expensive. One of them a vegetable grown from the ground, another a part of an animal, raised on the equivalent of thousands of artichokes in its lifetime, and then slaughtered. I demand cheap artichokes, but no one listens.

I, like almost everyone else, am a crude oil consuming animal. Everything I eat, drink, touch, wear, work with, throw away, carries with it (or was carried to me by) oil. Crude and refined oil. My life, like yours, is powered by and composed of oil. So i suppose TIME magazine, the new york times, and the water cooler guy, are all technically correct, that it's my fault, at least partially, that oil is spewing relentlessly into the Gulf. But i never asked anyone to drill for oil in the Gulf, they were doing that before I was born. I never asked to drive a car, or commute to work, or wear plastic clothes, or eat food subsidized and fertilized with oil. It's the world I was born into. But to be honest with you, I'm not sure I'd mind if all the oil went away.

If gas went to $20 a gallon. That would mean I couldn't drive anymore, or afford to fly anywhere, or eat what I wanted. It might even put me out of a job, and grind the economy to a halt. $20 per gallon fuel would mean the end of a lot of things as we know it, butit would also force us to redesign our unsustainable lives. The transitional generations (me, you and everyone we know) would have a tough time, but a brighter, cleaner, less consuming society would lie ahead somewhere in the future.

When gas peaked at around $4 per gallon, people began to scale back, drive less, car pool, mow their lawns less, etc. All of these things are good, a net positive effect on society. I began sharing my commute with a co-worker. If oil doubled to $8 per gallon, I would have to make more drastic changes. Take public transportation to my job, find a job closer to home, ride a bike and walk around town. I'm not sure these things would be so awful. Would they be inconvenient, sure. But I would manage.

On Etiquette ... and forks.

Manners. Etiquette. They are different, but they both have a lot to do with forks. Etiquette tells one which fork to use and manners tell one how to deal with a boorish slob once he's used a salad fork to eat his steak.

If you don't know the difference between a salad fork and steak fork, it's because there is no difference. Also there is no such thing as a steak fork... that is, until you use your salad fork to eat a steak. Then it's a steak fork.

Once the steak is finished, the steak fork becomes another type of fork altogether. The Wrong Fork. That's my favorite type of fork to use. The wrong fork is so versatile. Equally adept at picking up lettuce as it is at opening a jar of pickles.

But Etiquette can't be all about forks right? A quick Wikipedia search reveals that sadly, yes. it is. Etiquette is all about forks.

The fork. It's a big deal. Which fork do I use? When do I use it? How many forks should i have? On which side of the plate should I put how many forks?

Something tells me that all these fork worries weren't such a big deal until people became rich enough to own so many forks that they needed rules to justify why they owned so many forks in the first place.

There was a time shortly before the Fork Rules Era where the simple act of using any fork in any way would mark you as an elitist douche, worthy of an ass beating ... like the kids who had Palm Pilots back when I was in High School, in the mid 90s.

Nowadays, when you take a look around the world we live in, it seems that forks aren't as important as they used to be. There's finger foods, chopsticks, 100 calorie packs, squeezable potato salad, sporks, splades, breakaway lid pieces that can act as scoops, and even scoop-shaped corn chips that take silverware out of the salsa-eating equation altogether.

The decline of the fork has dragged down Etiquette, the science of fork rules, along with it. Now instead of worrying about which fork to use, people worry more about not getting murdered and which parts of facebook they should keep private.

What's that you say about Soup spoons? Never heard of them. How can we think about silverware when everyday is 9/11 all over again, and people are wearing sweat pants to work?

So what happened to etiquette? Where did it go? What does it look like today? What kind of fork should I use to scratch my balls?

I would ask God these questions. Etiquette would dictate that, but I can't, because God is dead, and since cleanliness is next to Godliness it would follow that cleanliness is probably dead as well, and since etiquette is all about cleanliness (of forks specifically) it would follow that etiquette might soon be dead too.

Etiquette was, in its heyday, largely a set of rules for classy people to live by so that they can have a nice and tidy society full of classy people who know all about forks. Nowadays we just make do without the nice and tidy, and classy part. Looking around the room, it's obvious that we all know to wear pants when in mixed company. That's etiquette. But most of us don't care if those pants are too long, too short, too dirty, or too tight anymore. If Blue is the new Black, then Camel Toe is the new Tuxedo.

How did this happen?

10 years ago, I paid Etiquette a visit at The Yacht Club in Marblehead, MA. If you've never been to Marblehead, I can tell you, it's a little Peninsula on the North Shore of Massachussets, where everyone owns a shitload of fancy forks.

I went to the Yacht Club fresh from a boating excursion which left me horribly under-dressed. So they forced me into a blue blazer with gold buttons. I had to wear that blazer so that everyone would know that I was a broke loser who had to borrow a jacket to eat dinner with the wrong fork ... Etiquette dictates that.

I paid Etiquette another visit recently, and it looks a lot different now. I was in Western North Carolina, a part of North Carolina so upside down that it's actually South of South Carolina. We were planning on going to the Yacht Club there. I was nervous. Would they force me into another jacket? Would I know which fork to use? Did I inherit enough money from my grandparents? The worries were endless. So I got as dressed up as my vacation wardrobe would allow, and parted my hair very squarely.

As it turns out this The Yacht Club on the Georgia - North Carolina - South Carolina border was much different from the Yacht Club I had been to a decade earlier in Massachusetts. The Etiquette had changed. Gone were the yachts, the well heeled New England prep schoolers, the pink polo shirts, the white slip-on boat shoes. In their place were Buckets of LandShark beer, the putrid stench of floor vomit and many fried finger foods. I didn't need a sport coat, just a towel around my waste and a flourescent green bikini top to house sun wrinkled tattooed cleavage.

Now I'm willing to admit that this Yacht Club in Appalachia wasn't the same type of place as the one I had been to, in Massachusetts. But I think it's more likely that 10 years ago it was a nice and tidy place, full of well mannered and well dressed men. And at some point in the past 10 years everyone traded their Blue Blazers for sleeveless Hulkamania T-shirts and threw away all their forks. It's a forkless world now. I think it's time we get used to it.

Pat's Right about everything

A Friendly Neighborhood Snow Parking Issue.

On a normal sunny day in South Philadelphia, you can find blocks of double-parked cars, a parking lot in the center lane of Broad Street, and a few scattered lawn chairs saving the parking spots of local residents who cite some sort of "My Family's been here for 100 years and we're just going to the Acme for a minute" birth rite. This is annoying, but if you circle the block a few times you're bound to find a spot vacated by someone humble enough to leave a spot for the next guy, like a normal person. But in the winter to end all Philly winters, there are no normal sunny days.

When snow falls from the sky in record numbers in Philadelphia, a city more accustomed to Storms of the Century turned drizzle, than to 40" of snow in 4 days, the locals get restless and the worst of their already disgruntled characters comes bubbling to the surface. The occasional chair saving a parking spot balloons into a situation where every single vacated parking spot is occupied by lawn chairs, kitchen furniture, paint buckets, plastic tables, traffic cones, and a myriad of other pieces of plastic garbage parked in perfectly good car-sized parking spots. This quirky neighborhood issue has metastasized into a rapacious cancer of me-firstism, that is eating at the already moribund body politic in the City of "If you ain't from here, get the fuck out. Wait, where are you going, come back here with my job."

The idea of the Saved Spot is incredibly offensive to me. It takes a self-centered world view and multiplies it by a disgusting obesity of laziness, for a person to believe that he alone was affected by consecutive Nor'easters. It all begins with the inconvenience of snow fall. Everything sucks, and parking sucks, so you save your spot, which only exacerbates the already difficult parking situation for everyone else. People leave notes like the one on the end of my street "Please do not park here. I worked very hard shoveling my space. Karma is a bitch." I've seen this guy, he's 30 years old and drives an Audi. I guess the fact that the snow forced him to do 30 mins of cardio in the outdoors was enough to earn him his spot for the next month. I hate this guy. I thought maybe he was an old lady at first with the "I worked very hard" line, but rather it's an able bodied man, citing Karma in defense of his 30 mins of toil. If Karma does its thing that guy will become a vegetable, a literal vegetable. Like a kumquat or something.

If you are one of the many who has taken up this chair parking behavior you are one of 3 types of people:
1. You do this all the time because you grew up doing it, and you've live on this block the longest, and you saved up for your Mustang bagging groceries at Acme all through high school, and you're 34 years old and not yet eligible for a handicap spot and you live with your grandma who sometimes has to get in your car, and whatever it's your neighborhood, and fuck all the yuppies.
2. You normally wouldn't do it, but you hurt your back shoveling 3ft of snow twice in one week, and with all the physical labor you exerted you deserve a prize. A reserved parking space that only you and your chair can park in.
3. You normally wouldn't do it, but all the spots in your neighborhood are occupied by chairs so you pretty much have to or you'll never find a spot. And it seems to be working.

The idea of saving a parking space whenever you leave it and having it there when you return is a very sexy one. It's tantamount to having reserved parking, a luxury many people pay very good money for, some even build garages for the privilege. I bet those schmucks wish they had known that they could have saved all that garage money by carrying a lawn chair in their trunk. That chair is like a Wharton MBA, pop it open, place it in the spot, and voila, a parking spot with your name on it. You are better than everyone else, because when the snow started to fall, you were parked somewhere. When the snow stopped falling, you wanted to take your car somewhere else. So you cleared your car of snow with a broom or something, and then you cleared some snow from the front and back and sides of your car, and pulled out, leaving a gaping hole behind, a hole that looks impressive, but which you had very little to do with. Your car, bless its little soul, took care of most of it. I know this because I too have shoveled my car and my girl's car, every time it snowed. My chest swelled with pride at my greatness when I typed those words.

People in the aforementioned 3rd group, who feel a little guilty when they come home and see that sweet parking spot right in front of their house, still housing their Ikea chairs that they left in the morning, might ask someone like me to stop being so bitter, and to just put something in my spot. But I refuse to do that because, oh I don't know, I worry about sad sacks like me who are searching far and wide for a spot vacated by an unselfish and reasonable person. Hopefully when I return with my car, someone else will have returned the favor.

Now I've heard some say, "I cleared the spot, I deserve it. I don't want some asshole who didn't even clear a spot taking one he doesn't deserve." To those who say this I point out one thing, if the guy is driving his car around, odds are he must have cleared a spot somewhere, so maybe he deserves to borrow your spot, while you're not using it. Just a thought. Likewise, maybe you'll find yourself in his neighborhood and you can park in his spot. This is how parking works, dammit.

Now the reason people even try this whole spot saving thing is because it works. It works because if you take someone's spot they'll know it was you because you left your car there. You left your car exposed to whatever type of wrath the parking space's "owner" chooses. They could egg it, key it, avocado it, or "noun" it in a million ways more expensive than a lawn chair. So it is in instances like this when a people relies on its government to enforce the rules and squash civic discontent. I would assume leaving objects in parking spaces would be illegal in Philadelphia, but not according to our brilliant mayor.

In an interview with the local Fox affiliate Mayor Nutter stated "Look, if you spend two hours digging your car out, that is some serious effort there, and ultimately it's got to be respected by folks in the community. And I think most people really do understand that, and they've kind of worked those things out."

The fact that the mayor has the same idiotic mentality as the populace is just fitting for the Racist City that years ago elected a black mayor so he could bomb black neighborhoods. Nutter's notion that some people spent 2 hours digging out a spot and should be respected accordingly, implies that those trying to take their spots are coming from distant climes where snow never fell. This logical mastermind is supposed to get us out of a budget crisis, puh-leeze. I'll put money on the idea that pretty much anybody driving around Philadelphia right now, dug out a space somewhere. I'll also put money on the fact that Mayor Nutter doesn't park on the street.

Tonight, when you return home, take your chair out of your spot, and park there, then fold the chair up and bring it inside where it belongs. If enough of you do this, well then, maybe we'll all find parking spots where makeshift urban living rooms once stood. In a city where parking isn't any kind of fun to begin with, let's not make it worse. If you want to save a spot, try leaving your car in it. Works for me. So there, now we're all happy. But when one problem is solved, another invariably arises. When all the snow melts, wherever will we park our chairs?

grrl rock mix

The Genius of Andy Reid: a rare look behind the curtain

Now in his 11th season as head coach and director of football operations of the Philadelphia Eagles, Andy Reid stands as the winningest coach in franchise history, having steered his team to 10 playoff victories, 5 NFC Championship games, and 1 NFC Championship. Despite all his success, the calls for Andy Reid's head have reached a fever pitch in recent years. The Philadelphia Eagles faithful have grown weary of Andy's game-day gaffes and bouts of apparent mental retardation. The desperate cries for a championship echo through the air, from Pennsport to Port Richmond, from Wilmington to Allentown. For many it is a matter of life and death, as if if an Eagles Super Bowl victory would somehow cure every 45 year old Delaware Valley man of his cystic acne, sweat pants, and unemployment all at once.

In the middle of this turbulent 2009 season, the oft-guarded coach, of the 5-4 Philadelphia Eagles, has invited me to his sprawling Villanova Estate for a rare one-on-one. As I approach the Reid Family Home, I see a rotund silhouette at a distance shooting hoops at the top of the driveway, like a fat lonely kid, having a quiet recess by himself, bricking one freethrow after another, bouncing the ball with two hands twice and then accidentally off the side of his giant Frankenstein sneaker. This is Andy Reid.

Unlike most fat recess kids, Andy has a whole wheelbarrow full of regulation NBA balls at his side, and so he saves himself the humiliation of splitting his Husky pants while bending over to pick up another one. He lines up for another freethrow, this one, an airball, careens off the base of the wheel-away Huffy hoop, and rolls directly toward me.

"I wish I coached basketball." He hollers to me from 20 yards away as the rolling ball stops at my feet. "Those guys have it easy. They only have to worry about 5 or 6 guys, all black and talented. There's no strategy, no real coaching. Football you gotta manage fast black guys, fat white guys, fat black guys, Samoans, Australian punters, Gay kickers, and everything in between. And those NBA coaches, they get all the timeouts they want. 20 seconds, 2 minutes, 8 minutes. Whatever."

If Andy Reid's name was Achilles, his heel would look like a high school football scoreboard with 8 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter and all the timeout lights smashed to oblivion. Historically Andy Reid's teams have treated timeouts like snot rags. Looking for every feasible way to get rid of them, burning them, wiping their asses with them, stuffing them in between the seat cushions in the backseat of the Suburban. It's as if Andy doesn't even know what they're for. So I asked him if he knew.

Andy muttered gruffly "You came all the way out here to talk to me about timeouts?", as he fires off another airball, this one sails 6 feet wide of the backboard. "I thought you wanted to play one on one?"

"I wanted to talk to you one on one," I said. "I wanted to ask you about timeouts. It's been quite a lightning rod issue for you."

"You sure you didn't wanna ask me something else. Both my sons are junkies y'know. Ask me about them. Wanna see their rooms? They got all types of crazy shit in there." I didn't take the bait. "Okay fine, let's talk timeouts", he relented. "What do you want to know?"

"I just want to know what you think is more valuable, 5 yards or a timeout" I asked, referring to the 5 yards a team is penalized for delay of game, and the reason Andy Reid uses most of his timeouts.

Andy smirked, "That's easy. The 5 yards. You can't get that back, but timeouts, they keep on coming. Heck if you run out of them, they just give you more the next game ... and there's other ways of getting more timeouts, but I'm not gonna get into all that."

I pressed on, "Andy could you tell me what timeouts are for?"

He looked at me sideways, as if looking for a hidden angle, "Okay fine, what is this for a school paper or something? Okay kid, I'll tell you everything I know about timeouts. Just let me finish this milkshake first."

I stood there, enduring 15 seconds of excruciating bubbling straw noise and then he began, "Timeouts, what they do is they stop the clock. But only until the next snap of the ball, and you gotta snap the ball every 40 seconds about, so really, three timeouts, that's just 2 minutes. Hell I've taken pisses that lasted 10 times that long." He continued "You see timeouts, they don't give you that many to begin with, but sometimes I feel like I have too many. You get 3 in the first half and 3 in the second. I try to make sure I use all mine up. I'd use all 6 in the first half if i could, that way i don't have to worry about making sure i use them in the next half."

"Andy, some would say that you might want to save those timeouts for the end of the game. You know, in case you're behind and you need to conserve time," I suggested.

"I knew you would say that," he quipped. "Everyone is always saying the same thing. Save the timeouts until the end. Well that's what the other team expects me to do. But I like to use mine when they're not paying attention, early on in the game, and that way they don't know I'm trying to conserve time and they end up doing it for me. That's my plan, trick the opposing team into accidentally conserving time by calling timeouts in odd situations. When you call a timeout at the end of the game, the team will make sure the next play chews up as much time as possible. But at the beginning of the game or start of the half, they just think you screwed up and they run a regular play."

"So it's strategic then." I clarified. "Because oftentimes, when you call timeouts it seems like you're just not sure what play you wanna run and you need more time."

"That's what it's supposed to look like. But believe me, we have it all mapped out. We have at least 17 plays in the playbook that are designed to make Donovan take a timeout. [Offensive Coordinator] Marty [Mornigwheg] is a genius at drawing up these timeout plays. Some of them are just straight up timeout plays, where i just tell Donovan to take timeout. Other ones we have special Timeout packages that we bring into the game. We'll call a regular play and even Donovan thinks it's a regular play, but it's not, it's the Timeout package. We'll send our dumbest players in and they waste so much time, Donovan has to call a timeout, even though he didn't want to. The other team never sees it coming and we catch them offguard by calling our second timeout with a quarter and half still left to go. Greg Lewis used to be the best at this, but we had to let him go. I miss him, but we have even dumber players now to pick up the slack. And signing Vick was a big pickup too. People thought it was for the Wildcat, but really it was more to do with his ability to create timeout necessary scenarios, TNS's."

I wasn't sure if he was kidding so I prodded further, "Andy, what do you do at the end of the game when you are trailing and you are out of timeouts?"

"You see, I got that one figured out as well," he was growing excited. "You know how we always pass. Like every play we pass. 1st and 10. 3rd and 4. 3rd and 1. 4th and inches. Pass.Pass.Pass.Pass. That's what we do. Now why do we do it? And this here's off the record."

I couldn't believe my ears. Andy Reid, the Mormon of Solitude, was about to let me in on one of the most baffling questions of his entire tenure. Why do the Eagles always pass the ball? Even against the Raiders. Even against the Chargers. Even against teams with girls at linebacker and murderers in the secondary.

He continued, "When I was at BYU I stumbled upon a loophole in the regulation rules of football. I brought it with me to the NFL and I credit this little nugget of knowledge with a lot my success. If you pass the ball and it's an incompletion the clock stops. So every time you pass the ball and you miss it, it's like an extra timeout. So if Donovan goes 30 for 55 passing, that's like we got 25 extra timeouts."

I pointed out one of the myriad flaws in this logic, "The clock stops for an incomplete pass, but what about a completion? The clock keeps moving. And since you need to advance the ball you have to have completions, in which case unless you get out of bounds, the clock keeps running, you have no timeouts to stop it, and the clock runs out and you lose the game."

"Won't happen. Have you seen how Donovan throws the ball. It's either in the dirt, 20 feet over someone's head, behind the receiver, or just totally uncatchable for another reason. Rotation, velocity, etc. He's especially uncatchable at the end of games. So we don't have to worry about completions. We get the incompletions and all the bonus time outs that come with them. We have a lot of incompletions and you just can't lose with that many timeouts."

"But you lost this week", I corrected.

"Well I'm not sure what happened there. I'm gonna have to go back and take a look at that, but that is interesting."

"What happens," I asked, "if the opponent has the ball and you want it back, but you don't have any timeouts, and you can't stop the clock by throwing and incomplete pass?"

"Easy, we make sure they throw an incomplete pass."

"What if they run the ball?" I asked.

"Why would they do that? Running is retarded."



Bagerick Calais is the fake pseudonym of a fake person who has not interviewed Andy Reid or anyone ...ever.

Muppet Takes Manhattan

T-shirts available xs-xxl. Limited Quantities available. Send inquiries to lirpisamethod@gmail.com

Mark Spitz Isn't Jealous

In the fall of 1972 Mark Spitz had just finished his assault on the Olympic record books, winning 7 times in Munich. In two short weeks Spitz had transformed himself from World Class athlete in a sport nobody cared about, to World's Best athlete in a sport everyone would soon remember they didn't care about.

These days he spends his time as a stockbroker and as an avid viewer of pornography. "I have almost every movie Anita Dark ever made" Spitz tells me from the living room of his Modesto, CA home. It was a Saturday night in August, the night that Michael Phelps, America's newest vacuous hero, was poised to break Spitz' long standing record of 7 Gold Medals and 7 World Records in a single Olympic Games.

"You know. I thought I'd take that record with me to the grave," said Spitz. "I was a perfect 7 for 7 with 7 golds and 7 records. How could anybody beat that? And you know what, nobody ever would have if they hadn't added the 50m freestyle ... if they had that in my day, I would've won that one too. And now they have these fancy swim suits, and frictionless water. Shit, I did everything I did with a hangover, a mustache and a full bush. Sure we knew about friction back then, but I wasn't some kind of teenage virgin like Phelps. I needed my pubes. We all did. But I'd rather go a little slower in the pool, if I could bang a little faster. It was the 70s, and a dude without pubes, wasn't any kind of dude at all."

"You know that poster of me in the Speedo's with all my gold medals", he says as he points to the one mounted on the ceiling above his sleeper sofa. "That was the biggest selling poster for 4 years ... until Farrah Fawcett sold all those hard nipple posters," Spitz said with a hint of sadness, as if he could feel all his records crashing down around him.

Spitz had been enjoying the Olympics so far. Michael Phelps had helped to revive his fame a little, and had brought back some good memories. "I even got recognized at the Dairy Queen the other day without having to do that "index finger over the lip thing" that everyone always makes me do when they think it might be me, but then don't believe me when I say 'it's me.' You know, so they can picture me with a mustache. I shaved it when it went gray ..."

As Spitz' words trailed off into nothingness, he gazed out his window with palpable nostalgia. After a moment he turned to me, visibly shaken "No matter what happens tonight, Michael Phelps will never know what it's like to be Mark Spitz. He'll never get to see Zeppelin live, he'll never get to meet John Lennon, he'll never be on Carson or Sonny and Cher or "Emergency" 'cause that show got canceled, and the other 3 people died in a motorcycle accident. I was a TV star, dammit. And Phelps might have all the fame and money in the world, but he'll never get to have tons of indiscriminate sex with girls with big bushes and real boobs. No. Not without a condom he won't."

The shag carpeting of Spitz' anachronistic living room cruelly flickered like digital water in the cool glow of Spitz' even more sadly outdated 32" non-HD Cathode Ray Tube television. The American men, who had never lost the Men's 400m Individual Medley, took to the pool. And Michael Phelps, the young man with flippers and gills and weird ears and messed up teeth and a personality like Soy Milk, swam the third leg of the relay easily and without visible effort, in comfortable oblivion to the man sitting next to me. Although Phelps was the one swimming his 17th swim of the Olympics that night, when it was over and Phelps had won his 8th and final gold of the games, it was Spitz who looked exhausted.

Unable to find the remote, Spitz slowly walked over to the TV and turned it off. He quietly opened the sliding door to his balcony, and proclaimed to the valley of newly christened Michael Phelps disciples below him, "It's just swimming. It's just gold medals. Nobody cares. I invented this shit. I had a mustache."

Alicia Sacramone is gonna be Just Fine

I Started feeling bad for Alicia again. And then I remembered that she's just a sorority chick from Brown, and as such deserves no sympathy. Then again, the dude she knocks out in this video seems like a bit of a douche ... so things even out. And now I feel bad for her again. I just can't make up my mind.

Chinese Toddlers Dominate Drunk Americans

Last night Alicia Sacramone, the real life daughter of fictitious mob boss, John "Johnny Sac" Sacramone, fell on her ass a couple times and the U.S. won a silver medal in Women's gymnastics at the Beijing Olympic Games. Sacramone, a 5'1" goliath, looked out of sorts all night, and turned in an uneven performance, where she looked both nervous and hot the entire time.

The Chinese entered the balance beam portion of the contest, holding a 1 point lead, which in a sport that deducts points for camel toe and armpit sweat, is nearly insurmountable.

The U.S. was ready to symbolically concede the world to China, but then from out of the sky came a gift from the always pro-American God in heaven .... Gasp! one of the 5 year old Chinese girls made a fatal error in front of an entire nation of 5 year old girl murderers. When the 35 pound China doll fell off the balance beam, the whole stadium drew firearms and threatened to sell her to a Fruit of the Loom factory.

With that 8 tenths of a point deduction, an American comeback seemed probable ... for a moment. But then that hot Amazon from Brown University, who at a towering 5'1" looked like some sort of white Serena Williams, ruined everything when she launched her huge 105 pound frame from a spring board, and failed to execute a simple front flip onto a 4" wide bar suspended 4 1/2 feet above the ground, in front of roughly 1 billion home viewers.

(I might not know the first thing about Gymnastics, but I watched the Chinese kindergartners mount the balance beam from a step stool. Not quite sure why Alicia thought she had to get all crazy.)

And then, with the taste of failure fresh in her mouth Alicia took to the floor exercise, where she did flips and aerials with force and strength that would make Tony Hawk (or almost any other guy) cream in his pants ... and ended up on her ass ... and stepped out of bounds. And then the anorexic blonde girl .... stepped out of bounds. And then the little powerhouse girl, who could kick the doors off a bank vault ... stepped out of bounds. And somehow this team of vertigo stricken teenagers ended up with a silver medal. And of course we, the sore losers of the United States of America, still find a way to bitch. Because a silver medal isn't good enough.

I think everyone needs a little perspective on this. The U.S. Women were falling off parallel bars and balance beams for 2 out of 3 days. The Chinese were (to anyone's surprise?) using child labor. And the Russians were out of sight drunk as hell ... as always. In the end the little girls stayed on their feet longer and the American sorority chicks got a silver. Boo-hoo.

I do feel bad for Alicia, she seemed pretty crestfallen. And she probably won't want to look at that silver medal for a while. She just needs to learn a thing or two from Mitch "The Wild Thing" Williams, who unceremoniously ended the Phillies' bid for a World Series Title in 1993 with a middle of the plate fastball.

Alicia, move out of town (or in your case the country) for a while and then come back 20 years later and launch your own Salsa Line, or you could always get a job at ESPN as a field correspondent. If that doesn't work, think of the Alternative. Are you really jealous of Li Shanshan, the star of the Chinese team? She will have her day in the sun in China, and then, when she gets all big and womanly like you, the government will revoke her fake passport and sell her into wage slavery, where she will be forced to make giant Sponge Bob dolls for American Carnivals forever. So really Alicia, even as a big fat loser, you are a winner .... And so are you America.