NOTHING IS OVER!

Just before midnight on November 1st, the city of Philadelphia let out a collective groan. The inning that Brad Lidge had started so well was ending in flames at the hands of the hated Alex Rodriguez. Just an inning earlier Pedro Feliz had tied the game on a monster home run. Everything seemed right in the world. Brad Lidge came in and quickly got Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter out. He got 2 strikes on Johnny Damon. Then it stayed at two strikes. Damon fouled off pitch after pitch, denying Lidge the redemption he so desperately wanted for his terrible season. Damon fought him off and slapped a single into left field. A few minutes later 3 runs had scored and the city of Philadelphia was in a state of shock and the Yankees took a 3-1 series lead.

Game 4 was one of the most emotionally draining losses that I’ve ever encountered. It temporarily erased all the good Phils vibes that I’ve had over the past year. The thought of watching Game 5 made me physically ill. The old Philly fan neuroticism snuck in and made me question why I even thought the Phillies could repeat in the first place. Was it is a devastating loss? No questions asked. Was it a killing blow? No sir, it was not.

Sure the Phils are down, but they’re sure as hell not out. You need four wins to win the World Series. The Yankees have won 3 in a row, why can’t us?

Our great hope Clifton Phifer Lee pitches tonight against A.J. Burnett, who is going on short rest. This is very winnable.

Pedro Martinez would presumably pitch Game 6 if things play out right. I think Pedro’s here for a reason. A Game 6 victory in New York couldn’t be more appropriate.

If we make it that far Game 7 will be a total team effort against a gassed CC Sabathia.

If anyone can do it, it’s the Phillies.

This is not a series for the weak of heart. I kindly ask that you bandwagoners abandon ship, we have no more room for your kind.

To hell with the celebrities! To hell with the pundits! To hell with New York! Nobody sticks Philly in a corner! LOUD NOISES!!!!!!!!

We can’t sit idly by and let these douche bags take this. If New York wants this title they’ll have to rip it from the Phillies’ cold dead hands! If you’re going to Game 5 you need to be louder than you’ve ever been! Nothing is over! This is a best of seven series for a reason. Keep the phaith folks, ya gotta believe!

Stay Classy, New York Media: Part II – The Daily News

While the New York Post, featured in Part I of this post, is almost universally thought of as a rag, I expect a little more from the Daily News, who have had what some might call, “quality contributers,” like Mike Lupica. Now, all you have to do is watch The Sports Reporters to disagreewith that, but nonetheless, it’s the 5th-most circulated paper in New York. But it’s still trash. And that’s because of articles like these. That’s why I would like you to meet Joanna Molloy. She wrote a column that disagreed with me. Maybe it was a headline that read, “Cheesesteak-stinkin’ town poses just a phantom menace to Yankees.” It included great quotes that you could only find in a trash article for a trash newspaper from a female writer who has never stepped inside a sports atmosphere before. Including:

“Believe it or not, people down here in Silly-delphia actually think the Phillies will beat the Yankees in the World Series, which starts tomorrow.”

“Did they also think Sanjaya would beat Jordin Sparks? That would be ‘American Idol,’ in case you watch too much baseball and not enough Stupid TV.”

But it wasn’t her quotes that really irked me. It was the quotes that she decided to use to make a sad attempt to prove her point. “Fan after Philly fan,” she wrote. Yes. While Jeremy Olshan and his band of moron minions may have talked to actual New Yorkers, you know, writing for a New York paper and all, Joanna Malloy went to Philadelphia and talked to Philadelphians to prove that Philadelphia sucks. How did she manage to extract those quotes? “Hi, I’m from the New York Daily News. I’m writing an article about why your city and Phillies fans suck. Would you like to give me a quote?” She then proceeded to perform what appears to be a stand-up routine on why Philly sucks.

“W.C. Fields wanted his epitaph to say: I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia. Well, maybe it’s better than being dead, but I’m not sure.”
“The Philadelphia Art Museum has Picasso’s “Three Musicians” and Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” but New York has just about every other great work of art.”
“Philadelphia produced Bill Cosby, but he lives in New York.”

Stay tuned for more, er… actual, World Series coverage coming up later today.

Stay Classy, New York Media

What do you do when you’re a New York City tabloid newspaper, and your beloved Yankees are playing in the World Series come tomorrow against a team from a city that everyone loves to hate? Naturally, you get your crack advertisement department on the oh-so-important mission of photo-shopping a skirt onto the said team’s All-Star center-fielder! (By the way, “crack” here does not mean that they’re great. At anything. Or even remotely good. It means that I genuinely think that everyone at the New York Post who wrote, edited, or published this article must be on crack to let this get by and into their newspaper and website.) They could have at least tried to be original! I mean, the guy’s Hawaiian! Everyone knows that! His nickname is The Flyin’ Hawaiian! They couldn’t even go for a grass skirt? Plus, “The Frillies!” Are grass skirts not frilly?

Oh, if only they could stop there… But some Yankee reporter just had to ask Vic to pose with the cover: “”Shane, could you ..?” “No, I’m not holding that up, bro,” he responded, no questions asked.

"It's only a positive thing to have them focus on you. There's obviously a reason why they put me on the front," Victorino said, referring to the cover of the New York Post.

From Todd Zolecki’s Zo Zone piece:

“Pretty cute,” Chase Utley said. “Shane looks pretty good. I would say Ryan (Howard) might look a little bit better in that skirt than Shane.”

And then there was the article written for the cover. Oh, the article. Such trash. The Post needed 3 people to write this awful headline and by-line: “Frillies are coming to town! Their fans are second-rate & so is their city.” They needed three people to extract quotes like these, this one presumably from a hot-dog stand worker: “‘The Yankees are going to make Philly cream cheese out of them,’ a confident Tommy Bayiokos, 44, predicted yesterday in Midtown.” I particularly enjoyed The Sports Hernia‘s response to Tommy:

“Tommy, if it said you were 16 years old, this might make sense. You’re 44, please do us all a favor and violently tase yourself.”

Other choice quotes from despicable journalists Rich Calder, Erin Calabrese and Jeremy Olshan, with my response following:

1.) “Gotham has been regularly beating the pants off Philly since overtaking the one-horse town as the nation’s economic capital in the early 19th century.”

2.) “Even Benjamin Franklin, Philly’s patron saint, has been described as “the father of all the Yankees.”

3.) “Although Philadelphia doesn’t draw the same ire among New Yorkers as Boston or Los Angeles, it’s mostly because Gothamites consider the city across the Ben Franklin Bridge pretty pathetic, says Bleacher Creature Michael Stewart.”

4.) “‘I don’t have hate for Philly exactly — they are like our redheaded stepchild,” he said. ‘It’s like a nothing city. It’s just insignificant in comparison to New York.'”

5.) “‘The big meal there is a steak with cheese and onions on a hero, but they don’t even call it a hero. It’s a hoagie. What the hell is a hoagie?’ said Ron Montclane, 26.”

6.) “As far as sports go, sure, the Phillies have won two World Series championships compared with the Yankees’ 26, but far sadder is that no one from Philly cares much. ‘Their most famous athlete is Rocky, and he’s fictional,’ sneered Alex Rusu, 23, a building superintendent in Gramercy.”

1.) Isn’t it ironic… that we won the season series 2-1? (Unlike anything Alanis Morissette ever sang, that actually is ironic, which, in a way, is kind of ironic in and of itself.) Also, the 19th century was the 1800s. The Yankees didn’t pkay their first game until 1901. Great fact-checking. So, that’s an advertising department and a research department both on crack?

2.) I’d like proof of this, since, you know, HE DIED ALMOST A CENTURY BEFORE THE FIRST BASEBALL GAME WAS EVER PLAYED!!!

3.) I thought they literally just said how much they love Ben Franklin. So, they love the guy, but hate the bridge?

4.) I have two reasons why Philadelphia is a better city than New York. For the first one let me quote Homer Simpson: “New York is a hellhole. And you know how I feel about hellholes.” Wow, I can’t believe I just agreed with Homer Simpson. Secondly, living in Philly, you wouldn’t have to run into any of these morons – the ones working for the paper, or quoted by the paper.

5.) HOAGIE. CHEESESTEAK. SUB SANDWICH. IDIOT = YOU.

6.) Wow… stupidest statement of the article. We don’t care? We filled our stadium to 102.2% capacity every game! Yankees couldn’t even get 90%!  Also, did they talk to anyone with an actual job?

Updates coming in the morning. Wow, that was longer than I expected it to be. Enjoy what I have so far, and look forward to some more.

Update: Here’s a great anti-Yankees picture that I forgot to add last night. Props to RCinPA and fdoyle11.

If there are two things that I love in this world, they’re plays on words and the Phillie Phanatic. Suck on that, Tommy Lasorda!