King James and Tribe

– PhilliesOutside –

The Cleveland Indians head to Philadelphia, this must be the best chance

Philadelphia
is going to have to break out of the ‘anti’hot’ mode and actually
win a series that they should win, yes they won the series at Yankee stadium,
but the Yankees just got the hell knocked out of them by
Arizona.

The Indians are currently number 2 in the
American League‘s bargain basement,
if you don’t understand that expression then check out the standings, basically
it means for National League teams there are just 4
American League teams that
you should expect to either win the series against or even sweep, the prime
number 1 team everyone wants to play are the Orioles, then you have the
Indians
,
then the Royals and finally the Mariners, any other
AL teams would on paper be a
tough opponent for any of the National League teams.

This
isn’t to say the American League is better than the
National League, because
during inter-league play I am sure there are just 4 NL teams that the AL would
like to play, they being, Pirates, Astros, D’Backs and the
Brewers. Sometimes
though the alignment of baseball planets and good and bad karma just don’t allow
what should be, to be. Take the Yankees, please take the
Yankees, or at least
prevent them making headlines because of Lady GaGa,  for instance, they
should conceivably sweep the D’Backs, lets face most people thought it, most

Yankee
fans expected it, but yesterday they got what could only be looked upon
as the playground bully being smacked around by the nerdy loser kid, doesn’t
happen often, but when it does, we all root for the loser nerdy kid, even now I
find myself thinking, wouldn’t it be good if they actually swept the Yankees.

I was kind of hoping when the schedule was released for 2010 that the
Phillies
would actually play the Tribe at the
‘Jake’, yep I am told to call it
that up and coming insurance name is some kind of insult to true Clevelanders, I
am not sure why cause no one actually goes to the games anyway. Maybe if they
could encourage a celebrity to turn up in underwear and flip everyone the bird,
maybe it would draw more fans in Cleveland, probably not, what about if they had

‘King James’
make an appearance, again probably not since he’d show up as the
final pitch was being thrown and then only if there was a chance he’d be
supporting the winning team. Lets face it the great ‘LeBron Day’ that was supposed
to show support for him staying in Cleveland, that was held at the University of
Akron’s
campus, was a wash out, some 4,000 people showed up to claim a free
t-shirt and then went double time so it appeared like 8,000 people were in
attendance. Yes, the chances are good once again New York will wield it’s mighty
check book in a different sport and land ‘King James’ although for this sport in
question it does seem as though Chicago’s check book could be bigger than the
Knicks, but it’s all speculation as is the content of the little chat between

James
and Curry.

Off track a little, well it is a sporting event and it uses a ball and it has
ties to Cleveland, who are playing the Phillies, in
Philadelphia for 3 days,
whooopi, I get to watch it all happen on some Cleveland Indians
sports channel
that is about as lame as the Dodgers,
Kansas City and the Astros winning skills at the moment.

Notable occurrences, the Indians got swept by the
Mets, then lost 2 of 3 to
the Pirates and the answer to the Tribe fans prayers during the off season, the

Nationals
manager, Manny Acta moving to Cleveland, and after being handed a 5-3
loss Sunday what words of wisdom do the Indians fans get from Acta “We
weren’t able to pick up the ball and throw it to first base. That’s why we
lost.”
WOW, I see Manny has come a long way since playing the staring
manager’s role in Washington DC, although you’d think it was
DC Comics with
the way he managers the Tribe.

Lets just hope tonight the Indians are
nothing more than a comedy of errors and the Phillies
are able to use it to their advantage, with the return of J-Roll it
should be an interesting 3 days.

Just a minor gliche in the online voting system, they seem to have Pat
Burrell listed as a DH for the Tampa Bay Rays, when he’s actually in San
Francisco, and his numbers are already better in San Fran than they were in
Tampa, so here’s the dilemma, has anyone got voted onto the AL roster and actually
being playing for an NL team at the time of the All Star game, or visa versa…

Happy
Voting All

 

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Good, Bad or just some of the Same

– PhilliesOutside –

Same sh-it different day…. Yes the Phillies are in the middle of
that time
of the month
‘, actually they are now on the tail end of it, with just 5 days
left, they have to get through the last few days with minimum damage to the
players and their psych, they have a couple of wins to bag before the end of the
month, then it’s all new, the month of June arrives and it all starts again.

In this time of phunks and stupidity, they have nearly been no-hit, they have
struggled to score runs, they
have even struggled to get hits. Jimmy Rollins has struggled to stay off the DL,
Ryan Madson is still wishing he hadn’t kicked that chair, while Brad Lidge is
thankfully still on the DL, although he keeps telling everyone his elbow is
fine, Really? isn’t that what you said last year.

Charlie Manuel has been keeping his cool, with a few changes here and there
to the line up, sometimes not making any sense to me, but that’s what baseball
is all about, being able to find those things that the manager does that doesn’t
seem to jive with the rest of what’s going on. It’s also good that you can see
things that you feel you would have done differently, lets face it, if you agree with
everything someone does all the time then you have to be brainless or just plain
stupid
, yeah okay you could be a (insert political party of your
choice)
,
but
we are talking baseball and that means June will see the world of fastballs,
sinkers, sliders and change-ups get a strange jolt in the equilibrium which will
see the baseball planets align once again and settle into a more balanced
universe.

At
a time when the All Star voting is well under way, the Phillies catcher
Carlos
Ruiz
suffered a knee injury earlier this month, is now back off the DL, but is
still suffering from some aches and pains, in an effort to try and change things
around he tried out a new catchers mask, going from the traditional to the
hockey style, needless to say by inning 3 he was back to his original style
mask. Charlie Manuel even sat him out of last nights loss, just to give him a
rest.

All the favorites seem to be in the running for the All Star Voting, but is
this proving it’s just a popularity contest and teams with fans that attend home
games actually punch that ticket, or they have fans that go online and vote.
Recently on the front page of the MLBlogs
(it’s gone now) they promoted the All Star voting and some blogs that
appeared to have relevant posts about the voting, one in particular, which I
will not name, due to probably selfish reasons, but the point being this blog
had 1 post, no bio, and looked as though it had been set up just for that
specific post, the post indicated views and selections the poster had made for
the All Star game, this was not an objective review, but a promotion of Yankees
and Reds players, where am I going with this, just trying to show some elements
of things where this has become nothing more than a popularity contest, or at
the worst a contest where players get selected because the fan base for that
team is larger, i.e. Yankees in the AL, the NL has a little more even
distribution of fan base amongst some teams, although teams like Florida,
Milwaukee and Washington will always lose out. 

Am I someone who sees a conspiracy in everything, maybe not everything, but
in today’s world probably most things that include some type of opinion based decision
has an ulterior motive, but that’s a whole new post, maybe even my next one.

We all think we know which State has some type of mojo working
against it, well I am here to tell you that the worst has to be Ohio, not
because I live there, although that maybe the problem, because they really can’t
win anything. The Cavs should have been in the NBA finals, with the players they
had, they were definitely the hot favorites to take it all, and some saw it
again last night, or those people that had nothing better to do with their
lives, saw what I am told was a guaranteed win for a girl from Ohio lose to some
guy with less talent in the final episode of American Idol with the only judge
who offered a real opinion. So for all people and teams Ohio based why bother,
oh okay.. it’s all in the fun of competing… yeah right…