Morning Report: The Phils’ next foe
All of my life I've waited to see a Phillies-Yankees World Series.
All of my life I've waited to see a Phillies-Yankees World Series.
Having begun my baseball life with Richie Ashburn in center field and Puddin' Head Jones at third, I regarded the Yankees as a mortal enemy.
The Yankees of the 1950s weren't a baseball team, or even a sports franchise - they were an undefinable monstrosity, something like world communism.
The Phillies botched their chance to slay this monster in 1964, and most of us have been waiting ever since.
I'd have been glad to play the Red Sox, or even the White Sox. Even Detroit or Cleveland or another I-95 series with Baltimore.
But no - it's become the Phillies' lot to play foil for a bunch of expansion teams. The Kansas City Royals or the Toronto Blue Jays. The Colorado Rockies, even.
And now, the ultimate humiliation, a looming matchup with the Tampa Bay "don't call us Devil" Rays.
I admit I follow baseball a bit tepidly. It comes way behind real sports such as the NFL, Penn State football, NASCAR or the Iditarod.
But even by the standards of a casual fan, the Rays are magically obscure. Even now, I can name only three Tampa Bayers - Evan Longoria, Rocco Baldelli and Joe Maddon, who has retired the trophy for most anonymous manager to reach a league championship series.
Worse, a Tampa Bay matchup would be fraught with danger for the Phillies. If they win, naysayers will claim "you only beat the former Devil Rays. Who the heck are they?"
And if they lose, it'll be 1964 all over again.
Oh, well. Right now, it's better than being a Noo Yawka or a Noo Inglandah!
Why not? The Eagles demonstrated their disdain for a third-round pick on Tuesday, when they discarded Tony Hunt. OK, the former Penn State running back couldn't play NFL football, so off he went.
But Tony Gonzalez can play with any tight end who ever played the game and should wind up in the Hall of Fame.
And he could have been an Eagle for a third-round pick.
Since passing up this deal makes no football sense, the next thought is that salary-cap problems prevented it. But if the Birds couldn't fit Gonzalez under the cap, they wouldn't have been bidding in the first place.
So maybe the rumor never was true.
Would a team holding two first-round draft picks, when it has demonstrated a reluctance to use even one first-rounder, refuse to part with a third-rounder?
It seems highly unlikely that the Eagles will hold onto all of those picks in April, so why not use the pick to improve the team now, instead of trading it away next spring?
So we're left with only two possibilities: Either the rumor never was true, or the Eagles simply didn't want to bring in a star player whose goal is a Super Bowl, because that would create expectations the team is reluctant to face.
Finally. Penn State is a 221/2-point favorite on Saturday over a team the Nittany Lions haven't beaten in 10 years.
Does that mean the Lions are for real? Or that Michigan is putrid?
Or that the oddsmakers expect JoePa to unleash his offense to purge a decade's worth of frustration in one afternoon?
Morning Report will eschew the bandwagon until after the trip to Columbus, Ohio
