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.