A celebration for Dick Vermeil, the Sixers make a deal, and other thoughts
Dick Vermeil's 90th birthday party in Downingtown brought together more than 200 people with an enduring connection to the Hall of Fame coach.
First and final thoughts …
On the night before he turned 90, Dick Vermeil took hold of a microphone, stood at the front of a packed banquet room Thursday at Downingtown Country Club, and looked out at the faces looking back at him.
There were more than 200 of those faces. Several members of his 1980-81 Eagles Super Bowl team were on hand: Ron Jaworski, Wilbert Montgomery, Roynell Young, Keith Krepfle, coaches, team employees, their family members and more. Herm Edwards was in town from Monterey. Former Eagles head coach Doug Pederson flew in from South Florida. Dante Hall, who with the Kansas City Chiefs in the early 2000s had been the NFL’s most dynamic kick-returner while playing for Vermeil — he called Hall “my Black son” — made the trip. Vermeil’s friends and former players and business partners filled the room. His wife, Carol — they’ve been married 70 years — and their three children and 10 of their 11 grandchildren took up a couple of tables.
He wore his gold Pro Football Hall of Fame blazer. He started with a single word, “Wow,” and continued speaking for 45 minutes, and the most surprising part of his remarks was not that he acknowledged one person after another in the crowd, not that his recall of his connections to those people was perfect, but that he did not cry. Vermeil is famously emotional, as everyone familiar with him knows, but not Thursday night. He could have been hosting a dinner party or delivering a locker-room speech to one of his teams or motivating a group of executives at a sales conference. He was that engaged and engaging and joyful.
Mike Sielski alerts
A birthday party for a 90-year-old man might seem a pre-death wake, a commemoration of a life soon to end while the subject is still around to savor and appreciate it. This was not that. This was a celebration of a still-vigorous man, a coach who in his way is still coaching, a teacher who in his way is still teaching, a husband and father and friend as openhearted as he has always been.
“There is nothing more important than my family,” Vermeil said Thursday night, as if he were speaking of everyone in the room, which he was. It was a remarkable night for a remarkable man. Happy Birthday, Coach.
Don’t bet on it
The 76ers announced Friday that they had reached a sponsorship deal with the predictions-market company Kalshi, less than two months after LeBron James reached a sponsorship deal with the predictions-market company Polymarket. Professional sports keeps opening its arms to snuggle betting and gambling and all their obvious ethical issues in its warm embrace, and neither these leagues nor their athletes appear to care about the cynicism they’re fostering.
» READ MORE: Sixers become first NBA team to partner with a prediction market, team up with Kalshi amid growing gambling concerns
As more of these unholy partnerships form, more people might start wondering whether everything they see on the field or the court is on the level, if they haven’t already. As one example, it will now be fair to examine the dates, the circumstances, and the frequency of the games that James misses this season because of “load management” or a “coach’s decision.” And it will be fair to ask why a man who was already a multibillionaire chose to align himself with such a problematic industry for the sake of a few more bucks.
The trend the Phillies missed
The Milwaukee Brewers’ charge to the first World Series title in their history and the Tampa Bay Rays’ run through the American League proved just how far away the Phillies were from competing for a championship. And for all the rightful complaints about the flaws within the 2026 Phillies — a top-heavy lineup, bad defense, a lousy bullpen — the Brewers and Rays also showed that Dave Dombrowski and his staff made a giant miscalculation that has loomed over not just this season but this entire era of Phillies baseball.
It’s not a coincidence that Milwaukee and Tampa Bay, who didn’t just reach the World Series but were the best teams in their respective leagues, were tied for the major-league lead in batting average (.258). Ahead of the 2023 season, MLB implemented several rules changes, including a ban on the kinds of infield and outfield shifts that over time had transformed hundreds of ground balls and line drives from hits to outs.
The discussion about the need for such legislation had been swirling around the sport for years. There was a groundswell of fans and people within baseball who understood that widespread emphasis on the “three true outcomes” — home run, walk, strikeout — was making the sport boring. The pendulum was bound to swing back toward creating more action, encouraging more athleticism, and incentivizing teams to put the ball in play more often.
The Brewers and Rays got ahead of that re-trend. The Phillies didn’t. With Bryce Harper and Rhys Hoskins already here, Dombrowski leaned into constructing a team that could hit the ball over any shift and out of any ballpark. To a roster that already had Bryce Harper and Rhys Hoskins, he added Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, and Trea Turner, all of whom were or have become swing-from-the-heels hitters and subpar fielders (at best). One of the under-mentioned aspects of Turner’s underwhelming tenure is that, even though he has averaged more than 20 home runs over his four seasons with the Phillies, he actually had a higher home-run percentage over his four previous seasons (3.7%) than he has here (3.2%).
Put simply, Dombrowski and the Phillies adjusted too late to what was coming. Now they’re not built for what baseball once was and has become again.
