Well, this sucks. My computer seems to have a virus of some kind. I'm currently typing this from the hubby's laptop, but as I hate typing on laptops, and I don't know how long it will take to bring my computer back to health, I may be incommunicado for awhile.

Aargh. :-(

**UPDATE**  After 3 1/2 hours (!) on the phone with the Dell technician, the virus is gone. Yay!

If you ever turn on your computer and something called "Control Center" pops up, telling you that you need to update all your security stuff, it's a virus.

Following in the footsteps (gurney tracks?) of Raul Ibanez and Scott Eyre, Brad Lidge became the third Phillie to have surgery this week. In addition to repairing his flexor pronator tendon, he also had a loose body removed from his right (pitching) elbow.

Oh, wait, wrong kind of body. Apparently "loose bodies" look a bit more like this:

A little piece of bone which has broken off and is now floating around inside the elbow joint, wreaking havoc and causing pain.

Given all this carnage that was going on inside his elbow, is it any wonder that Lidge's season was a total suck-fest? Of course, many pitchers continue to pitch through injuries, so it's hard to say with certainty that this was the sole cause of his problems this year.

According to phillies.com, he should be ready to begin throwing in about eight weeks. Though he may be a bit behind in Spring Training, the Phillies are optimistic that he will be ready to pitch by Opening Day. Let's just hope that he returns to 2008 form, and does not have a repeat of 2009.

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Speaking of Spring Training...

I don't know about the rest of you, but ever since I discovered the Phillies had posted their tentative Spring Training schedule online, I have found myself sitting and staring at it several times a day. Just...staring...at...it.

(Well, I'm sure those of you who are fans of other teams are staring at your own team's schedule, not the Phillies')

Will 2010 bring a return trip to Clearwater for me and the hubby? Hold on while I go plant a crop of money trees in my backyard :-).

Now that baseball season is over till next year, it's time to get back to thinking randomly, something I do well. In my last entry, I said I'd be back "tomorrow" - well, that ended up being four days later. I should know by now never to give a concrete time frame, as real life tends to interrupt my blogging on occasion.

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Chase Utley hit five home runs during this year's World Series, tying the record set by Reggie Jackson, aka "Mr. October".

Since Derek Jeter is already "Mr. November" (thanks to his heroics in the 2001 World Series), and Chase's homers occurred in October and November, does that make Chase "Mr. Octember"?

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Is there any rational explanation for having Alanis Morissette sing the National Anthem before Game 5 in Philadelphia last week?

She's from Canada, and lives in neither Philadelphia nor New York. Besides, I thought she was into hockey players, not baseball players (rumor had it her hit song "You Oughta Know" was about her relationship with an unnamed hockey player).

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Speaking of singing, for those of you who couldn't get enough of Tim McCarver during the World Series, here's an item for your Christmas wish list:

Tim McCarver Sings Selections From The Great American Songbook, available as a download for a mere $8.99 at Amazon.com ($9.99 on iTunes)! Based on the 30-second preview snippets, all the songs are equally cringeworthy. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be forced to listen to it ad nauseum until baseball season starts anew!

The shocking thing is that of the 12 listener reviews on Amazon.com, eight gave it 5 stars (!). Could they be relatives of McCarver, using fake names? Or are there really that many people out there with tin ears?

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Until next time, I'll be thinking random thoughts, and making sure to share them with you!

(Utley and Morissette photos: AP)

The World Series is over, and it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it. I guess the people at Macy's weren't psychic or magical after all.

Congrats to the Yankees, winning it last night 4 games to 2. The Yankees seemed to be able to capitalize on almost every miscue the Phillies made in the Series. The Phillies played hard, but in the end the magic ran out, and there would be no come-from-behind victory.

Surprisingly, I'm not in as bad a mood today as I thought I'd be. I'm not going to think about baseball the rest of the day (well, try not to, anyway).

I'm going to relax in front of the TV tonight, catch up on missed episodes of Desperate Housewives and CSI: New York, and not have to get a brain cramp while trying to beam positive thoughts to the Phillies. But I'll be back tomorrow with a collection of random World Series thoughts :-).

Imagine my surprise this morning when I glanced at the back of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I nearly spit out my coffee - had I woken up in some alternative universe where Games 2, 3, and 4 actually had good endings? Or do the people at Macy's know something that the rest of us don't? If the Phillies should somehow win the next three games, I guess I will have to believe that Macy's is truly magical, indeed.

And that about sums up my mood after Games 3 and 4, and I refuse to say anything more.

Actually, the words running through my mind last night were much more, uh, colorful than that, but if I use them here they'll just get asterisked out by the filter that protects our delicate sensibilities.

I was downright giddy after Cliff Lee's Game 1 gem, so giddy in fact that I never got around to blogging about it yesterday. Now that good mood has been replaced by one a bit more foul. I keep reminding myself that my rational mind knew the Phils wouldn't sweep the Yankees, that there would be at least one loss, but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant.

As I have a tendency after a loss to think not-very-nice thoughts about the opposition and the vast majority of their fans, thoughts molded by my formative years spent growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania surrounded during the summer by very annoying denizens of NYC who chose to vacation there while complaining that nothing was as good there as it was in New York, making me wish I could tell them all to go back home if it was so much better there, but...oops, sorry, got sidetracked there a bit...and darn it, I was going to once again abide by my not-saying-anything-at-all-if-I-couldn't-say-anything-nice rule, but my fingers betrayed me.

Anyway, Ryan Howard can add a less glamorous "award" to his NLCS MVP trophy, the dreaded Golden Sombrero. Yep, Howard struck out four times last night; three times against Burnett and once against Rivera. Not good, Ryan, not good. Please get back in the groove you had against Colorado and L.A.

Recent history would suggest that the Game 2 loss is not a portent of doom - the Phillies lost Game 2 of last year's World Series and this year's NLDS and NLCS, and all of those series ended up turning out pretty good for the boys in red. So I'll get my bad mood out of my system today, and be ready to watch on Saturday as the series moves to Philadelphia (after washing the bad luck out of everything I was wearing last night, of course).

After a few days of waiting to find out who would be the Phillies' World Series opponent, the Yankees sent the Angels back home, defeating them in Game 6 of the ALCS. I was kind of hoping they'd go to Game 7, so the winner would only have one day off, they'd be nice and tired, and hopefully CC would not be available the first game or so. No such luck.

Nonetheless, destiny was fulfilled, and I will not have to hear those freakin' thunder sticks booming out of my TV any more.

So why do I say "destiny"?

If you're a regular reader of Jane Heller's Confessions of a She-Fan, you may recall an entry she wrote back in February, after consulting a tarot card reader on the fortunes of the Yankees this season. Here's an excerpt from the tarot card reader's comment clarifying the results of her reading:

... So, for all of you fans out there that would really like to see the Yankees win the championship, keep your thoughts and feelings positive and in this way we can co-create a resonant field of success that energetically supports their win. It's just quantum physics.

Patricia

By patriciadiorio@cox.net on February 9, 2009 4:50 AM

So Jane, does this mean that if Jenn and I concentrate hard enough, we can get the Phillies back to the WS? A Phillies-Yankees series would be cool!
Loved the article - it was really funny!
Sue

By mrsmudboy on February 9, 2009 3:58 PM

 

Glad you liked the article, Sue. Yes, we must concentrate and we will "manifest" our guys to victory! A Yankees-Phillies WS would work for me.

By Jane Heller on February 9, 2009 7:36 PM

 

The Phillies are headed to the World Series for the second straight year (yay!), and now await the conclusion of the ALCS to see who their opponent will be. The Angels rallied to beat the Yankees last night, forcing the series back to New York for at least Game 6. Personally, I am rooting for the Yankees.

Yes, it pains me to say this, as I've always professed to be a Yankee-hater. But I've come to realize that it wasn't so much the individual Yankees I disliked (except maybe A-Rod), but the whole concept of the Yankees. I mean, 26 (!) World Series championships? That's almost one-fourth of all the championships ever. The Phillies, on the other hand, have exactly two. So I guess it's more jealousy of all that success than hate - call me a Yankee-envier.

An all-East Coast WS would have the benefit of none of those late West Coast games. No worries about jet-lag affecting the Phillies players. Alas, no palm trees (because everything is better with palm trees), but I can overlook that.

In the meantime, since the World Series doesn't start until next Wednesday, I can b*tch and moan about one of my major peeves with postseason baseball - the starting times of the games and the length of the games.

Is there any reason that we have to wait until 8:07 to begin a night game? 7:05 is good enough the rest of the season. If MLB wants to attract and retain a new generation of fans, having games start that late and not end until almost midnight is not the way to do it.

Of the nine postseason games the Phillies have played so far, only three of them have finished in about 3 hours. Two of those were started by Cliff Lee (thank you, Cliff, for being so efficient). The other one was Game 2 of the NLCS, when Pedro Martinez and Vicente Padilla were both dazzling.

The other six games averaged 3 hours and 49 minutes in length, with two games going beyond 4 hours. This is well beyond the attention span of many young fans, and even a lot of adult ones. Maybe Lee could give the other starters some lessons on mound efficiency.

 

Every Girl Crazy 'Bout a Sharp Dressed Man

Maybe ZZ Top could pull off some of the looks sported by TBS reporter Craig Sager during the NLCS, but I sure can't say I was crazy about them. See for yourself:

Game 1: OK, this one's not too bad, it's kinda reminiscent of one of HK's favorites, which hangs in the dugout during each game.

 

Game 2: Yikes! How did Ethier manage to keep a straight face while being interviewed? My 8-year-old daughter might think this is a good look - she thinks everything looks better if it's pink.

 

Game 3: Though it doesn't really show in this photo, on TV the jacket appeared to be velour or some similar material, and is a very dark purplish/eggplant color. Has Craig been raiding Liberace's closet?

 

Game 4: This one makes me think of a pumpkin. I guess he wanted to get in the holiday spirit, since the World Series will only be at Game 3 (!) on Halloween.

 

Game 5: Slightly less garish, but still on the loud side. And c'mon, Jayson, smile - you just clinched the NLCS!

Since I don't normally watch much sports on TBS, I don't know if this is the way he always dresses. I can only hope he's doing this on purpose, and doesn't actually think this is a good look. And what must his closet look like? Seeing all those jackets hanging side by side would be enough to make my eyeballs pop (or at least scorch my retinas).

Thank goodness the WS is not on TBS; I don't know if I can handle any more of these visual assaults!

Last night's NLCS Game 4 was just a little too stressful for my tastes. After jumping out to an early lead in the first inning via a Ryan Howard long ball (which I missed, by the way, while helping my young procrastinator finish a school project which was due today), the Phils' bats went silent as Randy Wolf found his groove for the next several innings.

Joe Blanton, on the other hand, started out strong, but then began to falter the second time through the Dodgers' lineup. The Dodgers took a 4-2 lead, and I began to resemble this:

Yep, I was giving some serious hairy eyeballs to the Dodgers, particularly when ManChild, oops I mean ManRam, was for once not "being Manny" in the outfield, as he ran in to make a shoestring catch on an Ibanez liner to end a Phillies scoring threat.

The Phils did manage to cut the margin to 4-3, but the Dodgers still held a one-run lead heading into the bottom of the ninth. But now it was payback time. Last Friday, it was the Phillies who blew the one-run lead in the bottom of the eighth to lose, 2-1, when their pitching began to unravel.

Jonathon Broxton, last night was your turn.

Broxton retired Ibanez for out number one. Matt Stairs came in to pinch hit, and worked a walk; Eric Bruntlett came in to pinch run. After Carlos Ruiz was hit by a pitch to put two men on base, Greg Dobbs came in to pinch hit and was retired on a humpback liner to third.

Two outs, I'm starting to imagine how bad my mood will be today.

Up to the plate comes Jimmy Rollins, who was only hitting .167 so far in the NLCS (not good, Jimmy). Miraculously, Jimmy smoked a liner to the gap in right to score both Bruntlett and Ruiz. Happiness ensued! I felt like doing this:

but unfortunately I don't live near a beach (must change that situation!).

In the postgame interview, Rollins looked like he was doing his best Etta James impersonation:

Love the look, Jimmy - I hope we see it again this season!

The Joy of the NLCS Schedule (she says sarcastically)

So why is it that during the regular season, teams can play eight, nine, even ten games in a row, but come the postseason, they can't seem to play more than two days in a row?? Why exactly do we need an off-day in the middle of the three games being played in Philadelphia? I'm sure it has something to do with TV and advertising revenues, but I don't like it.

The Joy of Technology

It seems that StubHub experienced an "email glitch", and accidentally sent messages to fans of the Mets that said,

"Be there alongside your New York Mets as they chase baseball immortality. Go to StubHub, where you'll find a fantastic selection of tickets to every playoff game -- so you experience the championship chase live and in person."

Hee hee! I wonder if there were any dimbulb Mets fans who got confused and actually tried to order tickets?

Apparently fans of a few other non-playoff teams also got erroneous messages (see full story here), but I always take secret glee in the travails of Mets fans. Sorry, but I can't help it :-).