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