Too Bad He's Not Our Asshole

Alfonso Soriano is one insolent cocksucker I’d take on my team any day.

His accused woman-beating drunk-driver of a general manager, Jim Bowden, rescued him from the two-pronged shrieking hell of playing in Texas and anywhere near Buck Showalter. But all Bowden got until the beginning of spring training was a bucket of tears from Senor Culo de Dominicana – no way he was gonna play the outfield for $10 million this season. Not him.

¡Bebé pobre!

All that changed when hard-ass Nationals manager Frank Robinson told him to take the field or take a seat. Bowden and Robinson had put their heads together and decided it would be just fine with them if he sat out the season, considering they could dock his pay. That got Soriano’s attention, and baseball fans were anxious to see if he would earn his keep or dog it.

That question has been emphatically answered.

Not only has the All-Star outfielder (nee second baseman) earned his pay (well, maybe not $10 million smackers), he has accepted a leadoff spot in the lineup and still put up big numbers. And today, he demonstrated in boldface how handicapped Team Psycho is with Jelly Roll at the top of the order.

Soriano single-handedly propelled the offense and accounted for all three of the Gnat’s runs, just enough behind the black magic of Livan Hernandez’s beguiling array of off-speed pitchers. They won 3-2, and considering how unable the Phils have been to “manufacture” runs, the game was over after Soriano’s go-ahead single in the seventh. In the top of the third, he hit his 19th homer with his pitcher on base to give D.C. a 2-1 advantage. Now he has more homers than Ryan Howard. In fact, this leadoff hitter is second in the National League in the dinger department.

Just a few numbers, because they demonstrate results rather than psychosis, the latter Jelly Roll’s biggest flaw: Soriano was moved to the leadoff spot after 72 at-bats in the third and fifth position. He had six homers, 12 RBIs, a .236 batting average and a so-so .328 on-base percentage. Batting first for 143 ABs, before today he had an on-base percentage of .389 with a .336 batting average. Throw in 13 homers and 26 RBIs, and…well, you get the idea.

I don’t need to review Jelly Roll’s sick numbers – suffice it to say they took another dive today. Today’s ass-rape included grounding into a double play to kill a damn good run-scoring opportunity in the fifth. In the seventh, he popped out weakly to strand another two – that’s four runners left with their cocks in their hands.

Soriano, meanwhile, was aided by Hernandez, a pitcher who can hit and lay down a bunt, something most Phillies hurlers are inept at executing. Even if they could hit .400, that doesn’t solve the Jelly Roll problem. There is one hillbilly who can, though.

After the game, Backwoods Chollie reached for an assessment of the flaccid effort and came up as empty as Jelly Roll. A reporter asked him if this is what we should expect the rest of the year – implying a team that can’t produce in key situations.

“What we are we haven’t gotten there yet,” he said. “I don’t have an answer right yet.”

Then he reflected on his own career riding the pines in explaining his choice of ninth inning pinch hitters, Baby Girl Burrell and Dingdong David Bell, both given the hot day off, and both of whom yielded nothing with two runners fondling their genitalia.

“I think a guy’s been playin’ is a lot more sharper than the guy’s been settin’,” he philosphized. “I know ‘cause I did that job.”

One day, and it might be sooner or later, he will refer to the job he has now in the past tense unless he gets the stugots to rectify the lineup’s rigged deficiencies.

Banging A Buffalo

It was the one day of five that is the sure thing in Team Psycho’s rotation, a quality start from Brett Myers. He didn’t disappoint.

How nice it is to get a day off from the torment of pathetically inconsistent pitching, the hallmark of the team’s misbegotten start. So relaxing was Myer’s road to the 4-2 win, your host drifted off to sleep, and if I were a Mormon, I’d say I had a revelatory dream.

Shortly after Corky Abreu’s three-run homer, a buffalo appeared, or rather, a buffalo’s brown ass backed into me and showed me its vagina. Then, with some otherworldly pearly white spunk, I impregnated the beast. I don’t remember if I washed my hands.

The next thing I know, Bobby Knight (yes, the college basketball coach), appeared and was standing in a wainscoted café drinking an espresso. He didn’t say a word to me, but something told me to keep my distance, as he was more dangerous than the buffalo.

Finally, my Old Lady materialized, and to allay any fears about what I had done to the buffalo, she proffered a pile of gleaming ebony mussel shells, which she had been offering for sale. Then the next thing I knew, I was awake and saw Brett Myers work a walk to force in a run in the seventh.

What does it all mean? Beats the hell out of me. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s all the dead animals I’ve been eating. All I know is that I’m perfectly willing to manually inseminate a buffalo every day if it means an end to this torture at the hands of the Phillies

Barbequed Gnats

The barbeque was still flaring at the rowhome in Tacony as Team Psycho took the field. It was as hot a day as the team is cold, and chubster Jon Lieber waddled to the mound in a sweat to face the Washington Nationals.

Is it me or does it look like the guy can’t turn down a second helping? Whatever it was that caused his pulled groin, Lieber was done after the second inning, returning to the locker room for a rubdown and a short rack as he perused the Dow Jones.

By the time the houseguests, My Co-Defendant and The Jackal, had gnawed their chicken to the bone, Lieber had already ceded the required homerun to Ryan Zimmerman and one of our three Ryans, The Howitzer, had already committed his perfunctory throwing error, this one allowing madman Larry Bowa’s nephew, Nick Johnson, to score a run.

Backwoods Chollie was giggling all over that one.

“Check er out!” he said on the phone to me. “Their Ryan smacks a homer and my Ryan throws the ball like a smack! Gawdang!”

“Calm down, Chollie,” I told him. “You put Clay Condrey in there – he’ll shut ‘em down.”

And as sure as cows have udders, that’s what happened. As The Jackal - an old pal from my anarchist days who used to serve drinks at Harry The K’s - was recounting how hard it was to get customers to tip him after they paid $6.25 for a beer, Condrey settled in and pitched four solid innings in relief.

The Howitzer redeemed himself, firing a ball over the opposite-field fence to stake Team Wussy to a 4-2 lead. After that, to paraphrase a French king, came the deluge.

By the time all the chicken, pork and cow were consumed in Tacony, the Phils finally – finally – conducted a slaughter of their own, an 11-2 laugher at the hands of the relatively hapless Gnats. Everybody in the starting lineup except for the pitcher had a hit, most notably the suicidal Jelly Roll (two of ‘em) The Fasano Italian Sausage (two) and Dingdong David Bell, who had two RBIs to go with his three hits.

Considering what a ninny Abraham Nunez has been at the plate (down to .161 and sinking), Dingdong has to be beside himself with joy not to have the nagging specter of a viable replacement right now.

For me, it was gratifying to see The Jackal leave happy. His hardcore band, YDI, is still going strong after all these years, and their signature song is “I Killed My Family.” If only all those customers who stiffed him at the ballpark knew…

Chollie The Chessmaster

I played chess since I was a child, but really learned how to win years later from some opponents with masterful skills at a café during my self-imprisonment in Buttfuck Tucson.

Speed chess was the game of choice, and I regularly got whooped. But I kept coming back for more, knowing full well if I could win a few games at their playing level, the more pedestrian players would always be my bitch.

Just as Ryan Madson was lifted after a solid five-inning outing in which he surrendered only the obligatory two-run handicap to the Brewers, my son got a hankering for a game. Caesar has some real possibilities as a chessman, so whenever he wants a game, I give him my best.

I was reluctant to be distracted from a game in which the Fightless had come back to claim a lead, 4-2, as the floodgates were being unlocked – the bullpen door opened, that is - and the always-impending disaster loomed. Would Chollie let Ryan Franklin fuck this one up, too?

As my queen raped various pawns, clergy and horsies on the chessboard at home, the foursome of Jeff Geary, Rheal Cormer, Arthur Rhodes and Flash Gordon likewise put the Brew Crew down, shutting them out for the final four innings, allowing no run damage on four hits. Better, the offense squeezed two more runs out of the Brews’ reformed bong-smoking reliever named Joe Winkelsas, last employed as a trash collector in Buffalo. Really.

The victory almost seemed routine. Could Chollie be…gulp…employing a workable strategy?

“That whole bit with Ben Franklin was a setup for the Brewers,” the Appalachian Bobby Fisher explained, identifying the wrong stiff as he gnawed on a barbequed tripe sandwich. “I figgered we let ‘em get cozy the first five times we faced ‘em, then pull a quick one on ‘em.”

Still, Chollie said he was tempted to use Franklin.

“That woulda been somethin’ to see, three Ryans in one game, huh?” he said, intestines dripping down his cheek. “They wouldn’t know which pocket they stashed their balls in!”

That seven-inning relief effort last week against the Mets might have straightened out Madson’s confused head, as he not only gathered himself after permitting a second inning two-run homer, but clocked a two-run double to tie the game in bottom of the fourth after Dingdong David Bell and Italian Sausage Sal Fasano failed to consummate with runners eager to score. Madson is hitting .357 on the year, and Chollie might be well advised to trot him out as a pinch hitter in lieu of Abraham Nunez, now hitting a horrendous .164, the Team Succubus now nursing on his man-spunk.

Ryan Howitzer continues to terrorize pitchers this month, as he stroked his 17th homer to give Team Psycho the lead for good, 4-2. His numbers are Ruthian – or Pujolistan, if you will – considering the pace he is on would yield 51 homers and 132 RBIs by season’s end. He’s a .307 hitter right now and a lot of the production has come against lefties, which some skeptics said he couldn’t hit. The numbers are all the more impressive because it’s 100 percent country strength, fueled by Mom’s home cookin’ as a youth and not from the end of a needle in his ass by a steroid salesman.

The Memorial Day festivities continue tomorrow in South Philly, as the vaunted Washington Nationals throw their murderers row up against Jon Lieber’s teflon 5.83 ERA. He is sure to be fattened by the gift barbeque pig air-mailed by the retired Alex Gonzalez to his "comrades" from his hacienda in Florida. It is a holiday, after all.

The Essence Of Mediocrity

Half and half. One out of two. Six of one, a half dozen of another. So-so. Mezza-mezza. Patchy. Uneven.

Say it anyway you want, the Phillies are a mediocre team. The record stands at 24 wins against 24 losses. Worse, they are truly a schizophrenic bunch – a streaky group that can put up 12 wins in 13 games, yet follow that up by losing nine of the next 11 games, which is what they have to show for May.

Tonight’s loss against the Brewers was typical Team Psycho, as they dug another hole early from which they could not climb out. The Brew Crew has a strong lineup and is winning despite injuries to its two best pitchers, scoring eight of its nine runs with two outs. They displayed a tenacity lost on the Fightless, who are missing none of their starters - a group that stands some closer scrutiny.

In all fairness to the team’s hitters, the Phils are a .500 team mostly because their starting pitching has sucked except on Brett Myers’ turn. Whether Our Savior Cole Hamels can redeem this staff is still to be seen, but as it is, every four of five games has been helter-skelter, a disordered mess of misplaced pitches, loss of concentration, rookie mistakes and, sad to say, a staff “ace” named Jon Lieber who should be happy his mutual fund portfolio will provide a secure retirement soon.

Tonight’s category was the rookie mistake, as Scared Shitless Gavin Floyd took to the mound and proceeded to surrender a two-run homer to Carlos Lee with two outs in the first inning, so the hole began to be dug immediately. To its credit, Team Vomit countered with a run in its half.


Not to be outdone, the Brewers tallied another two the next inning on a homer by the immortal Bill Hall – again with two outs. Team Vomit countered with a run of its own in the third, after Jelly Roll, back to batting leadoff, got his swerve on with his second double and got knocked in on a double by Corky Abreu.

Terrified as usual, losing his concentration and acting like a teenager who got caught masturbating, Floyd didn’t last the fifth inning, allowing five of six runs with two outs. It was 6-2, and the Fightless needed to mount the usual comeback when he’s out there. Jelly Roll, uppercutting at the ball all night, got the homerun he was looking for and all of a sudden it was 6-4. When Ryan Howard stroked his 16th homer to tie it in the seventh, it was a brand new ballgame.

Tacony Lou at that point was contemplating how nice it would have been to have a quality major league pitcher hurling this game. The team can score runs. But the starting pitching is essentially untalented – mediocre, like the team record. True hope lied with the relief corps, which also has been scattershot, but not as consistently bad as the starters. As these thoughts were dancing about, Ryan Franklin, the fan’s favorite gopher ball pitcher, unfortunately took to the mound in the eighth and it quickly became a lost cause.

The Gopher allowed three runs to score on two homers with two outs, hardly an unusual effort lately by our reformed steroid abuser. It’s becoming his pattern, and despite his lack of success in close games recently, Chollie keeps on sending him out there to fuck up leads. His fat 5.32 ERA might cause some managers pause, but not Old Backwoods.

“There’s an ol’ sayin’ at the pig farm,” Chollie snorted after the game. “You gotta keep trying to grab a greased pig if y’all ever wanna eat. But even if ya can’t eat it, ya can still pork that hunky mother.”

Chollie grabbed a tube of Ben-Gay and cracked a smile.

Scary thoughts are already beginning to intrude the temperate Philadelphia night: Ryan Madson, back in the rotation until Our Savior resurrects, brings his 5.98 ERA to the mound tomorrow. Let’s see if he has any gas left after pitching those seven innings of relief last week against the Mets.

BOBBLEHEAD VOODOO

In the multi-tasking milieu of today’s New World Order, a ballplayer can get easily distracted having to work holiday weekends like this one.

Those oldtimers had it easy: Lots of days off riding in cramped, smoky trains. Cool-looking wool uniforms to keep the Summer heat close and comfy. They got to pee in outhouses. And they had no global warming, no terrorism, no SUVs. Hell, gas was a quarter a gallon!

But the biggest bitch about playing baseball on Memorial Day in the 21st Century is when the public relation flacks entice fans with a Bobblehead Night at the ballpark. Talk about a distraction.

Here are 30,000 people rattling a player’s figurine likeness every time he comes to the plate. What can be worse than that? It’s like a voodoo doll – and there’s not a single ballplayer that is not superstitious.

“It looks like their jiggling little dickies,” the Old Lady giggled during the Phils ill-fated tenth inning rally last night against the Brewers. The fans, forsaking an early start down the shore to collect their free prizes, were frantically shaking the loose-headed, springy icon, trying desperately to invoke animistic aid upon the bobblehead honoree, Chase Utley.

He was up with two outs in the tenth and looking at Shane Victorino standing on first after legging out an infield single. Utley was hexed so far. He was hitless on the night. It was 6-5. Defeat loomed, and it should not have come too this.

Maybe Milwaukee brought their own tikis of Bob Uecker, because they play Team Psycho as if they were the ’27 Yankees.

But Utley came through in the clutch, thanks to Satan or whatever, stroking a double to left and setting up the game’s eventual ultimate confrontation … with Chris Roberson at the bat.

Just what the bobblehead ordered, eh?

Rookie Roberson was standing there with the bases loaded and the game on the line because Corky Abreu follows Utley in the lineup, and there was no way the Brewers were pitching to him. After two wide pitches, they issued him a free ticket to first to load the bases.

Further rewinding the chain of unlikely causation, Rookie Roberson was there because he had pinch-ran for Baby Girl Burrell. The Fightless needed to mount a ninth-inning comeback to tie the game 5-5 in the ninth, the entire lineup failing to get a hit after the fourth inning and until the ninth except for Burrell. Chollie’s move worked, as Roberson raced in from second on a Ryan Howard double. Burrell has bad wheels, and if Old Backwoods didn’t send in Roberson and Burrell got nailed after The Howitzer’s shot, the possum pie just wouldn’t taste right.

Lastly, Roberson – who flew out to center to end the game – was standing there because Jimmy Rollins was distracted and was caught like a stag in headlights between second and third base after a base hit scored the Phils’ first run in the second. Without that fart, it would have been two men on with none out. The whole comeback might not have been necessary if Rollins didn’t kill the inning. The devil is in that detail.

There was another queer lapse:

All those springy bobbleheads must’ve obstructed the ENTIRE TEAM’S attention or eyesight when Brewers’ baserunner Ricky Weeks, stationed on second, took off like an impala to third base on what he thought was a hit to the outfield. But the ball was caught, so he had to beat a retreat, and fast. Nobody noticed he failed to re-tag third base after he passed it. You’re not allowed to do that. The rule is familiar to baseball men, even if they don’t worship at the bobblehead altar.

Nobody noticed that faux pas, notably Dingdong David Bell, who was standing there…not paying attention. If somebody – anybody – would have thought to appeal, Weeks would have been the third out of the inning. Instead, Weeks scored on a single by the subsequent hitter, Phillie-killer Geoff Jenkins. That gave the Brewers a 5-3 lead.

Those two distractions cost Team Bobblehead the game, plain and simple. The worse of the two, for my money, was Rollins flub. After six years of running the bases that was a bush league fuck up.

And it wasn’t even his Bobblehead Night.

Maui Wowie Is Top Shelf

Pigs flew, snowballs froze in hell and Pat Robertson submitted to Islam as Backwoods Chollie dropped Jelly Roll out of the leadoff spot today.

How long this lasts only his moonshiner knows for sure, but if Chollie is confident his troubled shortstop has lost the extortion pictures depicting him performing unnatural acts down on the farm, this move should stick. If results are what you’re looking for, it worked.

Maui Wowie Shane Victorino was inserted in the top spot and, while getting just an infield single, made an acrobatic flying catch at the warning track and worked a crucial walk to lead off the top of the seventh inning. That set the table for Chase Utley, who stroked his fourth hit of the day to deep right for a double and the Phils quickly plated the go-ahead run.

Add another quality start from Brett Myers and an insurance run courtesy of a Ryan The Howitzer RBI single, and the Phils had an efficient 5-3 win.

Meanwhile Jelly Roll, who was put on suicide watch, did his same ole same ole, uppercutting the ball with his nagging, seemingly unrepairable looping swing. It’s been a problem since he was a rookie, a mechanical malfunction madman manager Larry Bowa harped on him to change. But like a crackhead who can’t put the glass dick down, Rollins is beyond hope to reform unless he acknowledges his problem.

Even if he did I wouldn’t give him his old job back.

The emergence of Victorino has not been missed by the Miserable Legions devoted to Team Masochism. The dude can hit. He hit all last season in AAA and earned the league MVP. He hit last year after being called up for the September Wild Card race, delivering timely hits and baserunning speed repeatedly off the bench. Now he has hit over .400 while subbing for Aaron “Crash” Rowand, who will always have a job and free beer for life in Philly. So what do we do about this pleasant problem?

Some fans won’t like my proposal – but it’s an idea floated by more and more esteemed analysts after careful contemplation: Gillick should try again to trade Bobby Abreu for a front-line, high-salaried pitcher. It would free up right field for The Flyin’ Hawaiian, who not only would bat first everyday, but catch the shots Corky flubs regularly. Keep Rollins’ glove at short, but relegate him to the bottom of the batting order where he belongs. I have seen enough. Stop the torment!

Now Tacony Lou knows that is easier said than done. But imagine for a moment this lineup:

Victorino
Utley
Burrell
Howard
Rowand
Bell
Rollins
Lieberthal
Barry Zito


Burrell bats third for now because it breaks up the left-handed batters. The only break in the alternating sequence would be at the catcher and pitcher at the bottom. But considering that Howard is showing he hits both righties and lefties for average, he’d be the long term three-hole hitter. Just like Babe Ruth.

Utley would be a good Number Three as well, but he’s a better one-two punch with Victorino. He has turned himself into an offensive force. And with The Maui Wowie getting on base more often, he’ll still be driving in 100 runs or more. Just watch.

I have been duly impressed by the big numbers Abreu has put up – and that high on-base percentage, gosh golly gee, how do you argue against that? But his adamant refusal to field his position and complete unwillingess to bat anywhere else but third destroys a lineup’s flexibility. His speed is diminishing. And we have enough power hitters. What we lack is a leadoff hitter and a stopper on the mound

An ace can win 20 games. A maladjusted leadoff hitter and a brick glove in rightfield can lose more than that.

The sticky part of the equation is the contract status of the pitcher acquired. He can’t be a rent-a-player if Abreu is bid adios. We’d be trading a secured player and we need one back. Could we sign Zito? Could Oakland sign and trade him? Who else is out there? This is a true quandary, but that’s for Gillick to figure out.

All I know is this: Holding on to Abreu is like having a wife who doesn’t stiffen your piston anymore, but you stick with her because she’s inheriting a fortune. How many years of suffering is it worth?

Getting Alay

Knowing full well that the Fightless would rather get a lay than win a pennant, the Mets gave them their wish last night.

The New Yorkers threw Alay Soler at them, and it wasn’t because the Phils are fond of chubby Cuban dudes in the sack…well, maybe they are, but more likely they know Team Psycho can’t handle hurlers who have never pitched in the major leagues.

After all, if someone paid you between $7 and $14 million a year to play a game you’ve allegedly become skilled at playing, you can’t expect success against rookie pitchers, especially when he walks the bases loaded with no outs to start the game, which is exactly what the sly, plucky Cuban defector did.

Our hometown Losers weren’t about to fall for that trick – no way, no how - even after lucking into a three-run first inning. They knew it was a dirty communist trick he picked up from Castro. That single he surrendered to Pat Burrell led the optimists among us (are there any left?) to suspect this guy would get yanked before the rest of the crowd made the walk from the No. 7 train and claimed their seats. But our inept heroes were left to wonder: Could it be an act of tomfoolery straight from the Cold War playbook?

Their fate was sealed after second baseman Chris Woodward’s boner on a Ryan Howard grounder allowed two more runs to score, making it 3-0, because Team Psycho knew for sure it was just an act of scandalous subterfuge undertaken by the Mets to lead them into thinking they could win the game.

So they relaxed, as they are wont to do, baseball being such an arduous task, what with all the strength needed to judge and chase fly balls (Does Mommy’s little mango have a boo-boo, Bobby Abreu?) the intellectual calisthenics required to refrain from swinging at the first pitch (You should go poopy before the game, Jelly Roll) and the intestinal fortitude to mount a late-inning with our select group of pinch-hitters (Don’t worry Abraham Nunez, your namesake was also a noted failure before becoming President.)

Showing the effects of a 5 ½-hour workday the previous night, like a construction laborer with a hangover, the team dutifully reported to work. It’s just that they imitated the Mafia slobs working “no show” gigs on “The Sopranos.” Specifically, they did a Vito Spatafore, who, when it came to really doing some work while he was on the lam – with fellating his lover on his mind – he couldn’t handle it. He had to go back to his old milieu, and consequently, he was whacked.

The Mets hitman was David Wright, who got the big hit at the right time, and was 3-for-4 with two RBIs. He homered to center in the third inning to bring New York within one run, 3-2, then got a workman-like single to left to drive in the go-ahead run in the seventh, making it 5-4. It was to stay that way. In détente, you could say.

The Phils last real chance was in the top of the eighth, as Shane Victorino singled, was bunted over to second by freshly-sheered Dingdong David Bell (there goes his superhuman powers) and the rest was left to Nunez and David Dellucci. In other words, it was nearly hopeless, as Nunez has been a disaster akin to the “retired” Gonzo, and The Succubus has obviously parked her ass next to him. How else do you explain a first-pitch foul-out to the catcher? Dellucci, who has showed scattered signs of life this season, ended the inning with a groundout.

With Hillybilly Alpaca Fucker Wagner closing the ninth against the Fightless’ top of the lineup, and considering Jelly Roll is still trying to hit homers, Utley has never faced him, and Abreu plays like he’s on Hugo Chavez’s payroll, you knew it was over, the team’s chances as dead as the fictional Vito, their swings made out-of-whack by Cuban muscle and his Hillbilly accomplice.

A Prolonged Agony

The Team Succubus sat next to Chollie last night and sucked out what was left of his countrified pea brain.

Fans watching this 5 ½-hour New York agony were left to wonder why he left the de-steroided Ryan Franklin in to piss away a three-run lead with four outs to go against the Mets, no slouches on offense. But your miserable host here knows it was that bitch with the horns and tail, it had to have been, because even the kids in Little League know when to bring in Flash Gordon.

“Good thing the bars stay open until four in the morning,” Chollie told me after the 16-inning marathon, a true exercise in masochism. “Can you believe it? I mean, I could go to a private club after and keep on drinkin’ ‘til tomorrey’s battin’ practice.”

Old Backwoods probably wasn’t the only member of Team Fightless to need a tightener or twelve after the game, a devastating 9-8 loss. After forging a four-run lead in the top of the fifth, two disgustingly lazy fielding mistakes in the bottom of the next frame by our beloved corner outfielders set up the Mets’ first resurgence, capped by AARP member Julio Franco’s two-out double. The lead was shaved to a run, and it was 6-5 at the end of the inning. Scared Shitless Gavin Floyd had been lifted, and the rest was up to the bullpen. But the Phils were still ahead, and I was contemplating all the angry phone calls to be made the next day to the Burger King on WIP calling for a trade of our two miscreant outfielders, Baby Girl Burrell and Corky Abreu. But again, the Phils were still ahead and I banished those thoughts.

Things were looking up again after Dingdong David Bell hit a two-run double, and coupled with an earlier three-run homer, I was all set to disavow any accusations that Tacony Lou thinks he’s washed up and should be put out to pasture where he could impregnate young horsies and make more Baby Bells. He drove in five tonight, but he left six stranded. The double made it 8-5, and those were “big time” runs as the Voice of God, Harry Kalas, intoned, and I banished those nasty thoughts again.

The butchery in the eighth inning ended all those misplaced good feelings. I should have known better. Endy Chavez, who couldn't button his uniform when he was with the Phils last year – let alone hit – stepped up to the plate against Franklin with a .290 average. Two outs, nobody on.

The devastation began. Ryan “Howitzer” Howard, who’s been shaky all season in the field, fielded a Chavez chip shot to his right, hesitated, and Franklin took the stuttered toss and dropped it. The fastest Mets baserunner was at first, and the next batter naturally doubled to left and the fleet Chavez ripped around the bases to score. The hitter, Chris Woodward stood on second, and still, Chollie just leaned into the dugout's padded railing and stared like a farm boy contemplating bestiality.

The next batter, Jose Reyes, looked like a drunk swatting at mosquitoes against Floyd in his previous at-bars. Against Franklin, he looked like Babe Ruth, swatting an ankle-high pitch toward the No. 7 train platform past right field.

“I truly thought this game was in the bag,” Kalas lamentably cried.

Little did Harry know, but this baby was another eight innings – and two hours -- from being over.

The 16-inning contest was the longest in the majors this season and, thanks to Sludgemaster Steve Trachsel, the Mets starter (see previous post) it would have been an easy 3 ½-hour endurance test if it had lasted nine innings.

Ryan Madson shouldn’t worry about playing with a hangover tomorrow. He worked seven innings of four-hit relief, the longest stint out of the pen for a Phillie since 1991. If only he had pitched as well when he was a starter. He lost the game on a Carlos Beltran homerun – technically, that is, because what lost the game for the Phillies was Chollie’s refraining to use Flash Gordon, and all those hitters who left runners on base before the game got to that point.

The defense has been shaky at best, with Abreu and Burrell seemingly knee-high in pig slop. They cost the team runs, and their hooker quota needs to be reduced. Maybe the Team Succubus can see to that.

Molasses With A Side Of Sludge

When I lived in Buttfuck Tucson, Arizona, one of the few quality entertainment options for those of us who didn’t get our kicks blowing our meager pay at one of the local Indian casinos or up our noses on cartel cocaine was spring training baseball.

When I arrived there for my self-imposed desert imprisonment, the Cleveland Indians – no relation to the Tohono O’Odham -- were the only team to call The Baked Apple home. They were fun. I saw Jim Thome play third base in his prime, Omar Vizquel boot grounders and Albert Belle beat autograph seekers in the parking lot.

But my most enduring memory was sweltering in the mid-March heat (Summer begins on St. Patty’s day in southern Arizona) as I watched Steve Trachsel, the slowest worker in major league history, pitch against the Rockies, the team that the city took on after the Indians wised up and moved their training camp to Florida.

The memory came rushing back as I contemplated tonight’s game between the Phils and the Mets. Trachsel is back again like a bad dream, and I am resigned to accept tonight’s post will come after a marathon contest; Trachsel hasn’t changed one bit from that day a decade ago.

Trachsel fidgeted, fucking around with his hat, his crotch, his resin bag, his shoes and all the fans who paid to watch the torment of his dementia on the mound. Two hours easily elapsed before the fifth inning, and the heavy-drinking Tucson crowd (the population is 85 percent alcoholic) were six beers deep by the time his relief came in to their joy.

But the damage was done. The stands emptied out after watching Sammy Sosa’s opposite-field homer to right field (this was the year after he started dosing on the steroids), and, since the games don’t really count, all they missed was the debut of Todd Helton at first base, already anointed Andres Gallaraga’s eventual successor.

I stayed for the whole ordeal – I never leave before the game is over – slid myself into some shady seats behind the plate, and promised myself never, ever, ever again attend a game that motherfucker pitched.

Ode To A Latin Burn

Much to the relief of Phillies fans, Bozo Gonzalez retired today, and the team began to win again.

Coincidence? Not when you get rid of the Team Succubus, the female demon who set up shop on the bench next to Bozo and sucked the sperm and any ability he had left out of him. The rest of the players like their pussy, that’s for sure, but they sure know a South Philly bar slut from a bitch with horns, hooves and a tail:

The succubus doesn’t diddle your dick for drinks.

Phils General Manager Pat Gillick had to feel a little better after getting rimmed for a quarter-season by Bozo. Now the idiot owners don’t have to shell out most of the $750,000 contract he negotiated in exchange for his four hits every two months. But a succubus can do that to you.

"This is a guy that has had a lot of success at the major league level as an everyday player," Gillick said after his signing in February. “He's a professional who will add some much-needed depth to our infield and provide a strong right-handed bat off our bench."

The “strong bat” hit .111. A “professional” would have spent more time working through his struggles; David Dellucci sure did. Then again, he didn’t lose interest in playing, which Bozo so much admitted in his retirement statement, saying he had “other interests” to pursue. No family problems. No injury problems. No drug problems – “other interests.” Wow. Adios, asshole.

Meanwhile, a joyful Chris Coste was called up from the minors to replace this zombie. Coste deserved the job anyhow after clobbering pitchers in spring training and proving his versatility in the field. Interestingly enough, he is as old as Bozo, has no desire to retire, and is getting his first chance in The Bigs as a 33-year-old rookie. I’m sure he’s seen “Rocky” three dozen times. Even if he hasn’t, his ethic is appreciated here in Philly, because unlike his predecessor, he hasn’t given up.

The Fightless became the Fightins’ again today in celebration of the roster improvement, pounding Red Sox youngsters Lenny DiNardo and “One Eye” Abe Alavarez (so he’s blind in one eye – who cares?) into submission for eight runs in five innings.

Bobby Abreu, who The Old Lady had nicknamed “Corky” a few years back because of his resemblance to Sammy Sosa (don’t forget he used corked bats as well as steroids) finally had a big day, knocking in five runs with a single, double and homer, the kind of day a third-hole hitter should have more often.

Incredibly, Corky hadn’t homered in more than a month – that’s 81 at-bats – and the five RBIs matched the second-best total of his career. The first six hitters in the lineup had two or more hits except Baby Girl Burrell, and even his ground single to the hole came in the middle of a five-hit run that plated four runs in the third inning.

Corey Lidle had a solid six-inning showing, and after Abreu’s three-run homer made it 8-3, even the bullpen couldn’t fuck it up entirely. Ryan Franklin, Arthur Rhodes and Flash Gordon finished it up, and only Rhodes allowed the Sox to score. It ended 10-5.

Chollie refrained from using Ryan Madson, and you got to think maybe Gillick has told him it wouldn’t be a bad idea to retire the misguided mop-up man to the minors. After all, Bedtime for Bozo sure inspired a win. Team Psycho plays better when they’re a little scared.

Beat Into Submission By Bean-Eating Marlins

In case you missed watching Florida dominate your Phillies like an inmate terrifying his bitch during lockdown, Major League Baseball brings you interleague play against the Red Sox, a club in which three former Marlins now ply their craft, crack their whip and beat the Fightless into submission.

Most Willing Supplicant Jimmy “Jelly Roll” Rollins, a measly 1-for-5 tonight featuring three one-pitch at-bats, supplemented those premature ejaculations with two lazy errors that led to six Boston runs, almost single-handedly accounting for the 8-4 loss with his ineptitude.

Contributing to his own demise was Brett Myers, easily suffering from attention deficit disorder, because after Jelly Roll’s first miscue he lost his mind and forgot he was pitching well through five innings, matching Beantown starter and ex-Marlin Josh Beckett pitch-for-pitch. Without the error, he would have needed to retire Beckett to keep his good run going. Instead, he wound up facing ten hitters after Beckett flared a single to right, scoring the lucky runner from second. Clearly rattled, he unraveled and was trailing 4-1 entering the seventh inning.

In that inning, Myers coaxed a ground ball out against ex-Marlin Alex Gonzalez (the one with a pulse), but the mighty Beckett stepped to the plate next and homered, the first dinger by a Boston pitcher since 1972. After Myers tossed up a triple to leadoff hitter Kevin Youkilis, Chollie had seen enough, so he brought in Ryan Madson to fuck up again. Madson got out of the inning, but he had allowed the runner on third to score. Success!

Further accentuating that players named Alex Gonzalez can, in fact, hit balls out of the infield, Boston’s version clocked a two-run long ball off Aaron Fultz in the top of the eighth. He had been hitless in his last 17 at-bats. In the bottom of the inning, as Myers scrunched up his thick Leonid Brezhnev eyebrows watching the game’s conclusion, Ryan Howard smacked a three-run homer to offer a flicker of hope. Beckett was lifted for lunatic Julian Tavarez. It was 8-4, and anything could happen.

After striking out Baby Girl Burrell, Tavarez allowed Shane Victorino and Dingdong David Bell to reach on singles. After David Dellucci flied out to advance the fleet-footed Victorino to third, Chollie played his ass-in-the-hole, deciding to send up our Bozo Gonzalez with two outs and runners on the corners, proving he had lost interest in winning the game. He bounced a weak grounder to third on a 2-0 pitch to end the threat, and a loud chorus of boos rained down upon the clueless “Gonzo,” the fans no doubt tortured at the sight of a .111 hitter still considered a competent major leaguer – and the late-inning “threat” off the bench at that.

A Brief Intermission

Last night I decided to watch the game at the corner tap room. Shortly after the game began, there was a shooting across the street. I checked to see if any of the Phillies had come up to Tacony to suidice.

No such luck.

My Bartender was happy to see me, as I rarely go out, but when I do, I go all out, an approach the Fightins' should contemplate. Lately, I've been pondering staying in bed the whole day to help the Phillies get out of their slump. Maybe I shoud have tried that last night. It was another underwhelming loss against the overexposed Red Sox, boring to watch, and I was thankful the Old Lady came to check up on me after she heard the gunshots.

She was "bringing her A game," as the euphemism goes, and she proved a far more entertaining option than watching Team Psycho continue their slide. Before I knew it, it was time to go home, where she told me she wants a Shane Victorino shirt because he's cute.

It's so much easier for chicks to be fans.

Failure To Consummate

Well, Ryan Madson is now 2-for-2 when it comes to fucking up Cole Hamels’ starts.

I’m wondering how long Chollie’s going to stick with the formerly reliable reliever, considering he hasn’t pitched well in a year and a half. Even if the torment was adjudged to continue, why send him in today to get smoked by the Brewers’ high-octane lineup with a recent history of late-inning charges?

Madson ain’t the only one with an inability to close. Team Psycho was back to its routine of erectile dysfunction, leaving 17 runners on base and batting a pathetic 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, rallies killed by such luminaries as the limp-wristed Alex Gonzalez, who left FIVE – count ‘em, FIVE – runners stranded in today’s rubber game in Beer City. Hopefully, his balls aren’t shrinking as quickly as his .088 batting average. It’s as revolting to watch this guy try to hit as it might be watching one of those obese Milwaukee women in the stands lift a hanging flank to reveal her fuzzpocket.

We saw this lame fuck start in today's 5-4 loss because Jelly Roll has been hitting .191 since April 13. Chollie figures he needs more at-bats to work out of this ungodly funk, but so does Rollins – better near the bottom of the lineup where he slotted Bozo Gonzo. I’ll take a .241 hitter over Bozo’s insanely deteriorating skills any day. Come to think of it, I’ll take the third-best regular hitter for average on this team over either of them. His name is David Fucking Bell, and he went 3-for-3 today with an RBI to lift his number to .279. It’s nice to see Dingdong hit so capably, but check back in a month or so when he’s resting his achy-breaky back.

The Second Coming of Christ continued well today, though. Hamels, while not turning water into wine yet, had a good aura about him through five full innings. He worked out of trouble in the fifth inning when Chase Utley saved two runs with a diving stop of a sharp grounder up the middle. With one out in the sixth and a runner on, he allowed a homer to the immortal Chad Moeller, bringing the Brewers to within one, 4-3. After Hamels issued a sloppy walk, Chollie brought in his Judas to betray him, losing the lead without getting his pieces of silver.

Jelly Roll entered the game in the eighth after Dingdong’s third hit and meekly popped out foul on the fourth pitch. It was over before bong-smoking reliever Derrick Turnbow, a reincarnation of a cigar store Indian, put Team Unconsummated on a bus to the airport, flying back to Philly to face the Red Sox with 25 sacks of blue balls.

Ain't Nobody Gonna Steal This Jelly Roll

Jelly Roll has been congealing for a month like the brown tacky blood on a bed sheet stained with an old mother’s menses.

They prefer to call him “JRoll,” of course, but our leadoff hitter’s bat has been about as useful as the familiar confection after that distracting 38-game hitting streak ended. You know it’s bad when his numbers are nearly identical to Sal Fasano’s.

Coming into last night’s game against the Brewers, the gelatinous JRoll was hitting .242 with a .306 on base percentage so far. When you consider The Italian Sausage has a better batting average (a catcherish .245) and an accompanying .302 OBP, somebody here ain’t earning the keys to his Bentley.

So as our intrepid, gooey Jelly Roll -- who never saw a first pitch he didn’t like, and walks about as often as the streets get cleaned in Calcutta – dug in tonight to face somebody named Dave Bush, how could you expect anything less than the ordinary disappointment?

We got the regular treatment from Jelly Roll. He didn’t work deep counts. He couldn’t get a runner in scoring position home with two outs. He had a quick at-bat that barely allowed Scared Shitless Gavin Floyd to sit down. The Phils already had left ten runners on who were ready and able to score before JRoll got his chance for redemption in the ninth. He succeeded in keeping an impressive comeback going after a David Fucking Bell walk – yes, Jelly Smelly, they still issue walks - cueballing a hit past Milwaukee’s defensively-challenged second baseman. And he did score a run as part of the three-run inning in which the Phils tied the game, 7-7, before Arthur Rhodes fell apart in the bottom of the inning and lost it.

But dear fans, commiserate with me, would you? Imagine if our sticky shortstop hadn’t taken an 0-for-4 collar before the fifth at-bat? You’d have to say if the leadoff man gets on base, things happen. Runs score. Pitchers pitch from the stretch. But do we get that from Jelly Roll? Shit, Rollins, for all his “speed,” has managed only six steals this season because you can’t steal first. And, as I pointed out, The Italian Sausage sees that base on a more frequent basis per at-bat than our shortstop. Fat Prince Fielder, who looks as if he will eat himself out of the league like his obese Pops, has three thefts himself. And, oh my faithful Philly legions, have you noticed that the guy who’s supposed to get on base has but 13 walks – one-third the amount as Bobby “Corky” Abreu, who refuses to bat leadoff?

One theory for his hitting hard-headedness is the wasted time he spent with MC Hammer, who was the Oakland A’s batboy who parlayed his wood-fetching skills into a vaguely successful hip-hop career. Maybe something is still making him jumpy. I don’t care what the fuck it is, but Chollie the Manager would be advised to take Hammer’s lyrics to heart and bust a move on Jelly Roll to the eighth slot in the lineup. He’s reminding me more of the puny Larry Bowa years of the early 70s, a slick-fielding gnat who had no stick until he met Dave Cash. I’ll tell you one thing he could do: Bunt. Yet the good ole boys in the booth laugh it off every time Smelly Jelly swings away, another at-bat down the drain, and quickly.

They know it. I know it. And so does the blind lady holding this on her scales: Fasano .269, Jelly Roll .241.

Shot And A Beer

Drunk on beer, Ryan Franklin served up fat pitches to The Brew Crew tonight in the ninth inning, threw the ball in a staggered direction beyond third base after fielding a hard-hit bunt, and allowed the game-winning run to score. For an encore, he ran into the clubhouse to wash down his butchery, swilling the rest of Rich Dubee’s moonshine.

It’s not anticipated he’ll make curfew.

Franklin, denuded of his steroid power after getting busted injecting the junk last season, hasn’t been all that bad this season. That is, until he saw all those breweries.

Tacony Lou was worried about the Phils in Milwaukee. Not that the team used to be owned (at least on paper) by the Man Who Stole the World Series, Bud Selig, but because The Fightins’ have a bunch of players with the drinking gene. Led by Baby Girl Burrell, who never saw a nightclub he didn’t like, the party boys looked like they were swinging at the “middle ball” tonight (to paraphrase Mickey Mantle). The difference is Mantle hit the middle ball.

Chris Capuano, a lefthanded late-bloomer who has recovered from Tommy John surgery to become a pitcher with a plan, held the offensively struggling Phils to six hits and two runs through seven innings. His bravo performance was matched by Corey Lidle, who recovered from the hangover and red cheeks of an ass-whipping by the Mets last Wednesday and allowed two runs and one less hit than his counterpart.

There have been heroic comebacks lately, and Phillies faithful had to have been believin’ again after watching Baby Girl nail a runner at the plate in the bottom of the eighth, with a little help by a roadblock named Sal Fasano. The burly catcher, who is seeing more time crouching and fingering his genitalia behind the plate, was inspired by The Italian Sausage’s seventh inning victory in The Sausage Race, which used to be the highlight of a game at the Brewer's home until they stopped sucking as bad as their alleged previous owner.

“I’m so proud of Italian Sausage,” Fasano moaned after the game as he dried a tear and sucked on a beer. “People think it’s a silly piece of fucking meat, but it’s more than that to me.”

How’s that Sal?

“It’s how my wife calls me, you know, when she’s hungry.”

Sentimentalities aside, Chollie wasn’t too jovial about a 3-2 loss which saw David Dellucci strand Shane Victorino at third base after a two-out triple in the ninth inning against Brewer closer Derrick Turnbow, an obvious bong-smoker. Not only would a hit have given the Phils the lead, it would have meant a pinch-hitter for Franklin, the next scheduled batter. So the question remains: Why wasn’t Franklin lifted anyhow?

“Hot Dog should have won the damn race,” Chollie told me after the game. “Arthur Rhodes is a hot dog eater, and that wudda been a sign from da sperits. That Eye-talian Link, he’s a greaseball, evil-smellin’ and such.”

One Sick Mother

Team Vomit upchucked their way to another delightful victory today, thanks to illin’ Ryan Howard’s two long homers to center, his Mother’s Day gift to a team that couldn’t find any other way to score against the Reds, a barnyard of bastards raised on a jackal’s teat.

Howard, who loaded up on a pre-game plate of poisoned spaghetti and chili sauce, a Cincinnati favorite, showed Backwoods Chollie the pink puke he had disgorged on his uniform just before game time, and the manager decided he wasn’t sick enough.

“I’ll make ya sick,” Chollie told our young phenom. “You’re gonna be watching Alex Gonzalez replace you. If that doesn’t turn yer stomach, ain’t nothing will.”

“Gonzo” didn’t disappoint those expecting failure, going 0-for-3 to lower his sickening batting average to .103. After watching the rest of the team get shut out on three hits by the queasily-talented Brandon Claussen, Howard wiped the chunks off the pink ribbon on his shirt and declared he was ready to end this nonsense in the top of the eighth inning. The Phils were behind, 1-0, and he pinch hit for hurler Brett Myers, who was looking at a loss after allowing just one run and four hits, an ailing proposition.

Howard, unlike the rest of the fairies who were swinging pink bats for their Mommies, waggled his black stick and unloaded with the first of his two dingers to tie the game. The Reds threatened in the bottom half of the inning, and Ken Griffey jerked himself off in front of all the Mothers after lofting a long fly ball to right, watching the ball arc as he did last night, but again, it stayed in the park. Surely, the more observant of the Cincinnati faithful wished he had saved the masturbation for the trainer’s room, because his antics fooled his teammates on the basepaths, who strayed far from their respective stations expecting a homer. The ball was caught by rightfielder Chris Roberson, who nearly doubled up the closest Reds runner on first.

Howard was the one who got to admire his next hit, as he single-handedly won the game with his second shot over Griffey’s head and beyond the center field wall. Maybe Junior will go blind one day admiring his own spunk, but he got a good look at The Howitzer’s power before he finally turned his team's lights out.

The icing on his Mother’s Day cake of crow came when Griffey lined out to Howard to end the game. He watched all of that one from the batter’s box as well, because it was in Our Hero’s glove in a millisecond, and the Fightins’ celebration was not a bit premature.

Ach Du Lieber!

Jon Lieber puked on the plane to Cincinnati, and all I know is that somebody better keep him sick.

Poison his chicken with salmonella, inject a virus into his wienerschnitzel – anything to keep him pitching like he did tonight against the Reds. He may have been hurling chunks today, but what he was throwing at the Reds was perfect for nearly seven innings, allowing only two hits before being lifted with one out to go in the ninth.

“I got sick off Mama’s possum pie when I was a boy and hit three homers with throw-up down my jersey,” said Backwoods Chollie after the 2-0 shutout. “Gettin’ sick ain’t nothing. When I played in Japan, I ate fish sperm and chucked ‘fore everah game.”

Gastronomic memories aside, Chollie had to be delighted with Herr Lieber’s masterpiece, as the sinkerballer goosestepped through the Reds’ vaunted lineup like a Kruppstahl tank through the Polish cavalry. With pinpoint precision, he set down the first 20 batters before Ubermensch Adam Dunn shot a ball through the middle for a single. The other hit should never have happened. Ninth-inning defensive replacement David Dellucci fucked up a fly ball to left field off the bat of Ken Griffey, allowing it to ride over his glove like an errant meatball. Fortunately, Griffey was so self-consumed he thought he was watching a homerun. Because of his masturbatory blunder, he was held to a single.

Lieber was done, and Arthur Rhodes came in to allow another hit to make it slightly interesting, but the threat was futile. The Phils posted their second shutout of the week, and continue their impressive resurrection in the NL East, heaving and leaving vomit all the while.

Chollie Fucks With Jesus

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

His name is Cole Hamels, and Our Savior of the Pitching Staff made his debut against a hard-hitting Reds lineup and allowed but one hit – begging the question why Chollie yanked him after five innings, his evangel incomplete, his lead quickly squandered by Ryan Madson, his predecessor in the rotation.

While he did allow five walks, the Reds couldn’t do much with his preternaturally mature repertoire, which tonight consisted mostly of fastballs and changeups. He made superstar Ken Griffey look like silly-swinging Endy Chavez, and worked out of the small trouble the walks created. Griffey accounted for two of Hamels’ seven strikeouts. But he was pulled with a 2-0 lead.

So why Chollie? Why take the kid out after 92 pitches?

“He’s too skinny and queer-looking,” ole Backwoods told me after the game. “And I kinda feel guilty about Madson. I figgered that boy needed another whuppin’ to feel loved. My plan worked.”

Fortunately, the two instant taters Madson served up didn’t cost us the game – but did cost Hamels credit for the win - otherwise, Rich Dubee’s moonshine jug in the clubhouse would have been drained before the road trip got into the second game. The Fightins’ rebounded, and keyed by Shane Victorino’s four-hit night, the Phils put the game away after Madson’s butchery to win 8-4.

Madson wasn’t alone in the slaughterhouse. Blabbing Idiot Chris Wheeler massacred the language like an axe murderer, describing Reds second baseman Ryan Freel as “a dirtball-type player,” obviously a remark directed at his hygiene and general comportment.

Philosophizing as only he can, Wheeler and Ninny Foil Scott Graham bandied niceties about like Mr. Rogers and his Mongoloid Concubine.

“Every pitch makes someone happy and someone sad,” Wheeler crooned, to which Graham remarked that he should begin copyrighting such witticisms. Wheeler would have none of that, insisting, “I’m not much for sayings here getting published.”

Guess again, moron.

With the volume lowered, the Phils mounted their comeback in the later innings, and after impressive efforts by Ryan Franklin and Arthur Rhodes, the table was set for…Julio Santana?

Santana, looking fattened for the feast, proceeded to yield three walks, which led to two runs. Flash Gordon, who should show Santana how to lose the 30 pounds of blubber around his waist, was called in to preserve the 8-4 victory.

Hamels performed true to his billing. The Phils have a long history of fucking things up, but hopefully with Pat Gillick calling the shots, he’ll stay around long enough to buy a mansion in Gladwyne and put a half dozen Cy Young Awards on the mantelpiece despite Chollie forcing him to carry the cross of his mismanaging ways as he evokes the Second Coming of Steve Carlton.

A Bucket Of Blood For Pretty Boy Floyd

Every time Gavin Floyd takes a look at the long scar on Aaron Rowand’s face, or his crooked nose, he should remember how lucky he was tonight to get credit for a rain-shortened two-hit shutout win.

Without Rowand’s kamikazee act into the metal fence in center, he’d have dug a three-run hole in the first inning -- certain to have fucked up his scrambled psyche, since he’s been acting like a pussy most of his career and I would expect nothing less after he walked the bases loaded.

While Floyd can breathe easy tonight without tasting his own blood, his centerfielder will no doubt be fitted for a protective mask so he can play tomorrow in Cole Hamel’s debut. Rowand, whose body type evokes Ron “The Penguin” Cey yet plays baseball as if it were hockey, was brought to Philly to show our pretty boys exactly what playing to win means.

If our young wimps didn’t get the message tonight, Rowand should break their noses.

“Hardnosed” is a tired expression in sports, and in Rowand’s case, his snout would be broken even if it were made of diamond after robbing Xavier Nady of extra bases with that catch. Blood gushed from his beak like water out of a faucet. I’m surprised a team owner didn’t try to bottle it for ten bucks a pop at the concessions. Better, somebody should have gotten a bucket and made the rest of the roster drink it.

In all fairness, it seemed to galvanize the team. As Voice of God Harry Kalas said, the proboscis-smashing catch “really had to give Gavin Floyd a lift,” and judging by his next four innings of work, it did. He went on to allow only two doubles, worked out of those minor threats, and better, worked a perfect and quick fifth inning before the flood gates opened up as he walked back to the dugout. A home run by Chase Utley in the bottom of the first was all the Phils really needed, and after a lengthy rain delay, the game was declared officially over, and the Fightins’ won their second of the three-game series, 2-0.

They are a mere three games behind the enemy after their gutless start, and our new personal Jesus Christ turns water into wine tomorrow night.

At Least They Lost The Fight

My wretched habit of timing my ballpark visits to coincide with magnanimous losses continued yesterday, my desolation so yawning it prohibited a more timely entry. I had to sleep this one off.

It is the Day After a 13-4 thrashing at the hands of the Mets; after three $25 tickets; one $10 parking pass; two $6.50 beers (the Old Lady had one); one $4.50 nachos and cheese; one $20 powder blue throwback hat (again, the Old Lady); and two $3.50 BOTTLED WATERS for fuck’s sake. Oh, I forgot the $10 media guide, easily the most useful and concretely enduring purchase of the night. Now I have Chris Wheeler’s career statistics.

There were intangibles. I furthered my son’s Education in Philadelphia Fandom, instructing him in the proper booing technique, which he had ample opportunity to practice. Accompanying the Family Tacony were two old friends, My Co-Defendant and The Promoter, experts in the aforementioned art, as well as such arcane practices as creating clever chants to charm the crowd.

The Promoter was particularly clever, intoning a sarcastic “Bring in Ham-els” sing-song that elicited guffaws from Phillies fans (they were charmed) and Mets leeches (smelly and repugnant) who were in the process of watching the New Yorkers put the game away early, scoring ten runs in three innings, the six-run third frame taking a gargantuan 32 minutes.

The Promoter wasn’t exactly kidding about his invocation. Cole Hamels, the newly-promoted pitcher he references, likely would not be as horrid as Corey Lidle and Geoff Geary were last night. Probably would have played a better first base, too, as Ryan Howard got busy putting on a display of defensive incompetence, letting one ball roll through his legs (Bill Buckner, were you there in spirit?) and blowing a sure double play by errantly tossing the ball over Jimmy Rollins head as if it were covered in lye.

Team Psycho was back.

Meanwhile, the Family and I got to watch future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine settle in and no-hit the Phils before Pat Burrell hit a two-run homer in the fourth to shrink the lead to 10-2. But it was already over. By then, the true entertainment value of our $136 outing was re-directed to Section 304 in the upper deck, as young hooligans wearing Mets merchandise unwisely had puffed out their feathers and challenged the angry Phillies faithful. All attention turned to this inter-city conflict, and from what I can tell, Philly out-hit New York by a 3-1 ratio. It was a pyrrhic victory, but a win nonetheless.

All of us stayed for the entire nine-inning debacle – true fans never leave a game before it’s finished – and vaguely hoped that alpaca fucker Billy Wagner would get a little work. Not a chance.

We're Your Daddy, Mets Fans

It must be tough living in New Brunswick and being a Mets fan.

There you are, stuck between Philly and New York, and there’s no Number 7 train to take you to Queens. You have to pump your SUV with $75 worth of gas, drive through the sludgy turnpike traffic, pay two tolls, then go through Manhattan just to get stuck in another traffic jam all the way to Flushing. For all that hassle, you get to sit in Shea’s concrete shit circle full of other Mets fans.

What a drag.

You know what’s gotta be worse, though? Trudging all the way down the turnpike to Philly (I’m sure most of Metsdom don’t know the shortcut) just to watch your team blow a come-from-behind tie with no baserunners on and two outs in the ninth inning tonight.

That must be fucking miserable!

This is the first of nine parties slated for the season in Philly, which is a fuck of a lot easier to deal with than the Tower of Babel that Queens has become. Maybe that's why so many New Yorkers are moving here, yet continue to wear the enemy's regalia. Like an unwanted fraternity student at a dive bar, Mets fans – the definition of front-runners -- come to wreak havoc inside our ballpark, and have for years (they’re the ones who left the urine stink at the Vet), especially when their team is on top. More often than not, their team is on top as ours is bottoming out. This year is different. It will be a fight to the finish with them, and, making it even more interesting, Billy Wagner is their fireman. (More on him tomorrow.)

An infusion of cable cash has allowed the team to buy a contender at the same time that the Phils are still competitive but, not unlike a drunk frat boy, our Fightins’ have trouble consummating. This problem afflicts the Mets, too, but the fans are obnoxious, arrogant assholes anyhow. They have an entitled air about them that makes you want to puke your Yeungling down their backs. They also feel they have a license to come to South Philly, piss in the parking lot and start fights, which sometimes are more entertaining than the games when the combatants all have the same haircut.

This game itself was worth the price of admission. Future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, who will never have to work a day in his life when he’s through thanks to New York Money, pitched well but was touched for three runs in the bottom of the second inning, and that’s all most thought the Phils would need considering Brett Myers was better. He allowed but a two-run homer in the eighth to Xavier Nady, then recovered to retire the side and leave it to Flash Gordon in the ninth after the Phils tagged on an insurance run to make it 4-2.

Flash almost cost us the game, surrendering a two-run homer to Carlos Delgado, who the Mets scooped up in the Marlins fire sale because they shit gold bricks and Jeffrey Loria is anal retentive.

Tied in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and diminishing expectations, David Dellucci tripled to keep hope alive. The Fish Lady of 9th Street evidently was smiling upon our paisano yesterday. Then, the energy vortex opened up, as a walk and a hit batter loaded them up for Bobby Abreu. The Home Run Derby champ, fraught with insecurity during a week-long slump, hit a little dribbler to Mets pitcher Aaron Heilman, who made a complete ass out of himself throwing it away at first.

The Phils won, 5-4, and that’s nine straight and counting. The cars with the Jersey license plates took the long way home. Hopefully, they didn't buy any real estate before they left the city.

Baseball Breaks Out On Bond's TV Show

If you think that a baseball game televised by ESPN that includes Barry Bonds transforms into anything less than a remorseless lovefest about Barry Bonds you are not paying attention. I did, I took good notes, and it’s all Bonds, all the time.

And why not? Besides carrying Shithead’s bucket-of-tears reality show, ESPN employs corpulent play-by-play blob Jon Miller, the Giants radio broadcaster, so he’s given to gab about His Cattle Fattener ceaselessly. Hall of Famer Joe Morgan, a Bay Area native, sits dutifully at his side and needs no egging on to effuse about The Shrunken Scrotum.

“Anybody (pursuing time-honored records) is going to be treated like this,” Morgan said of the high-decibel heckling the nasty cheater gets in every city except San Francisco. “It’s not a lot of joy, and that’s a shame,” he continued, soiling the memory of the un-enhanced abilities of Henry Aaron and Roger Maris.

Morgan further articulated his Bonds Apologia in response to the not obscene and family-friendly sign directly above the top edge of the outfield wall close to where he plays left field. It read: “Ruth Did It With Hot Dogs And Beer, Aaron Did It With Class, How Did You Do It?” Morgan, clearly not able to think rationally, opined, “Beer was illegal back then, wasn’t it?” Miller, never wanting to offend Little Joe’s feelings – the hallmark of our cowardly, pussy age – mumbled something about Prohibition, and how he couldn’t remember that far back, and thanks for telling him, a-hem, a-hem.

The Phillies could pile on 90 runs and win 19 straight before these guys would report upon the game, because The Barry Game was the feature show, pimpled and all. And when he hit Number 713 tonight in the sixth inning, they spent the rest of the game replaying it, leaving the replay of the homer Aaron Rowand hit waiting until after the next message from ESPN’s Suzy Kolber, who looks more like an impala than the namesake car she hawks for Chevy. (Does she ever wear a dress?)

The homer was just one of four the Phils laid on the Giants tonight, and again they started early, posting an early 3-0 lead on a Bobby Abreu RBI single and a Pat Burrell two-run shot to dead centerfield. It was 5-1 by the end of the second frame, and the ball game was effectively over. Jon Lieber was mostly in control through seven innings, and, besides yielding 713 to Bonds, was charged with three other runs on five other hits. The final score was 9-5.

The Phils’ eight-game winning streak is the team’s longest since 1991. Pumpkin Head was still a relatively-svelte veteran in his sixth season. By the end of that year, he had only 142 homers. After 20 seasons, at that rate, he’d have had only 472 for his career. Then Bob Dylan turned him on to marijuana, and the music changed forever.

Speaking of smoking dope, Miller sure has uttered some confused and just plain wrong things in his time. As the Orioles were about to put down the Phils in the 1983 World Series, he described the stadium as being in “muted silence,” as in “Can you mute that silence, please!” Tonight, he tried to convince the outside world that the ball Bonds hit in the stands “would have went over the hat of Billy Penn in downtown Philly at the end of Broad Street.” I get the hyperbole, Miller. And I’ll even forgive the omission that Billy Penn’s hat is atop City Hall (outsiders aren’t expected to know where the Mayor’s Office is – why would they want to visit a crime scene?) But the bit about Broad Street ending there makes me want to give him a tour of North Philly, treat him to the barbeque at Erie Avenue, then make him walk back to John Street’s bugged office so we can see who won the pool on how many times he got rolled.

Bonds had a chance to tie Ruth in the eighth inning, but thankfully, it wasn’t going to happen in Philly. I wish Aaron Fultz could be loaned to every Giants’ opponent this season when Bonds bats. He struck him out for the second time in the series, and made him look like a woman – not that his genitalia doesn’t already.

He was through for the night, and through in Philly forever, because these teams will not meet in the playoffs, and Bonds will never get that World Series victory. The Giants aren’t good enough. Maybe knowing this, he sat in the dugout, poking his shaven head like a schizophrenic vagrant.

“He seems to be berating himself,” Miller answered, as the fans left early. The game was over for all of them except the real baseball players.

The Gays, Willie Mays And The A's

Little has been made of the overwhelmingly gay demographics of San Francisco and how it impacts the local baseball team – the Queer Factor, if you will.

The Old Lady grew up in the Mission District in the little peninsula of Fag Central, and recalls being dragged to ballgames at Seals Stadium in 1958 by her Old Man, a heterosexual mechanic with the build of a fireplug. That was before the joke of a ballpark named Candlestick Park was built in the cold, fallow Hunter’s Point section of the city, which can be described as San Francisco’s anus, no doubt to the delight of the boys in the Castro District.

Wealthy fags have made “The City” (their affectation, not mine) an overpriced, hyper-leftist Babylon. It is a debauched symbol of capitalist greed – and was long before buttboys dominated its civic life – whose public officials spurt out ideological jism with such prescient syllogisms concluding “there is no need for a military in the United States.” (That’s according to City Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval on national television Feb. 14, 2006.)

I don’t know about Sandoval – who is an attorney, by the way – but it seems to me that millions of men ( most straight, some gay) have volunteered or been drafted by the American Armed Services for the express purpose to defend his right to swallow urine flowing from his lover’s cock while he submitted a writ of certiorari.

But life is cruel when you’re a Great Big Fag like Barry Bonds. He swore off anal action a long time ago, ever since his scrotum disappeared. There is a nightclub in the Castro that amputates genitalia, and they’re all Giants fans. They worship before a diorama of Bonds, the one with the jewelry dangling out of his earlobe, symbolic of the loss they celebrate ceremonially by watching, with baited breath, every one of his at-bats. They share his pain.

Bonds reminds me of the old drag queens who flagged me down when I was a taxi driver. The ravages of age and meth abuse had finally caught up to them, but they refused to admit it. The stink of stale aftershave – that unmistakable gay guy’s brand that no other normal man or woman buys – introduced itself five feet before they creaked into the back seat and lost control of their high heels. Liquor assaulted the air as soon as they started to cackle their destination. Then they’d tell you what a crime it was that they couldn’t marry their nephew.

That’s the kind of baseball veteran Barry Bonds has become. The offensive odor precedes him, as sure as the boos begin twenty seconds before his name is called over the public address.

In a way, Bonds’ perversion of the sport has overshadowed the Giants inability to win a World Series since moving to San Francisco the same year my Old Lady’s Old Man started taking her out to see Willie Mays in his prime. That’s a good drought, but I have no sympathy for The Bay Area. The Athletics, stolen from Philadelphia, have won four titles since they moved to the Oakland ghetto in 1968 from Kansas City.

Could Mother Nature be punishing the homosexuals? I mean, AIDS is bad enough, but no baseball championship parade through the Castro…jeesh. How do people get a woodie for this team?

Meanwhile, back in Philly tonight – our fags believe in the military here – Barry The Cocksucking Fake was held to a lazy hit, and it was all worth it, if only to see how a once-spry athlete has disabled his ability to avoid getting struck by a batted ball and, thus, be banned from the basepaths. It effectively killed one of the many rallies that the Giants erected but couldn’t consummate. Amazingly, Ryan Madson gave up a meager run – and it wasn’t even really his fault, it was a passed ball thrown by his relief pitcher – and the Phils triumphed 4-1. Utley homered again to put the Phillies ahead in the first, and they never looked back.

I’d say it was an easy win, but the luck plane shifted the Phils’ direction all night, as it has for the last seven straight wins. True skill was demonstrated by the indomitable Flash Gordon, who had another 1-2-3 ninth inning for the save.

Flash knows better to violate nature and play in a cursed city.

Worshipping False Idols

I was appalled to hear Ryan Howard say after the game tonight that meeting Barry Bonds for the first time was “like a dream come true.” Not that I care so much about the guy’s fantasies, but now I question his judgment.

Whether Bonds was one of his “childhood idols” is not the issue. When you’re a ten-year-old, you might not look at that baseball card and see a junkie. But after you’ve sown a few wild oats, boyhood innocence peels away and the hideous truth about your heroes are revealed. They’re human, and you’re one too. Heroism is no longer relevant or useful.

In Bonds case, he is no longer human (he’s “The Thing”) and aside from showing the fawning Howard the battle scars of steroid abuse, he was useless in tonight’s match, an easy (!) 8-3 victory for the Phils.

You’re a man now, Ryan. Learn how to despise the cocksucker.

Media crowded the clubhouse, field and parking lots before the game dangling digital devices to detail Pumpkin Head’s every movement. What a waste. After a long wait, it was meekly announced that His Highness was too busy rubbing “the cream” over his shrunken balls to talk. “Go tell the white devils to eat a motherfucking hoagie and have a happy Cinqo de Mayo,” a BALCO buddy read to the assembed.

“But we just want to ask Barry how he…how he feels,” quivered Scott Graham, chewing bubble gum and holding Bonds’ Topps rookie card.

Attention quickly turned to the other major event of the evening, a baseball game, and the 85.7 percent-full stadium was rocking in anticipation of the effusive verbal bitch-slapping that so vigorously is arranged in South Philly for all enemy combatants, but is cherished like a stinky hunk of cheese from 9th Street when it comes to singular bamboozlers like Barry Boy.

Already down a run and not yet out of the 1st inning, Scared Shitless and Schizo Gavin Floyd faced the Parade Float We Call Bonds, and the television audience was made keenly aware that the youthful hurler had said before the game that he would “treat him like a regular hitter.” Meanwhile, as he stepped up, an incessant cadence of boos was disgorged from the lungs of the locals. If only the air had that dead-cat-and-piss smell of the Vet, the act would have been sensorially complete. Bonds flied meekly to center, and Floyd found his way out of the inning. Ah, growing up.

It seems the Phils have turned a corner in May, because they immediately battled back in the bottom of the opening frame with the first of two homers each from Chase Utley and Howard. It was 3-1 and they were never to trail again. Briefly tied in the third after an intentional walk to Bonds and a Moises Alou single, Howard came back in the bottom of the fourth with his second tater to make it 4-3, a game-winning RBI against his pompous hero and the Giants.

The only spectacle left was the Bonds Show. As the score creeped up to 6-3 before his third at-bat in the top of the 5th, a well-executed 3-5-4 double play courtesy of an overshifted Phillies’ infield vanquished Mr. Sensitivity and ended the inning.

Then, the coup de grace. Aaron Fultz, relieving Frog Rheal Cormier and his 0.00 ERA, faced Bonds to start the 8th inning, and, in a story sure to be told to his descendants, struck the fuckhead out swinging. That’s all the fans needed to see, and half the crowd headed for the exits to get sloppy drunk and start fights with the idiots who thought it would be cool to wear a Giants hat to the game.

Earning, Not Shrinking, His Stugots

Corey Lidle earned heroic stone stugots today.

Published reports quoted him skewering Barry Bonds, the cheating motherfucker who is about to assrape the record books again by passing Babe Ruth’s lifetime mark of 714 home runs, still a mystic number in baseball lore.

Born into wealth and evidently bred to be a racist, Bonds, who reportedly wears a size 18 hat now (it was merely a “10” when he broke in), has scurried like a roach to do damage control this season to his shit-stained reputation, earned after years of condescending comments to reporters, teammates and fans alike, a cock robin strutting his superiority complex with a pimp’s attitude as he whored the national pastime with the help of his steroid dealer.

ESPN’s “Bonds On Bonds,” a pathetic, self-aggrandizing attempt to “humanize” the “misunderstood” circus freak he has become, is replete with moving moments such as an elongated crying session and other maudlin attempts at exposing his softer side; in short, one long Pity Party for Barry.

Unlike most players, Lidle evidently is not a chickenshit when it comes to expressing his sentiments on better hitting through chemistry in exchange for testicle shrinkage.

"I don't want to see him break records," Lidle was quoted in the reports. “If he breaks them, it will be a shame, because I think when all is said and done, the truth will come out. It hasn't yet, but I think if he was in front of a jury, and there had to be a verdict, I think the verdict might be - with everything that I heard was in that book - I think the verdict might be guilty."

Frankly, if Lidle decided to retire tomorrow, he should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, Diogenes Department, because baseball has finally found an honest man.

Like they say in the ghetto, he has spoken truth to power.

As for his pitching…well, nobody’s perfect, but Lidle has been a solid performer this year with the best strikeout/walk ratio in the National League. And maybe the reports today proved distracting, as he gave up two quick runs to the hated Atlanta Braves in his start tonight. The Braves, a collection of wife-beaters and fruitcakes (see yesterday’s post), have no known steroid freaks in the lineup, preferring disco drugs in the off-season. Their booties stopped shaking after that inning, though.

Lidle settled down after the Phils tied the score in the bottom half of the opening frame, 2-2, which Pat Burrell ended abruptly on the basepaths by losing track of the outs, the same thing he accomplished over the weekend in Pittsburgh. Greenies are banned in the clubhouse this year, Pat. You’d be well advised to start chanting “Hare Krishna” or switch to a lower grade of whiskey for the hangovers.

But Burrell wasn’t finished yet. His laxity in running down a short fly to left after watching Jimmy Rollins pursue it for five miles started some avoidable trouble for Lidle, but Mr. Stugots worked out of that hairy 6th inning after Pat the Bat’s torpor. Blowhard “color” man Chris Wheeler provided an alibi completely free of syntax, saying “he’s struggling with trying to move.” Come to think of it, if he had dropped the infinitive, he nailed it: Pat’s struggling with trying. Oh, how he hates to get up in the morning to check his bank balance.

Lidle was relieved after the sixth leading 4-3, and Wheeler entered into his head via an alien implant to reveal he “probably used it up emotionally.” Later in the 8th inning, as Harry Kalas was forced to sit with His Idiocy, Wheeler changed his mind and said Lidle “probably was gassed,” implying he was physically spent, as opposed to becoming unstuck with his feelings.

Ryan Howard, who drove in the go-ahead run with his second sacrifice fly (the first was just before Burrell’s nap) gave the Fightins’ more breathing room in the bottom of the 6th with a solo homer to make it 5-3. Shane Victorino, who mercifully replaced Burrell in the 8th, singled in a run to make it 6-3.

The Braves were vanquished, the Phillies are now a .500 team at 14-14, and the big weekend series with Bullshittin’ Barry Bonds and the Giants awaits the hungry, angry Philadelphia fans to savor as every Roman relished their Bread and Circuses. Lidle may not be pitching to Bonds, but the lions await the Christians.

The Confederate Wife-Beating Gay Boys

My hatred of the Confederacy was inherited from my father and has been justified by my experience.

Good old Dad hated one rebel in particular for a pretty damn good reason. His platoon leader, a proud product of Dixie, tried numerous times to get him killed on various icy hills in Korea. Dad was stubborn. He kept coming back alive, and every time, let Johnny Reb know what he would to do to him if a court martial wasn’t in the way. After three years of inflicting carnage against the Red Chinese and North Koreans, he came home less fond of Southerners than he was of kim chi.

Kim chi he could avoid, but Southerners kept on finding their way up to Philly, and the nuances of the cultural differences between North and South were brought to the attention of my tender sensibilities early in life. My father could do a vaudevillian imitation of a country drawl and warned me away from grits, but most of all, he instilled in me a healthy repulsion of all things below the Mason-Dixon Line. And there was no better way to articulate this than against Confederate sports franchises like tonight’s opponent, the Atlanta Braves.

It should be made clear that the sinister Braves are an assemblage of biscuits-and-gravy-eating perverts whose manager, Bobby Cox, was arrested and pleaded guilty to beating his wife some years ago after he lost an argument with her in the car. It’s understandable to see why Cox was angry he lost something. After all, his ballclub has been successful in claiming division titles 14 years running now, and maybe he forgot how to deal with it. But Bobby boy’s one big loss in the assault department is rarely noted, so I thought everyone would like to know.

Also salient to this report are the homosexual exploits that pitcher John Smoltz has been covering up since he was spotted at the Bike Stop leather bar back in the 80s. Just kidding. But noxious thoughts like that waft about when you take a look at Smoltz, with that bald head and fellatio-inspiring goatee and stand him side-by-side with his nubile catcher. That Brian McCann kid looks like the poster boy of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

And besides. Harry Kalas called Smoltz “a horse,” and you know what Katherine the Great did with those animals in her boudoir.

Anyhow, it’s great that this team from the heart of Dixie, the Braves, evoke such unpleasant thoughts, real and imagined. It’s almost like a little revenge beyond the grave from dear old Dad. And besides, Smoltz and the Wife-Beater lost to the Phils tonight, 5-4, so I’m so happy I can shit.

Also defecating as usual tonight was Chris Wheeler, whose violations of the sanctity of English grammar and baseball commentary has all the grace of a pederast stalking his victim. Somebody please take a blackboard and a piece of chalk up to him and have him write “First ball fastball” 10,000 times until his nose clogs. Asshole so reflexively uses the overworked adage that he’s wrong easily half the time he describes its alleged occurrence. Take the Andruw Jones homer tonight that tied it, 3-3 in the top of the sixth.

Said Fuckface, “He loves to swing first ball fast ball – oh, it’s a breaking ball” and proceeded to wither away as he gushed about the Braves centerfielder.

Then, in the top of the 8th, Stat Boy blustered without tense agreement that Jeff Francouer was “looking first ball fast ball and drive it.” Again, the first pitch was a breaking ball, and the aggressive Francouer laid off.

But Wheeler doesn’t swing the bat (who knows how many he’s had to duck in the clubhouse) and after Francouer put the Wife-Beating Gay Boys ahead, 4-3, esoteric Frenchman Rheal Cormier stepped in to put out the fire for the Phils. In the bottom of the inning, with the meat of the order hanging out, Chase Utley singled to start the inning and Aaron Rowand parked one to right center to put the Phils up, 5-4. Pat Burrell was no help. Rested for David Dellucci – who better stay away from the Gayborhood until he gets his average above .125 – he came up to hit with the bases loaded and grounded into a double play, doing his best David Fucking Bell imitation to kill an inning. But Rowand’s blast was enough.

“Flash” Gordon, a known heterosexual, put the Pink Rebels down quickly for the save in the ninth. Cox and his Cocksuckers put on the black leather and headed to 13th Street. Punishment was meted out by the awaiting master in candy stripes.

Hockey Season Is Over

For the uninitiated, it is hard to understand why fans at a Phillies game sometimes begin singing cheers for the other sports franchises here in The City of Confused Brothers.

Need something to do while watching the Phils get clobbered by ten runs? Start singing “Fly Eagles Fly” and pine for football season. The Fightins’ can’t get a hit to save their lives? “Let’s Go Flyers” is the incantation used by hockey fans to exhort the team to victory. And if the 76ers had a new song – their old one from the 70s sounds like a bad O’Jays tune sung by coked-up disco dancers - that would get play at the old ballpark, too.

The other teams’ fight songs are crooned because they have a higher success ratio than the Phils, who are charging full steam to the unstated goal of losing their 10,000th game in their 124th season. (They started the season with 9,879). That’s no mean feat considering the sport has its share of losers; this team, however, is not a “loveable” loser like the Cubs, or worse, the Red Sox. They’re the Phillies, man, and waddya want? The Athletics to move back? Some would jump at that idea. Or at least take Barry Zito off their hands.

As the Phillies gaffed the Marlins tonight in Miami, 7-5, courtesy of some timely hitting by off-season acquisition Aaron Rowand, big things were doing back in Philly with the hockey team, the Flyers. They were getting their asses righteously kicked by a team from Buffalo which nearly went bankrupt and whose payroll is about half the money that Comcast, the local cable monopoly who owns the Flyers, pays its French Canadien and Eurotrash flyboys. They lost 7-1. In baseball numbers (sorta like dog years) that’s the same as losing by double that score. What a joke.

So when bozos like Sal Fasano, our alleged new folk hero, give away a run by flinging the ball uncontrollably from his chubby hand when he tries to fake out a runner, fans needed only to flick the remote one channel up to see what the Buffalo Sabres were doing to the Flyers to feel better, after color man Larry Anderson indicated this might be another comedy promotion night.

“I don’t know what to say,” Anderson guffawed. “Not to laugh at him but…”

Oh, go ‘head, Larry. Treat yourself. Laugh at the poor fucker. The players like to say they’re entertainers, right?

In all fairness to Sal, who I suspect has been doing shooters with Chollie between innings, he was all over the field tonight – mostly for the good of the team – and even had the wherewithal to catch a popped-up bunt on an ill-advised Marlins squeeze play on a full count to the batter (!) and run down the dead-duck runner barreling toward home. Whew. The whiskey almost came up on that one.

“The Harder the Battle, the Sweeter the Victory” hangs over the Flyers’ locker room door, but sweetness was not to be savored by the Ice Men, and at least not by Out-of-Hand Sal in his last at-bat, who was called out on a questionable third strike and tried desperately in his fury to break a bat apart in the dugout to no avail. Chollie nipped at the bottle and offered anger control therapy.

Without Sal, who is now hitting .182, the Phils were not to be denied, warts and all. Jimmy Rollins hit a homer in the 7th inning with two outs (one of them Sal’s strikeout) to shrink the Marlins lead to a run, 5-4. The inning looked cooked but Chase Utley hustled his skinny ass down to first base and beat out a bang-bang play to key a big rally finished off by Rowand’s three-run triple. The bullpen, which has performed well after its horrible showing the first two weeks, shut down this AAA team like the rookies they are.

The Phillies now have the city’s entire attention until Eagles training camp at the end of July, and without Terrell Owens, the football team is no match for Sal’s soon-to-be announced Summer Buffoonery Festival, following straight on the heels of his stand-up Spring.

¡Sí, Se Puede!

Team Psycho celebrated “A Day Without A Mexican” by defeating a team without a new stadium, the Florida Marlins, who are situated in a city, Miami, with a large Caribbean refugee population, retired New Yorkers by the bunch and a history of hosting vice and criminality for everyone’s fun and profit.

The team is without a “just for baseball” stadium because this eclectic polyglot has repeatedly refused to prostitute their tax funds on behalf of its whore owner, Jeffrey Loria, who feels deprived because he is “stuck” fielding a team at Dolphins Stadium, which was built by the deceased whore owner of the local football team, Joe Robbie, who, though flush with cash but not humility, saw fit to name it after himself when it opened.

I am compelled to tell you the tragedy that has been Loria’s life because Phillies Voice of God Harry Kalas slipped a little propaganda to his listeners tonight before the Phils mounted an impressive comeback against Marlins ace Dontrelle Willis and won, 8-5.

“Not a very big crowd here at Dolphins Stadium,” he observed, maybe after counting the 6,017 heads that attended the game. “That’s one of the reasons they’re talking about moving.”

Sorry, Harry, but as Whitey used to say, “I wouldn’t bet the house on it.”

The fans weren’t there tonight because Whore Loria dismantled a damn good team – one that used to kick the Fightins’ ass on a regular basis – to cut payroll and make concrete his threat to move the franchise to another city by fielding a remedial team, thus ensuring sparse attendance. Appropriately enough, Las Vegas is a prime candidate for the relocation, and he should be happy there, considering all the johns looking to get their dicks wet. Maybe he’ll get a ballpark designed with a built-in brothel for his well-heeled fans and a blow job bleacher section for the masses. Lit up in neon, it could be quite a sight. The only…ahem…trick might in keeping his players away from the whorehouse.

Trickery is Loria’s specialty, having fucked his partners after he bought a 24 percent share of the Montreal Expos in 1999 and, after a series of shady maneuvers that inspired a RICO investigation (that’s what they use to bust mobsters) diluted the shares of the other owners to raise his stake to 94 percent, like a trollop stealing a wallet from the guy whose drawers were dropped for her performance.

This from the man who co-authored “What’s It All About Charlie Brown?”

Now in a different decade and with a different franchise, this year he has fielded a team that, besides two all-stars, pitcher Willis and third baseman Miguel Cabrera, would be more suited to filling smaller parks in the minor leagues. What he has done is akin to your local butcher telling you that because his customers won’t fund his new shop, you can eat green ground beef for all he cares.

Everyone in the league knows the Marlins are easy marks this season, except when Willis pitches. He truly is one of the best arms in baseball, and, in the Phillies case, can be deadly against a lineup with so many lefthanded hitters.

It didn’t look good from the outset. For one, Phils starter Ryan Madson, entering the game with a hefty 8.05 ERA, seems to have trouble speaking Yiddish with Mike Lieberthal, his catcher.

“They’re not able to get it together right now,” huffed color man Larry Anderson, exasperated. “They need to get it together before the game.” What’s more, Anderson asserted, was that Madson “showed Lieberthal up” last game with his gesticulations on the mound.

All this was not lost on “Backwoods” Chollie, who threw a tantrum in the dugout after the battery’s tiff in the 3rd inning. An out into the top of that inning, he got himself tossed out of the game arguing a close call and headed into the clubhouse to steal Rich Dubee’s whiskey.

It looked like it was going to be more psychosis on Joe Robbie's football field, and color idiot Chris Wheeler sounded like he was dipping into a little of the local reefer after the Marlins staked Willis to a 5-1 lead in the bottom of the 4th inning.

Marveling at Willis’ abilities, Wheeler, abandoning grammar, emoted, “No substitute for that, in any sports, is athletes.”

Tell you what, Wheels. If the roster consisted of 25 fat grannies, if they won ballgames, I wouldn’t want for athletes.

But in the spirit of today’s effervescent Spanish sloganeering, the Phils stole back their 1975 motto, took a deep breath, and with valiant bench coach Gary Varsho at the helm, yelped, “Yes We Can!” just like the Mexicans and put together a big late rally -- just like the Mexicans -- tagging the “athletic” Willis for six more runs, eventually winning, 8-5. His teammates were no help, looking as if they swilled pina coladas in the dugout, balls going willy-nilly when they took to the field.

“Sometimes you need a break in this beautiful game of baseball,” Kalas said, giddily noting Team Psycho’s lucky day without a loss.