This Just In: Professionals Still Somewhat Better Than Amateurs!

Baseball's back! In an exhibition game yesterday, the Phillies beat the Florida State Seminoles 6-1. The game was tied until the seventh inning which started with back-to-back hits by Pete Orr and Eric Kratz. Other highlights of the game included the first hit of the season for the Phillies by some dude named Tuffy Gosewisch, Hector Luna's two-run blast, and eight scoreless innings pitched by young arms hoping for AAA date cards. From the regular guys, Hunter Pence chimed in with a double in the fourth inning and Domonic Brown hit Big Truck's big truck during batting practice earlier in the day.

I know, I know. Exhibition games against college teams don't really matter to anyone outside of that young or old pitcher given a shot at the majors and the 2009 Manatee Community College baseball team that beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-4. I'm just happy to read a fresh box score.

Tune in this Saturday as the Phillies take on the Yankees who once played an exhibition game against my own hometown's heroes, the 1947 Waterbury Timers. It won't be '47 Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra, and Joltin' Joe or the '09 Manatees against Cole and the Gang, but it'll still be a good sneak peek of baseball to come!

Any predictions on who will be the team to beat in 2012? Greg Dobbs has already done J-Roll's whole "we're the team to beat" schtick which I'm pretty sure won't work twice. Leave it in the comments!

The War of the Broses

The magic number is 22. With an 86-46 record and just 31 games to go, that eight ball that J-Roll shook up that read, "Yeah, we'll win 100 games," back in March might have been right. Another number that's worth calculating at this point is the probability that the Phillies will make it past win 101, the most wins the Phillies have ever had in a season. They reached 101 in 1976 and again in 1977. While the fat lady isn't singing yet, if she was, she'd probably be singing this right now. To the most lovable bros in all of baseball:

Speaking of lovable bros, Vance Worley is probably rolling out of bed right now to take the mound at 12:35 PM. As I recently learned over at the700level, he stays awake until the sun comes up the night before he pitches and sleeps until game time. He even snored through that rare earthquake that shook the entire east coast last week because he had to beat the Mets later. Another thing I learned about the Vanimal recently is that he's been cooped up in some hotel since he joined the big leagues. Who knows? Maybe his strange sleep patterns are actually due to watching Prince's "Purple Rain" so many times on the hotel TV that his life mantra has become that message that appears after the credits roll: May u live 2 see the dawn. Just a theory.

Whether or not he worships in the house of Prince, Vance still needs a place to kick it. I think I've found him the perfect spot- that is, as long as he can pass the drinking tryouts:


On second thought, this pad could be the perfect home for a lot of Phillies bros. The term "fratting hard" brings Michael Stutes to mind as he's been recently donning that pink boa and backpack full of goodies for the bullpen, while "hot chicks" brings Kyle Kendrick's inexplicably hot wife to mind. Plus, bromances, defined on Wikipedia as "a form of homosocial intimacy," have basically fueled this team to its current position in the standings. Just think about it: Rollins and Howard, Utley and Howard, Utley and Pence, Lee and Pence, the Let's Go Eat T-Shirt and Pence, and the greatest bromance of all time, Halladay and Chooch. The options are endless!

Let's just hope that 9-1 Vance Worley continues to "kill it at life" today, bringing us one step closer to a division title and upping the odds for Worley Goggles and Mohawk Night at the Ballpark becoming a thing.

Yeah, bro.

Let's Go Eat

Nadine and I wanted to make our triumphant return to blogging with a nonfiction novella about that awkwardly lovable right-handed bat from Texas with no first names, Hunter Pence. How could he not be an instant Phillie fan favorite? The old-fashioned socks, the wit, the appetite, the Cliff Lee hooking him up with cowboy boots. Swoon! He's pretty much the anti-Werth outside of the right-handed bat thing. That no longer rings true for Werth, as his batting average hasn't helped anything but bar prices since he took that long walk to DC. But every time I plan on writing a post about a Phillie that isn't Kyle Kendrick or go to a game that Kyle Kendrick isn't pitching at, I am a total jinx. Sure, Pence singled last night after striking out three times, but I still managed to mess up that nice statistic about the Phillies winning whenever Pence hits. So let's save that goofy gangletron for another day, talk about why I couldn't sleep after last night's loss, and then go eat.

Let us first reflect on the Great Doctor and Cy Young Collector Harry Leroy "Roy" Halladay III. The same question is probably on everyone's mind whenever Doc goes into the ninth. While he's especially good at getting out of jams and pitching a quick and efficient nine innings, maybe Charlie should let the relief pitchers work every now and then. While Doc has proven us all wrong before, and it's awesome when he does, last night's loss to the D-Bags was especially rough knowing that in addition to neck tattoos, the D-Bags also lead the league in comebacks. Last night marked their 35th of the season. Doc also had his first extra-base hit ever in addition to pitching a solid game which did not help my mood. Instead, it made me reminisce on that postseason no-hitter he also had a hit in. Memories. I guess losses are just tougher on nights when you feel the Roy Halladay magic.

That brings me to my second point about them late innings bats. Tuesday's bottom of the ninth was difficult to watch: one out, runner in scoring position, and Ross Gload and J-Roll strikeout. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the Harry Kalas statue was also revealed last night or that I haven't been won over by Gload yet or that I had one too many beers, but before he even got up to bat, an old mantra popped into my head, "In case of emergency, use Stairs." Matt Stairs' home run was the last Harry the K called in 2009, and while Stairs was released from the Nats earlier this year, I wanted him to fly in then and there to save the day. That, or I wanted John Mayberry Jr. to be pinch hitting instead of pinch running.

You could replay Tuesday night's game a lot of different ways to make yourself feel better. At the end of the night, the next morning, and the next day, it's still just baseball — at least until the clock strikes 7:05 PM. I guess it's best to just maintain the same attitude as a fan of baseball that Hunter Pence does as a recent addition to the best team in baseball. “This is nice,” Pence said, “but I definitely don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

Let's go eat.

I Got 99 Problems But a Pitch Ain't One

It looks like I have the Kyle Kendrick ticket package again this season, what would have been the Joe Blanton ticket package if Big Joe wasn't sent to the DL. :(= Now I know what you're thinking, and I once thought it too. If you were me, you'd want to see anyone other than the guy that Joe Blanton beat out to become fifth wheel to the Four Aces. You know, one of those four dudes that appear on those sweet "99 PROBLEMS BUT A PITCH AIN'T ONE" tees sold outside of the stadium. Well, guess what? I've seen some of those guys. I was freezing my butt off when Cole Hamels gave up a quick six runs in his season debut, a 7-1 loss to the Mets. Oh, and that terrible 9-0 loss to the Brewers with Halladay on the mound? That "two-hit atrocity"? I was there. In fact, up until I was recently cursed with tickets to Kendrick games, I was convinced that I was a curse to the Phillies altogether, the jinx whose mere presence could turn an ace into a joker, making pitching problem #100 for Phillies fans everywhere.

So being 0-2 with the Phillies at home with now 9-3 Halladay and 9-2 Hamels, I wasn't thrilled when I found out that my first game at the ballpark with fellow lady of Scoring Position, Nadine, would be one hot date with Kyle Kendrick. Yes, we're talking the same Kyle Kendrick that gave up five quick runs to Old Man Giambi and the Brewers shortly after his World Series ring was found in a Mentos container at the bottom of a swamp, the same Kyle Kendrick that currently has a Facebook page with 260 fans that only seem to comment on how much he blows or spam his wall with quick ways to make $4000/month working from home. Sad, yes. What was sadder was that the night before last Thursday's game with Nadine, I wishfully dreamt that Kyle Kendrick was sent to the DL and Vance Worley would be taking his place on the mound. This was no prophetic dream. (Side note: dream psychology tells me that I dreamt this because I needed to work through a problem. Even Freud proposed that dreams exist to fulfill our wishes to see Vance Worley over Kyle Kendrick. Too bad thinking in reality doesn't work this way. Am I right?)

Kyle Kendrick was to take the mound at 7:05. What were two gals to do? Drink some beer and bank on a stroke of genius, I guess. After throwing back a couple at some 420-themed beer event at the South Philly Tap Room before the game, it finally came to us! We decided that we could either go about our fate like every other Philadelphian and complain about not getting Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee, or we could, for just one day, be Kyle Kendrick's biggest and loudest fans. Maybe the trippy black light posters covering the bar's walls were giving us strange vibes or maybe we had been slipped something, but what was to follow was truly magical.

Kyle Kendrick pitched an awesome three innings, leaving a big fat 0 on the board for the Cubs. Nadine and I even convinced the middle-aged ladies from the Northeast sitting next to us to jump on the Kyle Kendrick bandwagon. Clad in Phillies pink, they became even more obnoxious than us every time Kendrick through a strike. Kyle Kendrick had it together, and I thought my losing streak with the Phillies was finally coming to a close. Cue a montage of Kendrick putting people away to his warm up music, "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction:

Is this a reference to catching people on base or the discovery of Kyle's stolen World Series ring?

Then tornado-like winds ripped through the stadium, and after a one hour rain delay, Kyle Kendrick was inexplicably taken out. The Phillies were up 3-0, and Baez was on the mound. Even Nadine and I could not get behind that. What was to follow can only be explained by the workings of a curse. The game dragged on, and the Phillies remained hitless since J-Roll's three-run homer in the second inning. Ryan Madson blew his first save in 15 opportunities. In my mind, this all happened while Nadine and I were dancing and singing to "Don't Stop Believing" with our new gal pals from the Northeast. Charlie even argued his way into getting one of the home runs Madson gave up reversed to turn everything back into a tie game, yet the Phillies still managed to blow it. Herndon was not pinch-hit for with the bases loaded in the 10th. He struck out scared and swinging. Polanco made a rare throwing error at third in the 11th to allow the winning run for the Cubs to score. Was this just bad baseball or the result of a higher power?

I honestly believe that had Kyle Kendrick stayed in that night, the curse would have been lifted. Instead, I had to wait until Kendrick's next start against the Marlins. Watching from the 400 level with six friends, I saw Kendrick throw an amazing seven-inning one-run performance. Someone even started shouting, "You just got 'dricked!" every time Kyle put up a K. The Phillies cruised past the Marlins 8-1. Since that game, the Phillies have won in extra innings on a Chooch walk off, Cliff Lee pitched a two-hit shutout while racking up two hits and an RBI, and Vance Worley has magically returned from the AAA Iron Pigs. Sure, we lost last night, but you can't win them all.

Vance Worley's starting in tonight's game against the Mariners which might make me one of the few that ever had the Kyle Kendrick ticket package at all. Who knows what'll happen to Kendrick now? Maybe he'll split starts with Worley or maybe he'll return to the 'pen as the Phillies' much needed longman. Say what you will about the man, but first let me say this. It's probably the first time these words have ever been put together in the English language.

I am thankful for Kyle Kendrick.