Baseball and Tastykake: All the Good Things Wrapped up in One

Tastykake, of course we didn't forget! How could we? In honor of your 100th birthday, we thought we'd take it back to a simpler time for Phillies fans, a time when the team showed promise and the city spent its nights singing Frank Stallone tunes around burning trashcans. It's better to live in an idealized past than eat your weight in Butterscotch Krimpets while worrying about the future.

In the 1970s, home run hitters were fueled by Jelly Krimpets...

Pennants were raised by Kandy Kake gnomes...

Women played baseball...

...and the only Hall of Fame that mattered was one that everyone agreed on.

From the inside pages of old Phillies yearbooks and our hearts to yours!

Happy birthday, Tastykake!

Keep On, Keep On

It's Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, not everyone's going to be receiving a Chooch valentine this year. But, hey, that's okay. Philadelphia's a land of underdogs that have been known to come back approximately two out of every three times according to the movies.

That's good news for J-Roll's pal and new Phillies reliever, Dontrelle Willis. 2003's Rookie of the Year is coming off a 1-6 season with the Reds and a 5.00 ERA. Still, D-Train was pretty good against southpaw hitters in 2011, and is another pitcher that can hit! Let's just hope that he's feeling strong now. Word is he's been down in Clearwater for weeks.

Don't be another "bum from the neighborhood" this year. When life gets you down, be like Dontrelle Willis and the city of Philadelphia.... start a soul train.

The sky is the limit and I know that you can have what you want, be what you want

Happy Valentine's Day from the ladies of Scoring Position!

Update: The D-Train has left the station.

Hearts On Fire, Strong Desire

I miss you, Philadelphia. Since I moved in with you just five short years ago, my childhood bedroom in Connecticut has slowly morphed into a storage room for old perfume bottles, partially rewound VHS tapes, and terrible CDs from the mid to late 90s. It's kind of like the box of stuff you'd return to an ex if you hadn't taken a baseball bat to it first. Someone even tacked up a 1999 World Series pennant in here. The Yanks walloped the Braves in four games that year, while '99 for the Phils went from "promising to disastrous in the blink of an eye" (probably explains why it was also the year those batteries were thrown).

So as I sit here, in the room of my former self, awaiting this week's return to the land of late night pretzels, mummers, and these guys, I'm forced to reconcile with the fact that I once rooted for the team that won the pennant in 1999, the same team that beat the Phils in the 2009 World Series and that Cliff Lee didn't want to play for next season. But, hey. I had no choice. I was born into a Yankees family from central Connecticut, a no mans land for professional sports. (That is, since the Whalers left in 1997, and despite how much Connecticut folks still talk about missing the Whale and their sweet logo, I was always under the impression that they considered UCONN more of a pro team.)

I stopped caring about the Yankees and baseball at some point in the early 2000s when everyone got really into drinking steroid cocktails and bathing themselves in money (here's to you, Jason Giambi). Before that, I saw the Yanks as any kid saw the team they grew up with, as a bunch of good dudes that enjoyed the game - dudes like young Andy Pettitte, acoustic guitarist Bernie Williams, and old man Paul O'Neill that always got up to bat with the biggest smile on to "Baba O'Riley" by the Who. When I moved to Philadelphia in 2005, most of the good dudes were gone and I found myself without a team and no longer able to relate to the Yankees or New York. That's where Philadelphia came in, and shortly after my move, I officially dumped the pretty boy Yanks for the working class Phils, Steff from Pretty in Pink for Rocky.

That's not to say that I grew up not caring about the Phillies or hating the Mets. My family was a bigger fan of baseball than they were of the Yankees, and in '99 we payed close attention to the Phillies because of one player that grew up close to my hometown named Rico Brogna. Check out Rico as a baby.

Rico mysteriously disappeared from baseball two years after what was a pretty good year with the Phils and inexplicably ended up at my high school coaching football. I really want to make a Gerardo joke here, probably because "Rico Suave" would play in my head whenever Brogna and I crossed paths. I imagine that this happens to every girl that crosses paths with a dude lucky enough to be a Rico after 1990. Ah, "the price you pay for being a gigolo", but I digress.

I guess the point in all of this girl talk about dudes that play baseball, the good, the bad, and the suave, is that Rico was the first player that turned me on to Philadelphia. He was kind of like that dude that made you a great mix tape when you were fifteen and too stupid to know good music yet. When I moved to Philadelphia without a team in 2005, the rest was history. I found myself quickly falling in love with another team of good dudes that enjoyed the game. Jimmy and Chase and Ryan and Shane.

Sure, there are other great moments worth mentioning here that made me love the Phillies. Like that time an entire bar erupted into "High Hopes" after the Phillies beat the Reds in Game 2 of the NL Series this year. Or that time I was hanging out of a car on Broad Street screaming my lungs out about baseball and Tastykakes. We all have these moments, but ultimately the strong desire for the Phils that raged within, to paraphrase a song from Rocky IV, stemmed from my love for a bunch of good dudes like Rico.

Like blogging partner and fellow babe, Nadine, I'm a person that does not have any inside information on the Phillies. I'm a transplant to the city for Pete's sake. I'm just glad I didn't get kicked out yet. However, I do find myself constantly reading, posting, and sharing information about the Phillies, and until I figure out how to use my college degree in cognitive neuroscience to better understand why people love baseball as much as I do, I'll be doing this.

I originally wanted to make a Phillies blog titled "My Boyfriend, Charlie Manuel" in which I'd write about the Phillies from the perspective of Charlie Manuel's girlfriend - making him sleep on the couch during losing streaks and cooking him the juiciest of steaks after climbing space mountain to beat the Yankees. This just seemed a lot easier.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Until I see you later this week, Philadelphia, remember to keep checking the mail:

DEAR PHILADELPHIA,

YOU ARE... THIS IS...
I PROMISED MYSELF I WOULDN'T GET CHOKED UP.
I LOVE YOU.

XOXO,

LAUREN