Staff Blog
Final Call for Rounds
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| Jose & Mark, also former As teammates |
Hey, did you know that today’s Phillie starter, Joe Blanton (1-0, 4.03 ERA), and his Chicago counterpart, Rich Harden (4-1, 1.47 ERA), used to be teammates? It’s true. As recently as this year, until the Oakland Athletics traded them both and decided to be awful. Try finding that little nugget anywhere but here.
Now that we got that out of the way, we can focus on the game at hand. For the Phils, down one with 28 to play, it isn’t a small one. Losing with their ace is on the mound hurt last night, and it becomes up to Blanton to pick up the slack tonight. The bullpen has looked shell shocked the last two nights, so the more innings they can get the better, especially because you should never expect to get too much offense off of Rich Harden. When Harden is healthy he’s fucking nice, (an obvious example is the last time he faced the Phils) and he’s been healthy this year.
The big intangibles are the time of day - for whatever reason the Phillies have one of the worst day/night splits of any team in the majors and have four strait day games coming up. If they want to stay in the thick of this race, now would be a really good time to start to turn that around - and what inspiration Sarge’s epic rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch will bring the good guys. I’m guessing lots.
Your local blog links, ATJ
Phillies
Fucked up or no (spoiler alert: yup), the first comment on this Fightins’ video really entertained me
Eagles
Chris Klinkner at Bleed Eagles Green says the Giants may grab a DE if the Birds let one go
… and sure enough Giants fans are trying to snipe one already
the early cuts are in. The Birds are down to down to 67 … twelve more will get the phone call in the next three hours or so
Sixers
Hoopsworld looks at players poised to make their first all-star game. AI2 makes the list.
Listening to you.
In the cool
celerity of a
diffident young
bird I try
to forget a dying
behaviour, the
sound of a picture
and a luminous
care, easily,
like an earnest
desire.
Francesco Sinibaldi