Fine, Let’s Talk About Some F@#$ing Contract Extensions

Life isn’t fair to the ring tailed lemur.  The female gets way-horny, basically making herself open for business for a fervent, frantic, highly excessive bout of high-pitched screwing that gives the sloth in the next branch up sexually-charged nightmares he thought were behind him.  But, in one of nature’s most ball-busting twists, she only gets this way for 24 hours.

So if you thought inconsistency was OUR problem, think about all those sexually frustrated lemurs out there.

The Phillies can’t pull out a win to save their lives, or even the life of Dominic Brown, if he were tied to the railroad tracks.  The offense of a “mega-team” is absent.  The pitching is shriveling up like a dead peach.  Only the defense remains, giving Phillies.com something to autoplay as soon as you get on the site to blast your head off because the volume’s set to “BLEED.”

So, ignoring this skeletal death march out west, Ryan Howard just got his hands on a contract extension, and it is much, much higher than mine:  $125 million for five years.

At first, I thought, “Yaaaay, our merry little band stays a little bit more together.”

And then, I actually thought about the phrase “five years,” and considered the concept with with a little more scrutiny; something that normally happens when I think about something for more than two seconds.

The problem with five years is that its five years.  What is the shelf life of a Ryan Howard?  Is this even something we should talk about?  Is this legal?  I feel like we’re planning Santa’s murder.

Okay, so he can’t hit the breaking ball.  Or pitchers who happen to throw from their left hand.  With that much power being restrained, you can’t blame a guy for wanting to hit the ball as hard as he can, all the time.  Ryan probably wakes up in the middle of the night screaming and swinging his car-battery sized fists in the air, fending off the demonic, fanged baseballs of his nightmares.  Some people just harbor undeniable urges.  The governor of Texas can’t even go for a jog without blowing away a coyote.  At least its Ryan Howard’s job to try to hit a baseball.

If that sounds like the weak-ass arguments of a man desperate to ignore the obvious, then shut up and stop reading right now.  Declines are hideous, and in a lot of instances, sad as hell.  Who wants to watch their heroes embarrass themselves with the inevitable handicaps of age?  They’re the Phillies, not those racist Gundersons in 17G.

But what can we really expect from the post-30 era of Ryan Howard?  The front office must see something we don’t, or maybe this is one of those rare occurrences where the fans know more about what’s going on than the organization itself.  Maybe if Phillies higher-ups read message boards instead of coming up with the next hilarious “F=PH” joke to use in a fundraiser they’d have a better grip on reality.

Seriously.  This move felt pre-emptive to me, and I get way too attached to things, especially in baseball.  When Curt Schilling was the last piece of the ’93 squad left hanging around I felt like everybody had moved out of my neighborhood except my obnoxious uncle who everyone rolled their eyes at when he left the room.

At least wait and see what the man will be capable of a bit further along.  His contract wasn’t attached to a timed explosive, I don’t think.  So what was the point of putting this together with such haste?  Especially for a guy who is so receptive to slumps?  Why force what could have been a gentle, thought out process into a frantic, impulsive mess?  These are contract negotiations, not a lemur prom.

I was hoping today Doc could provide a small dose of consistency to a team that needed to see some just to remember what it looked like.  But even the infallible Mr. Halladay couldn’t get the job done against the Giants.  Maybe tomorrow.

Oh, look.  Cole’s pitching.