Philadelphia-Phillies

Jayson Stark had this to say about Randy Johnson’s recent 300th win: “It’s always a good idea to shoot for a milestone against those hospitable Washington Nationals. On Sunday, they were the victim of Jamie Moyer’s 250th career win. Four days later, they were on the wrong end of Randy Johnson’s 300th. So how rare is that? Glad you asked. If we use 200 wins as the official milestone cutoff, the last team to be victimized for two milestones (200, 250 or 300) in the same season was Rob Deer’s 1990 Brewers (Nolan Ryan’s 300th, Frank Tanana’s 200th). But if we raise the cutoff to 250, the Elias Sports Bureau reports, the Nationals become the first team to do anything like this twice in one year since Pop Corkhill’s 1891 Pirates helped Old Hoss Radbourn win his 300th and John Clarkson win his 250th. Hard to believe, folks.” ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Another month of baseball has passed and it’s a testament to the sport that things have gotten a bit crazy. As I write this on Tuesday, the standings look a little something like this: AL East Yankees Red Sox Blue Jays Rays Orioles AL Central Tigers White Sox Twins Royals Indians AL West Rangers Mariners Angels Athletics NL East Phillies Mets Braves Marlins Nationals ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. What a real bummer… The biggest news since last week, if you hadn’t heard already, was the drug test that Manny Ramirez managed to fail. This is now the biggest baseball star to fail a drug test and win himself a 50-game suspension along with a black mark on his hall of fame chances. It goes like this: Manny Ramirez saw some physician in Florida who gave him a banned substance according to MLB rules. The substance, whose name I don’t totally remember and am too depressed to look up, is a female fertility drug that is also used to mask drops in testosterone following a steroid treatment cycle. Seems pretty clear cut. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Poor Cole Hamels can’t catch a break. A poor spring training with injury leads to two starts where he’s beat up, another start where he’s hit by a batted ball, and another where he rolls his ankle and lands on the DL again. Hopefully his luck starts to turn around soon, a month of the season has already passed us by. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. It doesn’t take a sports guru to know that a seven game losing streak is a BAD THING. Back the Marlins up to 19 April and you see a team five games ahead in the AL East with a record of 11-1. Just ten days later the team is sitting half a game up on the Phillies with a 12-8 record. Yeah, it’s been that kind of week for me, haha. The Fish were FINALLY able to bang together a win last night against the dreaded Mets, but will this momentum start to carry the team forward? They face Johan Santana tonight on the mound, a guy with a sub 1.0 ERA and who they only managed to beat last time thanks to a Daniel Murphy error in left creating two unearned runs. Luckily for the Fish, they’ve got Josh Johnson to trot out onto the mound, but he’s not gonna be able to do much unless he gets some run support. ...

I was totally supposed to do some MLB news yesterday and I spaced and forgot. The Marlins dropped three straight to the Pirates to end their road trip 6-3. The Fish are off today, but starting tomorrow they take on the former World Series champs, the always challenging Phillies. If they do as well as they did against the Mets, I won’t worry, but if they pull a Pirates against these guys…this season could start getting dicey soon. Honestly, I’m not too concerned with the sweep at this point, it’s one of those math things where the team that’s just won so many straight can’t continue doing it. Hopefully the bats get swinging and the pitchers start dueling hard tomorrow. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. 15 April may mean the tax man is coming around, but I like to think of it from a better perspective: Jackie Robinson Day. That’s right, on 15 April 1947 Jackie Robinson debuted for the Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers, finally breaking the color barrier in baseball and paving the way for civil rights in America. Jackie Robinson was a hero and I’m glad that baseball honors him each year on this day by allowing players to wear Robinson’s league-wide retired #42. ...

You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ’em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. We’ve finally arrived at the last WMQ before the baseball season. Congrats are in order for us all, but I honestly don’t know how we made it so long without our beloved baseball. Here are a few quick notes about things that have been going on: ...

When Schneider tagged me in her version of this I almost pulled a Linus Torvalds (http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/02/25-things-about-me.html), but instead I decided not to do one at all. Then I came across two “25 Random Baseball Things” articles and fell in love with the idea as a way to release pent up excitement about the upcoming baseball season. Hope you enjoy it.. 1. Baseball was the first team sport I ever played. To this day I don’t really understand what motivated my father to sign me up for the game. My grandfather is afraid of playing catch due to an incident where he got beaned, my dad is mostly apathetic toward sports in general, including baseball, and my older brother hated little league baseball. My best guess is that we were living in the mostly Cuban (at the time) Hialeah where little league baseball is the predominant sport. ...

So the 2008 World Series has finally come to a close. The last three innings were certainly tense and exciting, but at the end of the day the Phillies were just able to edge out the Rays 5-4, ending a Philadelphia drought of about twenty years of no major sports franchise winning a championship. Although I absolutely hate the Phillies and hate that they beat a Florida team, I’ll try and be a bigger man and say: ...