On New Pitches and Mental Conspiracies

We've told you before about Roy Oswalt's superpowers, but did you know that Roy O is also an inventor? Desperate to get out of a 14-pitch at-bat (including 9 fouled-off pitches) last night to Juan Uribe, Oswalt invented a new pitch, changing the grip on his slider to confound Uribe and finally strike him out. Ultimately, Oswalt combined with David Herndon, Antonio Bastardo, and Jose Contreras to shut out the Padres and bring the Phillies' record to 12-6. You can read more about the Uribe at-bat here.

It's great to know we have secret super-geniuses, robots, and the coolest man on the planet pitching for us, but it would be really great if our offense would step it up and let these dudes get a second to chill out on the mound once in a while. Like, maybe by not stranding a runner in scoring position every now and again? That said, I was happy to see solo homers from Ben Francisco and Brian Schneider, as well as Plácido Polanco continuing to make his case for most-underratedly-awesome Phillie and one of my all-time favorite baseball names. Let's hope we see more of that going forward. And maybe next time, like, one of those home runs could come while somebody's on base? Please?

Speaking of Brian Schneider, do you think if I followed him home after the game, he'd lead me to a pot of gold? Looks like a leprechaun to me! Who else sees the leprechaun? Say yeah!!!!!

It's like we've been trying to tell you: these 2011 Phillies just aren't human. MENTAL CONSPIRACY! BLAH BLAH!

Phanatic vs. Machine

Johnny Baseball

No, the Phanatic's not taking on Pat the Bat. I'm talking about Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, Ken Jennings vs. Watson, Dave vs. HAL. Tomorrow, a robot created by Penn’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab will throw out the first pitch against the Phillie Phanatic. According to this article, the robot rides around on a Segway and has a motion-tracking camera "head" that can locate the strike zone on any fat, furry, green creature.

Before this matchup for the ages, former Phillie Randy Wolf will take on the Great Doctor and Cy Young Collector Harry Leroy "Roy" Halladay III, who according to this podcast (talk of "baseball" begins around 16:22) also parties with replicants (not to mention, makes up one quarter of R2C2). Quoting some dude or one of his brothers: "The Phillies. Half robot. Half of their league. Half of their bench is robotic. There's some mixies in there. There's some half and halfs—half robot, half human. Roy Halladay. 100% robot. He's actually a pitching machine."

While this source cannot be trusted since he goes onto call Brian Wilson a "great American hero" that "isn't a robot at all," I do admit that it's hard to watch Doc without wondering about his superhuman abilities. It's like Roy walks into a phone booth dressed to the nines before every game and comes out in a Phillies uniform ready to pitch entire games. I do agree that Brian Wilson isn't a robot, but if not a robot, what is he? Discuss.

The Sound and Soul of Philadelphia

On this day in 1974, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by MFSB featuring the Three Degrees hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100—brought to my attention by this A.V. Club article written by my good friend Kate. You know, the theme song from the television show Soul Train that's also played at CBP before the start of every home game? Yeah, this jam:


After reading Kate's description of the tune, it's hard not to draw parallels between Philly soul and our current team of Fightin' Phils:

Though vocals appear on the track twice—The Three Degrees sing “People all over the world!” a few times near the beginning, echoing “Love Train,” and then chorus “Let’s get it on/It’s time to get down” during the fadeout—the focus is clearly on the instruments, which is exactly what made Philly soul special. The lack of a standard frontman crooning in the spotlight was a microcosm of the scene at the time—its strength was cooperation and collaboration.

While mathematics predicts that we will have one of the best four-man pitching rotations in MLB history :(=, recent history suggests that "Chooooooooch is clutch," and my memory tells me that Ryan Howard looks awesome in these goggles, it's difficult to come up with a "standard frontman" for the Phillies. Pretty much everyone has been important so far. The focus is clearly on the instruments, which is exactly what makes our current Phillies team so special.

That's not to discount the role of the city in helping produce a groove that works - like what the Funkadelic talk about in their One Nation Under a Groove album, which even ends with a song called "Cholly (Funk Getting Ready To Roll!)." (It's like George Clinton foresaw the makeup of Uncle Cholly's present day Phillies!) While sitting outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood the other day, I overheard an interesting conversation about just this point—cities, like people and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, have soul too. This is all secondhand coffee talk, but I couldn't help but be intrigued by this dude's theory that how much soul a city has depends on two things: how many people from a city still live there to have memories about the city and how neurotically-obsessed people are with their city.

The fact that the Sound of Philadelphia is still honored on CBP's speakers taken with the current paranoia brewing among Phillies fans about when it's okay and not okay to boo can't help but make me think that Philadelphia has the most soul of all.

Putting the X in Exxon Valdez

At Scoring Position, we're certainly not strangers to investigating which of your favorite baseball players are secretly or not-so-secretly straight edge. So of course it got my attention when—during last night's game against the Nationals—I noticed that second-baseman Wilson Valdez had drawn unmistakable X's onto his batting gloves.

Unfortunately, googling "is Wilson Valdez straight edge?" just leads you back to this blog. Which leaves me wondering: could the Philadelphia Phillies have a straight edge kid in their midst? Could Philadelphia—home of Kenzinger and Ben "Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy" Franklin and Philly Beer Week, where you can buy a 20-ounce cup of lager for $2.35 at McGlinchey's or this t-shirt—also be home to a replacement Chase Utley who doesn't even drink? I want to know the truth: is Wilson Valdez straight edge? Or is he just putting the X's in his way-too-perfect nickname, Exxon Valdez?

Enterprising tipsters, send your thoughts to scoringpositionblog@gmail.com. And while you're at it, follow Scoring Position on Facebook for more frequent updates on your favorite bunch of baseball dudes—and how their edge is.

Harry Kalas, Friend to All

Philadelphia said goodbye to good friend Harry Kalas, voice of the Phillies, two years ago today. Harry the K was in the Nationals press box when he collapsed several hours before the start of the home opener for the Nationals. Harry's Phillies went on to beat the Nationals 9-8 that day after taking drags of his brand in tribute - Parliaments, which he called "heaters."

Let's hope that the Phillies win another one for HK tonight as Doc goes 9-0 with the Nationals. Until then, light up a "heater," crack open a cold one, and listen again to one of the best voices in baseball here. Baseball Voices also put together a terrific CD featuring some of HK's most memorable calls, available for purchase here—highly recommended next time you're found with your head on the ground, gettin' low, or feelin' bad.

Kerplop!

Jayson Werthless

There was a time not too long ago when I was sitting with my brother in the bleacher seats at Yankee Stadium listening to chants of "Werthless" directed toward right field. My brother is a Yankee lover despite the fact that he has no problem matching the baseball cap of any AL or NL team to whatever color polo shirt he's wearing. I will never understand this phenomenon in bro fashion, but I have to admit that while morally questionable, his wall of caps is pretty impressive. His bedroom is just like Lids if Lids smelled like Axe and had a bed in the center of it. My brother wisely chose to go with one of his many Yankees caps that day while I donned my beat-up Phillies cap. I felt like Elaine Benes at Yankee Stadium, booed as much as Jayson Werth while returning to my seat with a birthday Bud Lite for my favorite Yankee bro.

While Phillies fans are infamous booers and will probably greet the new Natty beau (heh, see what I did there?) with louder rounds of boos than the Yankees did, they have their reasons. The Yankees fans that surrounded me that day were itching to boo anything that wasn't branded with a Yankee symbol. This included Jayson Werth, me, and could have included my Yankee brother had he chosen a different shirt/hat combo. The bleacher creatures of Yankee Stadium do not discriminate. Their chants of "Werthless" upset me, and not because I was a Phillies fan, but because they were unfocused and followed by chants of "you suck" at all things non-Yankee. That said, I don't think that Werth will be received kindly when Philadelphia takes over Nationals Park today, but at least there will be a method to the Phillies fan's madness.

I used to like Werth. I was sad to see him go. I almost cried when he talked about noticing the change in leaves for the first time after returning from 2010's loss to the Giants in the NLCS, and that whole "this is definitely not the same game I played in my grandparents' backyard as a kid" bit. Then the man chose money over baseball while his buddy Cliff did the opposite, and went on to pout for months about how he was on one of the worst teams in baseball. Werth was then caught swinging a bat while saying, "I hate the fucking Phillies." Of course the fans are going to turn. To quote Nadine's own father: "I have a bounty on Jayson Werth's head. 500 bucks to the first person to hit him with a battery."

Werth's obviously not over us either. In his first game with the Nationals, he chose "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses as his at-bat music:

Cause nothin' lasts forever and we both know hearts can change

It's hard not to read more into that. It's like watching John Cusack hold up a boombox outside a window in Say Anything. Werth's trying to tell us something. "November Rain" is an epic ballad about the misery of a former rock star reminiscing over a past relationship that ends in suicide—a newly married bride's gunshot to the head. In the music video, she kind of reminds you of newly married to the Nationals Werth, but then again, so does the down and out Axl Rose and the lost in the desert Slash wailing on guitar. After all, November was when the Phillies gave Werth an offer that he turned down to become a free agent. Either way, it will be interesting to see how this soap opera plays out. I know that Charlie's ready for Werth, as he was recently quoted saying, "I’ll be on him. I’ll be getting on him. I’ll be getting on J-Dub. I’ll be hollering at him."

As for me, I'm just happy that Ben Francisco's been doing such a great job in right field since we lost Werth, who truly wasn't worthless to the Phillies at all. He played great baseball here—hit home runs, dove for balls, had interesting facial hair. However, one area where Benny excels and is continuing to excel compared to Werth is hitting with runners in scoring position (RISP).

So the real question is, to boo or not to boo Werth in the April rain? It's hard to hate Werth all that much. Maybe Axl Rose is right: "everybody needs some time on their own."

The Phillies Take on the Madoffs Tonight

"Enjoy your slaughter of my Madoffs," my friend and lifelong Muts fan wrote me yesterday after hating on "cheesesteak-eatin' Phillies fans" for a paragraph or two (I may have left out some adjectives there). So tonight let's party like it's 1964...

Jim Bunning, father of seven, pitching the first perfect game in NL history against the Mets on Father's Day

...or at least 1915, the last time the Phillies won the first four games of the season. It seems like we're breaking old records every day. Let's just hope that tonight's game isn't too much of what 1965 Mets manager Wes Westrum would have called a "real cliff-dweller". Go Phillies!

Edit: We did not party like it was 1964 or 1915 last night. Cole had a tough time on the mound and our 7-1 loss to the Mets wasn't a "cliff-dweller" of any kind. However, the lack of action in the later, colder, windier innings did incite some fan to run onto the field and slide into second base, so there's that. Maybe my hopes were a little too high for my first game back at the ballpark. The Flyers and Sixers also lost which made for an extra sad subway ride home from the land of the stadiums.

In Defense of Greg Dobbs, My Favorite Phillie of 2008 (No Joke!)

There's something to be said, in baseball and in life, for adapting to your role and learning to do it better than anybody else. And there is no better example of that than Gregory Stuart Dobbs circa 2007-2008, the best pinch hitter in Phillies history.

Not only known for hitting .355 as a pinch hitter and shattering Greg Gross' single-season franchise record for pinch hits, Greg Dobbs was also a favorite around the clubhouse, spent more time on his hair than any other Phillie (at least according to one of those scoreboard "ask the players" videos at CBP), and was voted the player Philly women second-most wanted to bang (after Chase Utley). He may not be my type of dude (I'm into lanky left-handed pitchers, personally), but Greg Dobbs is definitely my type of player. Scrappy, adaptable, unexpected. Doing whatever it takes to beat the shit out of everybody at the part of the game he got the chance to play. Tragically, limited roster space and reduced playing time took a lot of those chances away in 2009 and 2010, and Greg Dobbs' glory days were over.

I wonder who on the 2011 squad could possibly fill 2008-Greg-Dobbs' shoes. If anybody can, and especially after Friday's glorious walk-off pinch hit, I hope it's John Mayberry Jr.

Luckily, Philly Gameday got the answer to the question "can the Phillies win without Greg Dobbs?" for us, straight from the source himself:

Hello again fans! Greg Dobbs here doing some pinch-blogging (heh, see what I did there?) about the Phillies’ chances to overcome the loss of Greg Dobbs and continue their run atop the NL East. The Phillies current run of four-straight division titles began back on January 15, 2007, when the Phillies re-affirmed their commitment to winning by claiming Greg Dobbs off waivers from the Seattle Mariners. The rest—as they say—is history.

Greg Dobbs led Philadelphia to its first playoff appearance in 13 years, its first division title in 24 years and its first World Series title in 28 years. Greg Dobbs was enjoying all the success he brought to the team and thought the ride would never end. But Greg Dobbs was wrong.

Read the rest of the article here.

Everybody Hits! Woo Hoo!

Take a look at us now.

Baseball's back! For those who didn't catch the end of yesterday's game in a dingy pizza place across the street from work, the Phillies rallied for three runs in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Houston Astros in a great show of Opening Day April foolery. This is how it all went down:

Jimmy Rollins singled. Ryan Howard singled. Raul Ibanez popped out. Jimmy stole third. Ben Francisco singled. Chooch singled while Phil Collins' "Sussudio" played on the pizza place's radio. I began to dance in my seat with a slice of pizza (What is it about the Chooch/Phil Collins combo that's so darn magical?) Wilson Valdez doubled. Then John Mayberry Jr. slapped a hit to center with the bases loaded to complete the Phils' walk-off rally. Mayberry was pied and the entire city celebrated by slinging back beers in neighborhood bars.

Someone who probably didn't celebrate and ate his feelings in pizza while listening to a lot of Phil Collins was "relief pitcher" for the Astros Brandon Lyon who currently has a 81.00 ERA as a result of that beautiful ninth inning for the Phillies (1/3 IP, 6H, 3R). What a game!

Philadelphia Fillies

Happy Opening Day to the Phillies from Del Reeves and the ladies of Scoring Position:

While this song is really about Philly babes Del Reeves "batted a thousand with" and not the beloved Phils, I'd like to think that what Del's trying to articulate in his comparison of "Fillies" to hot twins from Minnesota and "cuddly cubbies" from Chicago is that there's truly something special about Philadelphia. So maybe I've been drinking too much of that Schuylkill punch, but I love that opening day's a holiday here. I love that the window displays of South Philly are decorated with bobbleheads and that I've been awake since 4:30 this morning in anticipation of the arrival of Uncle Charlie and the boys. Let's just hope that it's a happy Halladay for Fillies everywhere as Doc kicks off this much-anticipated season against Brett Myers and the Astros at 1:05 ET. Check out today's lineup here. Go Phils! Go baseball!