Muck N Myers

Everyday, you can pick up a newspaper and read about the utter and complete stupidity of your fellow man. It's as reliable as time. It will never fail. It is ever-present in society. People make mistakes. It's one of the inevitabilities of fallibility, but the true sign of a man is when you can own up to a mistake, admit remorse, and face the music like you bought tickets to see it played.

Brett Myers allegedly raised a fist to his wife, Kim, on Boyleston St. in Boston last Friday in the early morning. At this point, you have to say allegedly, but according to all reports you might as well say that the Phillies allegedly suck right now, or that Barry Bonds allegedly took illegal performance enhancing drugs, or that OJ allegedly killed his wife. Alleged is just a pretenser here. He did it. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. The question is why.

Myers, the volatile righthander who has been Philly's only semblance of decent starting pitching this season, has always been a bit of a head case. His composure on the mound doesn't fool you into thinking that he would be any sort of a pacifist off of it, but what brings a man who grew up an amateur boxer to raise a hand to the woman he supposedly loves? What could have happened? What could she have said in the middle of a crowded street that deserved a bitch slap or a knuckle sandwich (we don't have proof of which of those delightfully appetizing choices were administered that night)? Did she admit to some extra-curricular activity? Or perhaps, was she leaving him? Did she tell him his cutter couldn't cut through mashed potatoes? That his curveball is usually more well hung than he is?

The fact is that there is nothing she could have said that would have pushed me to that point short of her telling me she gave our 3-year old daughter to the recently released pedofile down the street for the weekend. I'm betting that wasn't the case. But as bad as the incident itself was, the reaction of the Philadelphia Phillies as an organization was disgraceful.

I have been a Phillies die hard since the day I was born. Somehow, probably because of my gluttony for punishment, I will remain one until the day I die. But I root for a uniform, and currently I don't have an ounce of respect for anyone inside that locker room or front office. For the players, it's the way they are playing. For the front office, it's because their greed and cowardice became evident in this circumstance, because a win was more important than what was right. Of course, in true Phillie form, they didn't even get the win.

Myers buried himself further with his coarse, remorseless, punk-ass comments to the media after the incident, shrugging it off with nothing but the notion that his lawyer told him to do so. Pat Gillick was cold, pointless and frankly, childishly selfish in his non-comments about how the manager would be making the decisions on whether to let Brett pitch. That is NOT the manager's decision. It should have been Dave Montgomery's, the President of the Phils, who remained as cloak and dagger as the worthless, spineless, money-grubbing, old money jackasses who own this team. If it didn't come from Monty, it should have come from Gillick. I feel for manager Charlie Manual, who is put in the position of playing the role of dad because he has to live with Myers the rest of the season and needs him to be productive, needs his head on straight when he takes the ball. I think Manual made a bad decision, but it never should have been his to make.

Brett Myers should never have taken the mound Saturday to face his hero, Curt Schilling, a family man who gets a bad rap for his selfishness but who no man would ever accuse of being a bad man, a bad husband, a bad father. Myers, that day, did not deserve to be in the same stadium. He did deserve the rude greeting the Boston and Philly faithful in Fenway dulled out. He did deserve the heartbreaking loss his team endured when David Ortiz did his thing in the 10th. He deserves everything else he gets too.

He should have been sent home. It's that simple. He should have been patted on the head by the Phillies and told, "get to your wife, make this thing right, face that music like you paid to hear it, take care of your daughter, reflect on the problem that caused this and take steps immediately to rid it from your life."

None of that happened. Once again, the Phillies failed. Trial or no trial pending. Sometimes you just have to take something for what you know it is. Sometimes the word "alleged" rings out like a funny joke. But then again, it was the Phillies. They aren't the losingest team in sports history for nothing.

On One Night, There Was Baseball

At my 10-year college reunion at the University of Scranton this weekend, a few of my sports junkie friends admonished me for the collapse of this blog back at the beginning of March. I made the typical excuses most would-be writers would make, and by would-be writer I mean, "I would be a writer if someone paid me enough to live on to do so." I said work responsibilities have kept me away from the computer screen. I whined about how the blog I wrote for before this paid me a few bucks a post and that added up to decent extra cash every month. This one unfortunately does not. I moped about not wanting to spend more time on a computer after 10-hour days, especially during the summer.

Then yesterday I received an e-mail from Monster and MLB.com inviting me to enter this random drawing for a free trip for two to the All-Star game in Pittsburgh and a chance to blog it on MLB.com. You get field passes and your choice of All-Star to interview. Plus, they chuck you two grand to throw around. Now, I probably have a better chance of mlb.com reading this and picking me up as a full-time writer, but I figured what the hell, because if I fixed the blog and threw an ad up for the contest, they were going to send me a new hat (see banner to the right). So, for the sake of new hats, and for the fact that I figured out what was making the site look weird, I am back.

It doesn't hurt that right about now my Phillies are teetering on driving me to do drugs (I already drink enough) and the New York Yankees, the pantheon of sports evil and eminence, are in town for a rare appearance at Citizen's Bank Park this week. It doesn't hurt that for the first time in about three weeks, I sat down in the yard with the grill fired up and watched a well played baseball game. The well played baseball game was the part that hadn't happened in a while.

It's no secret to Phils fans that this team is an anomaly. That's a strange sentence. It would make sense that if they were an anomaly there would be a secret behind that, but no, year after year, we look at this crew of supposed talent and wonder why they can't get over the hump. Well, I have your answer. It's starting to leak from the Bank like water used to leak from the rafters of the old Vet. Here it is, in grandiose form. Ready? They are not good enough. Plain and simple. And no amount of numbers from this supposed juggernaut of a lineup is ever going to change that. They aren't good enough from 1 through 8, and they are sensationally subpar on the mound. So, what we are left with is nights like last night when these prickly little players who don the red pinstripes summon up enough testicular fortitude to play like men. Makes you ask yourself why they can't do it every night, doesn't it?

Perhaps it's got something to do with the competition. Do the Yankees bring out the best in people? Does an aging Randy Johnson help fire up the furnace? Does Derek Jeter inspire Abraham Nunez? Does A-Rod put a spark in Pat Burrell? Last night, baseball was played the way it should be played at the Bank. Brett Myers and Randy Johnson battled how pros do, popping spots when they absolutely need to on a hazy and humid sauna-like night in South Philly. Hitters came through in clutch spots on tough pitches, and leather flashed like Mike Mamula in an Allentown bar.

Was it the crowd? Did 45,000 ignite a fire under a team who's nucleus has been together for 5 years now, talking about playing to their potential? There's been crowds before.

Was it the prospect of impressing the Boss and Joe Torre? Are there free agent years on the horizon for some players who may want to head north up the turnpike?

I'm not sure what makes a man bring it at one level one day and another the next. I know I have days at work that I "write it in." Most everyone does. It takes the extraordinary man not to. There aren't many extraordinary men on the Phillies roster. And Philly fans know the few that flirt with extraordinary. They are there every night. Their names are Utley and Rowand.

With that in mind, we can only hope that for a few nights a summer our boys hit the diamond, body and mind, and give us a few moments in the yard with our feet up and the grill firing, where even in our town, good baseball is played, and for at least one night, the losingest team in sports history lived up to 26 World Championships.

I'm back but probably not daily...I may kick out two, maybe three blogs a week. Thanks for your patience.