Let the Grapefruit games begin!

Wondering what those Phillies have been up to? This morning I paid a visit to some old friends that I hadn't seen in a while, the parts of the internet that still care about the well-being of this city's baseball team - you know, because they're paid to. Between headlines that were all like "Chase is totally fine! Don't even worry about it!" was one that read "Amaro's nephew helps University of Tampa beat Phillies". That's right. A team of fresh-faced college boys led by a young Amaro from Bensalem beat the 2015 Phillies. 

My thoughts raced as I clicked from sad news story to sad news story. How is the Amaro bloodline responsible for exhibition losses that even today's Phillies, predicted to be the worst in baseball, are supposed to win? Hold up, Baseball Prospectus. Even worse than the stinkin' Astros? I read that some dude that calls himself Mattress Mack lost 4-million furniture store bucks in a bet last year when the Astros won a rare "more than 63 games".

Is this what we've become? I bet if J-Roll was still here with his crystal ball and cool ego, he'd be all like, "We'll win 80 games. Well, maybe 75." Wait, what's that, ESPN? After spending years, antagonizing New York Mets fans with his swagger, Jimmy was recently caught saying that a future with the Muts would be "pretty bright". Well, he always did look good in shades.

Back to the Phillies. Things start in the Grapefruit League today against the Yankees. In reality, spring training doesn't matter too much. The Phillies are probably delaying what baseball statisticians and fans alike see as the inevitable. I'm just happy that baseball is being played, and as people say, anything can happen. A chain-smoking Tony Danza once brought the Anaheim Angels a pennant title, and the University of Tampa beat a major-league ball club just two days ago.

The future of the Phillies may not be as bright as J-Roll's, but I'm doing my best to get through my baseball seasonal affective disorder through some good old-fashioned writing about my feelings. I implore you all to do the same to get through this winter of bleak predictions. Until then, I apologize for not having posted since Cliff Lee's arm thawed out last year and leave you with an Instagram photo I took at the ballpark this summer, appropriately hashtagged #philliesneorealism:

Now, let's root, root, root for the Phillies and that Mattress Mack makes a bet against our future sometime soon. 

A Prescription for Your SAD

Severe lack of vitamin D, mornings spent trudging through wintry mix, and the long wait until pitchers and catchers report getting you down? Don't worry—we're here with a prescription for your SAD, miserable Wednesday. It's the video for MC Hammer's "Addams Family Groove," featuring none other than a 13 year-old Jimmy Rollins!

If you can make it through the rest of the video, J-Roll appears somewhere around the 3:30 mark. He's in a graveyard, but "there's no dancing involved" because, in Jimmy's words, "you don't want to dance next to Hammer."

While we're on the subject, maybe it will cheer you up to check out Penn drop-out and Addams Family-creator Charles Addams' badass Wikipedia photo. Enjoy!

Radio Days

Opening day cannot come soon enough. With more cold on the way and the most depressing day of the year still to come (January 24th or Blue Monday which is a "scientific fact" according to the internet and New Order), I've begun counting down the days, hours, and seconds until the Phils take on the Astros at 1:05 PM on April 1st.

Thanks to the folks over at The700Level and those awesome dudes on 610 WIP, the wait for April has become slightly more bearable due to this wonderful audio montage of Phillies highlights from 2010.

While the ending does not change no matter how many times you play it through (I'm on my fifth listen and Howard's still watching that meatball go by), it's bound to get you pumped about 2011 as memories of 2010 loop in your head.

Call me old fashioned, but there's something special to be said about radio. Seriously. Radio's great. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to experience the first half of the winning World Series game for the 2008 Phils during the most poorly timed power outage of all time, or have been able to ignore those annoying announcers on TBS and FOX during last year's postseason. Oh, and I will never forget driving into work last month sipping my coffee, watching the snow fall, and listening to an excited Philadelphia call into the 610 morning show with Angelo Cataldi after the Cliff Lee news hit. "Those fat Yankees fans will be eating flapjacks this morning, drowning their sorrows in carbohydrates," he said. Ah, the memories.

Baseball man Bill Veeck once said, "There are only two seasons- winter and Baseball". This is ringing especially true in the coldest and most depressing of months and in the wake of how the Birds played last night. So until opening day, it's going to be a lot of sitting around with my coffee and the radio, daydreaming about the Phillies of yesteryear.