Phillies Get A Break From MLB
Posted by BMT on 11th May 2010

It looks like the city that all 4 major sports leagues have been intentionally conspiring against for the past 100 years may be getting a break after all. The late June series the Phillies would have played in Toronto against the Blue Jays has been moved to Philadelphia on account of security concerns surrounding the G8 summit in Toronto. This means that Roy Halladay’s return to Toronto will be postponed at least until next year (unless the teams meet in the World Series). It also means that the Blue Jays will lose the competitive advantage of playing at home against a much better Philadelphia team.
In the grand scheme of things, nobody really cares much about this other than the 250 Blue Jays fans in Toronto. One viable solution would have been to play the game at Coca-Cola Field in Buffalo, New York (pictured above). Buffalo is more or less right across Lake Ontario from Toronto and it would have been fun to see the Jays travel to downtown Buffalo on a giant hydrofoil. It also would have made sense because Coca-Cola Field was built as an expansion-ready Major League park with a capacity of 18,000, well in excess of the 15,207 fans the Rogers Centre in Toronto is averaging this season.
After all, when the Astros-Cubs series wasn’t able to be played in Houston a few years back because of a hurricane, MLB moved it to a “neutral” site in Milwaukee, not to Wrigley Field. Clearly MLB now loves the revenue-generating Phillies and hates the scum living north of the border. And throwing the G8 into the mix means that world leaders are now on the Philadelphia band wagon. So no more bitching about how everyone hates us, folks.
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Perhaps the Cleveland Indians are the National League’s farm team for aces. Last year the Brewers called up C.C. Sabathia during the stretch and this year they parted with Cliff Lee. At least one other person noticed this and wrote about it on 
It’s that time of year when Phillies fans have the chance to take the road trip of a lifetime to Wrigley Field and watch the Phillies destroy the perenially-lifeless Cubs. At 6 games over .500 and 33-19 at home, the Cubs are theoretically in the playoff hunt. But when you look a little closer, you realize the Cubs have players like Alfonso Soriano (a worse and more disinterested defensive left fielder than Manny Ramirez) and Milton Bradley (crazier than Teddy Duchamp’s dad in “Stand by Me”). Coupled with pitching staffs historically-riddled by injury (Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Rich Harden, Ted Lilly, Ryan Dempster) and mental midgets like Carlos Zambrano and Lou Piniella and it’s no wonder the product on the field at Wrigley makes the park little more than the “bar” that Ozzie Guillen so accurately described it as.

After 2 games against the Cubs, the Phillies are 2-0 which means they’ve won 5 consecutive series, 10 of their last 11 games and since getting swept by the Braves to open July, they’ve won 14 of the last 15 games. The offense has scored 93 runs during this stretch and the pitching staff is allowing an average of 2.3 runs per game, creating an average margin of victory of 4 runs.
Getting through yesterday without any baseball was like having 19 prostate exams in a row. Alas, I’ve come through unpenetrated and am looking forward to the beginning of the 2nd half of the season. The question for the Phillies is a question that faces the division-leading Dodgers as well: can they hold onto their first place positions for the next 2 and a half months? Or will wild card challengers, Florida and San Francisco, be able to unseat them, operating on pitching alone? In the Phillies case, we’ll get a good glimpse at this division match-up as they begin a 4-game set tonight at newly-named “Land Shark Stadium” against the Marlins. Jamie Moyer faces Chris Volstad at 7:10.