"God bless Willie Mays."

gWhen my first wife came out of the anesthesia following the birth of our son, those were the first words she said. I'd uttered that plea so often that it was ingrained in her memory. Willie, the greatest baseball player of all time, was, and is, my favorite baseball player ever.

For that, and lots of other reasons, I should have been rooting for the San Francisco Giants to win the World Series this year and, in the end, I was. Right after the Giants had eliminated The Phillies, though, I was in no mood to to take side at all. I eventually began considering the Rangers, who have (still) never won anything, and because I still had a warm spot in my heart for Cliff Lee.

Lee proceeded to turn that ice cold with his "I didn't mind seeing them lose" comment, which was perfect reasonable from his perspective, but not something I needed to hear. So I started the Series a little ambivalent but essentially wanting the Giants to win. They proceeded to conquer my heart completely with their fantastic pitching and their git-'er-done play.

The final decider was The Decider himself. When Texas trotted out Bush 41 and Bush 43 before Game Four and offered up camera shots of mean old Babs in the stands, her eyes and expression revealing her deepest conviction as they had--the men in this family are wimps--I was all in

"I don't want to watch a World Series between two teams that are so good—no, great—that they beat the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies."

This is very funny and also very true. The TV ratings for the World Series so far are way, way down from recent years. It's kinda neat being one of the "evil empires" that professional sports require even if it makes us a target and a source of delight when our team fails, especially the way The Phillies did this year.

Spring training is only a little over four months away...

Winners because they refused to lose.

I posted the link over on the liquid Diet site because, quite simply, a lot more people are oging to see it there but I'd be remiss if I didn't direct those of you who (for shame!) don't visit both locations regularly to the excellent look into the psyche of the 2010 Philadelphia Phillies which appear in the newspaper today.

Second comings.

A friend from Chicago, who's a Phillies fan when the Cubs aren't in it (which pretty much means he's a Phillies fan period), wrote me that about yesterday's game(s):

About half way through [the Halladay no-hitter], I was thinking “this is the second coming of Cliff Lee.”  Wound up being the second coming of Don Larsen.

Earlier, Cliff Lee ended up being the second coming of Cliff Lee.

Why we love the Phillies.

They are not only the best team in baseball, they are just plain good guys.

WASHINGTON - One by one, they trickled out of the infield and down the concrete steps before disappearing into visitors' clubhouse of a mostly empty stadium. There was plenty of hugging and hand-shaking and on-the-back patting. But for a few precious seconds, there was no champagne popping. That, they had decided, would wait.

So they filed inside and they gathered around the dark green bottles that sat in the center of the carpeted room. And when the last of them finally arrived, they pointed to three men who had spent the better part of their adult lives waiting to feel that sweet, stickyspray.

Roy Halladay, Mike Sweeney and Brian Schneider: your honors.

"All the guys came around us," Schneider said later as he stood amid the mayhem of the Phillies' latest division title celebration. "I'll never forget that. They know we've never been able to experience this. It was awesome for them to think of us."

A damaged hero, but one we will always remember.

It is difficult to like Pete Rose. It is difficult to hate Pete Rose.

He will be honored in Cincinnati tomorrow on the anniversary of his record 4192th hit 25 years ago to the day.

You admire what he did on the field. You abhor what he did off the field.

He was as good as it gets on the field; he was a really bad human being off the field.

He deserves his fate, the worst punishment of all for someone like him, forever being denied entrance to the pantheon to which his accomplishments so clearly destined him.

A terrible price. A deserved price.

Here in Philadelphia, the man is part of our history. The Phillies would never have won the first world championship in their history in 1980 without him. He taught them how to win and he showed them how to win.

In that final game against Kansas City, his catching a foul ball in the ninth inning in front of the first base dugout as it bounced out of the mitt of catcher Bob Boone is as indelibly ingrained in our memories as is Mike Schmidt rounding first base in the third inning and clapping his hands as he drove in what would turn out to be the winning runs or the  Tug McGraw leaping in the air as the final strike flew past Willie Wilson or The Tugger then turning, as agreed, for Schmidt to jump into his arms before the whole team piled on into a sprawling mass of ecstatic humanity.

Pete Rose will always have that. And it will have to be enough.

He was robbed...(more thoughts).

One of the things I dislike about also posting posts from here on Facebook is that sometimes a discussion breaks out there that is superior to or, as in this case, in place of comments here. That is just what happened after I posted this.

Only four people were involved, one of them me, but it did expand and expound on my argument that the Commissioner of Baseball should step in and rectify the horrendous umpire's call in Detroit the other night which robbed a young pitcher of an historic Perfect Game. I found it interesting enough that I wanted to add it here.

So I have:

KERRY BYRNE
The downside is opening the floodgates to redo every call that's not popular -- whether right or wrong.

Personally, I think it worked out great: The pitcher was a total class act, and now everybody thinks he's a friggin' hero. Really refreshing. And the guy who fucked up manned up, too.

All in all a pretty heartwarming story .. even though the ump did blow it harder than a circa 1976 toothless 42nd St. hooker trying to make rent that week.

ALEXANDER MITCHELL
Because if you call into question the supposed infallibility of umpires without any formal instant-review process, you open up the can of worms of every call being protested endlessly for 20 hours. I don't care for opening that can.

JACK CURTIN
Which is, Alexander, the same BS as the powers that be are spouting. Not only is this situation sui generis, the addition of expanded replay systems, which is inevitable now, renders the "cam of worms" argument irrelevant. There will be a system in place. Not to mention the argument that the Commissioner can act in the "best interest of the game" ... See Moreand not create any precedent in the first place, plus he gets to decide which protests are valid. Lawyers are always looking for their clients to do nothing so that there is nothing to be contested. It is, as I said, stupid.

Everybody behaved really well, Kerry, agreed. Why not take the simple action that will reward them and cost nobody nuttin'?

KERRY BYRNE
Let me take more of an existential tact here, the Right Honorable Mr. Curtin.

While I agree the ump fucked up, and while I agree the pitcher was jobbed, the fact of the matter is that overturning the call would be an injustice to the 19 other guys who did in fact pitch legit perfect games.

All those 19 guys played the same game with the same rules and same dysfunctional and maybe even drunken dick-bag umps. They all had to overcome imperfect officials to pitch a "perfect" game. The fact that umps are so fucked up is one reason why a perfect game is more rare than a virgin 16-year-old from Philly. They all had to deal with the same shit.

I mean, it sucks ... but let's not go changing history just becuase we all feel a little sad for the young millionaire who just won a Corvette and probably gets more tail than Davy Crockett's haberdasher.

JACK CURTIN
I just can't agree. We are talking the 27th out, not a pitch called a ball which should have been a strike. Nor does correcting an obvious and admitted error in any way affect the rules in any way in terms of the what happened in the game. Get it right, isn't that the mantra? Why in the world let it stay wrong?

Not fixing it, who suffers? The ... See Morepitcher, the fans, the umpire, the game itself. Who benefits? Nobody.

Fixing it, who suffers? Nobody. Who benefits? The pitcher, the fans, the umpire, the game itself.

No-brainer.

ALEXANDER MITCHELL
What suffers is the absolute authority of the umpires, human and fallible as they may be. My father was a pro umpire for a little while. I learned from him that even if you're wrong, you're still right as long as you're not operating with deliberate bias. If we're going to put any doubt into the umpires' ability to call 'em, then just dispense ... See Morewith them completely and program cameras and lasers to call the decisions instead. Otherwise we'll spend all game arguing every call. What we just saw was ugly, but, like the 2000 election in Florida, a necessary evil.


JOHN ALESSANDRO IV
How about taking a page from Baseball's past? The Pine Tar Incident. (That image of Brett running out of the dugout is burned in my brain.)

That game was replayed -- several weeks after the homerun was ruled invalid -- from the moment of the infraction forward.

While here, Galarraga -- who is well aware he DID pitch a perfect game * -- may never ... See Moreknow the true joy in celebrating the moment, but he could pitch to one more batter, possibly get him out (again), and, possibly, officially get a complete game. The precedent is there; if it's such a Big Deal, let it happen.

I love that in an interview, Galarraga essentially said about Joyce, "Nobody's perfect." Well said. Of course, I couldn't help but think, "Except you, last night.", but that's just me.

* There are too many asterisks in Baseball already. Sadly, this is another.

JACK CURTIN
You think there is no doubt about umpires' ability to call 'em now, Alexander? Seriously? Absolute authority? That disappeared forever with home run replays. It was always shaky because an ump who made his infallible call was often convinced to change it after conferring with his brethren. Human error may be part of the game, but it hardly needs to be sanctified and protected, especially in an instance where it is obvious and rectifying that mistake would do nothing but good and have no impact on the rules as they exist at all. The game is over; let's put it in the books as what it was rather than what will become infamous as "the Perfect Game that never happened,' which is, really, just dumb.

He was robbed. And rectifying that will not only not attack the integrity of the game, it will strengthen it.

This is just stupid.

All the crap you hear about breaking precedents (What precedent? This has never happened before), the integrity of the game (this is the game that was filled with juicers and whose most sacred records have been violated by same, am I correct?) and never affecting the outcome of a game (the outcome of this game remains exactly the same, same team won, nothing changes except an exceptional and historic performance is recognized as it should be) is ridiculous.

The commissioner should man up and toss out the bad call, for the sake of his umpire if nothing else.

Simple. Do it. Nothing changes as a result, especially since such a colossal screw-up will probably mean the addition of replay options in any case, which makes the overturn itself even less controversial.

That said, three perfect games in a little over three weeks? How the hell did that happen?