Just Manny being Rickey

WASHINGTON – I have Brad Lidge fatigue. No, I’m not tired of Brad Lidge. In fact, he’s a great dude. He’s nice, polite, personable, Thoughtful, funny and smart. Generally, those aren’t the best qualities for a closer, but it seemed to work out pretty well last year. Hey, Lidge might be the only ballplayer in history to pursue an advanced degree in biblical archaeology. Think he and Brett Myers are sitting around discussing that?

Anyway, I have Lidge fatigue because I’m tired of writing about closers, the ninth inning and saves. Lately, it seems like that’s all we do. Charlie Manuel is tired of being asked about it, too, but frankly it’s the news. In the news business, one tends to focus on those types of things.

And apropos of that, I asked Charlie if he’d consider allowing a pitcher to go more than one inning to nail down a save because he labeled himself a “throwback guy.” The answer, of course, was no because with a bullpen thinned out by injuries and Lidge’s struggles. Remember the stretch run in September of 2007 when Manuel rode J.C. Romero, Tom Gordon and Brett Myers? If it seemed as if those guys pitched every game in the rush to take the NL East from the Mets it was because they did… practically.

Myers pitched 16 games that September, Gordon pitched 18, and Romero got into 20 games.

Fortunately for Manuel, he has a better starting staff this year so he won’t have to reprise that tact with Myers, Ryan Madson and perhaps Chan Ho Park until Lidge gets it together.

Regardless, the closer/Lidge issues are just filling the time until we start diving the fight for home-field advantage in the NLDS. As it stands now, the Phillies would go to Los Angeles for the first two games of the opening playoffs series while St. Louis would host Colorado. If the Phillies survive that scenario, they would host Colorado but travel to St. Louis for the NLCS opener.

Of course there are still 24 games to go and the Dodgers’ starting pitchers are struggling. Undoubtedly the Phillies would not want to trade their Lidge problems for ones with a starter.

Anyway, to put the Lidge (and playoff seeding) chatter on hold for a bit, I picked up a funny little blog post sent from a friend about the Dodgers, Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome.

Apparently, according to the post, Manny has no idea who Jim Thome is. Never mind the fact that Thome and Manny were teammates for 10 years in Cleveland.

Conjuring the famous and debunked story about Rickey Henderson and John Olerud in which Rickey was said to explain to Olerud when both players were on the Mariners that he once was teammates with a guy who wore a helmet in the field with the Mets.

“Yeah, that was me, Rickey,” Olerud said in the myth.

So now we have Manny, who according to the author of Diamond Hoggers, just couldn’t figure out who the hell some guy named Jim Thome was.

To wit:

This comes from a guy we know who works in the Dodgers organization. He wrote us an e-mail because he thought the story would please us. He was right.

Hey fellas,Hope all is well. Had a story for you that you might find kind of funny and that might go well on your site. Just leave my name out of it. So here goes:Alright so we all know that Jim Thome was traded to the Dodgers at the end of August, reuniting him with Ramirez after all those years in Cleveland. That's all fine and dandy and all, but get this..... hours before the trade is made official news to the media one of the clubhouse coaches goes over to Manny and says "hey we're bringing Jim Thome back here to play with you". Ramirez looks at him, stares off into the distance for a few minutes. Our coach starts to realize that either Manny isn't happy or he's got no fucking clue what is going on. Our coach couldn't believe it was that though, since they played together for almost 10 years in Cleveland. Finally our coach says "Manny aren't you happy about Jim coming to LA?"Ramirez looks him dead in the eye and says "I've never played with anyone named Jim." Gets up, and walks away. No [bleep]. Our coach left it at that.

Wonder if that coach is a certain ex-Phillies manager?

Nevertheless, add this to the absent-minded legend that is Manny Ramirez. Or add it to the pile of Manny stories that Manuel likes to tell from their days in the Indians’ organization. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for Manny to show up at the ballpark with no money to pay for a taxi, no suitcase for a road trip or equipment.

Call him Manny Gump – the baseball hitting savant.

Or just call this episode a case of Manny being Rickey.

Doubling up in The Pen

Between posting it up against episodes of “Hung,” “True Blood,” and “Entourage” on Sunday nights and no onDemand presence, the MLB Network’s show, “The Pen,” didn’t get as many eyes as it should have. That’s a shame, too, because baseball fans love to see their favorite players humanized. In covering baseball, those humanizing stories are probably the only aspect of coverage that TV does well since almost all of the real news gathering is still done by the writing media.

That’s neither here nor there, of course. The point is too many people missed a pretty decent show about the Phillies. So in this region, Comcast SportsNet will pick up the slack by re-airing the entire series.

Here are the scheduled air times:

Episode	Date	Airtime	Replay Date	Time
1	Mon., Aug. 3	7:30 p.m.	Sat., Aug. 29	12:30 p.m.
2	Mon., Aug. 10	7:30 p.m.	Sat., Aug. 29	1:30 p.m.
3	Wed., Aug. 12	7 p.m.	Sat., Aug. 29	2 p.m.
4	Mon., Aug. 17	7:30 p.m.	Sat., Aug. 29	2:30 p.m.
5	Mon., Aug. 24	7:30 p.m.	Sat., Aug. 29	3 p.m.
6	Sat., Aug. 29	3:30 p.m.	Mon., Aug. 31	7:30 p.m.

Unfortunately I couldn’t dig up any episodes of the show on the Internets, but as far as MLB programming with the Phillies goes, here’s Jimmy Rollins pretending to be Rickey Henderson…

And by pretending to be Rickey Henderson, I mean imitating his home run strut, not his on-base percentage.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9dLB5UO0As&hl=en&fs=1&]

If they could re-do the show I'd like to see more of the witty banter between the relievers in the bullpen and the fans out on Ashburn Alley. From what I hear from some of the guys that hang out there, it's like a comedy routine.

Home on the road

Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you go for a hike on the Appalachian Trail and wind up in Argentina with some woman that isn’t your wife? Isn’t that the way it always happens? Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, sometimes it’s just good to get away. It doesn’t matter if it is to meander through rocky trails beneath a canopy of trees or to sit on the beach with the trade winds cooling down a sunny day. Whatever it is, no one wants to hang around the house all day.

So we travel. We take the act on the road to see how green that grass on the other side really is.

Why not? There’s something relaxing about being out there on the road. You don’t have to worry about the mail, cutting the grass or if the neighbors are too loud. If anything happens, like the basement gets flooded, there’s nothing that can be done about it hundreds of miles from home. Worry about it later.

It’s the same thing with a baseball team, too. On the road all the problems of home go away so all the ballplayers have to do is hang around all day and then show up to the park to play ball. Pretty good gig, huh? Better yet, it’s not even like the players have to schlep their own luggage through the terminal or wait for their row to be called in order to board the plane. Instead they get dropped off on the tarmac of a chartered plane so they can fly all over the country in order to play baseball.

There are other perks, too. For instance, before the trip the players are handed $81 in cash for each day they are on the road. For the current trip through Tampa Bay, Toronto and Atlanta, each player was handed a little envelope with $891 cash. That’s for the players to spend on meals, sundry items and any other incidentals that pop up from time to time.

But here’s the thing – even though the players are given $81 in cold, hard cash in which to purchase food, the visiting clubhouses in every ballpark offer catered meals before and after the game as well as all the gum one can chew and all the sunflower seeds a guy can spit.

And guess what? It’s all gratis.

So why should a guy go spending all that cash when he can eat at the park for free? Maybe he’ll want to buy a souvenir at some museum gift shop instead.

Or, maybe he’ll just save all that cash the way Rickey Henderson used to. According to the legend, the newly elected Hall of Famer and all-time stolen base king used to collect those envelopes he was handed before road trips and stash them away in a big shoe box that he kept in the closet of his bedroom at home. As the story goes, whenever Rickey’s kids came home from school with a good report card, he told them to go into the closet and bring out the shoe box stuffed with per diem envelopes for a quick game of “Pick It.”

Rickey held the shoe box open and the kid with the good report card got to dip a hand in and pull out an envelope. Needless to say, the kids were all hoping to yank out one of those 11-day road trip stashes buried in the box.

Still, there is an advantage for a ballclub to play at home and that mainly has to do with the rules of the game. The home team gets to bat last, which puts most of the pressure on the visiting team. Other than that there really isn’t much of an advantage to playing at home. Sure, the home town fans can help intimidate the visiting club, but they also can give a lot of grief to the guys in the home laundry.

But that still doesn’t explain why the Phillies went into Wednesday night’s action with a 24-9 record away from Philadelphia and a 13-22 mark in Citizens Bank Park. That’s the best road record and worst home mark in the league. Explain that

Maybe nothing does because the dichotomy of the records defies explanation. In fact, when the local media asked the manager and players about it last week, the frustration mounted. It was as if Charlie Manuel and Ryan Howard went to the movies with some annoying friend who asked questions about the plot the whole way through the picture.

Talk about annoying. No wonder they were frustrated and losing so many games at home.

Regardless, there has to be a remedy for the losses at home. Like, maybe the Phillies can pretend they are playing on the road even when they are in Philadelphia. Maybe they can wear their road grays and shack up in the Holiday Inn across the parking lot from the ballpark.

Better yet, maybe the Phillies can get their road trip envelopes at home instead. Or, barring that, maybe Charlie Manuel can get out the big shoe box and let the team play “Pick It” if they win a game at home.

There's nothing like that shoe box to motivate a team.