Scott Mathieson to Once Again be Feel Good Story of the Spring

I am so sick of us getting slammed by genius one liners.

"“The Phillies might be favored to win the National League pennant, but folks who are making World Series hotel reservations in Philadelphia should consider two words:  Javier Lopez.”–SF Chronicle"

God DAMN it.  The Giants still have Javier Lopez?!  Why did I block off an entire week in the Darren Daulton Suite of the Phillies Hotel?  The clerk didn’t utter a sentence without the word “nonrefundable” in it.  I don’t even have the money to cover it, I just assumed somebody would have given me a bunch of cash by then.  Why do I always do that?  I wouldn’t give me any money either.  Certainly not a lot of it.  

So, now that the World Series is ruined and all that hotel-reserving we’ve been doing for the last few months had been deemed pointless, what the hell are we supposed to do?  Just like… sit here?  Quietly?  That sounds terrible.  No, the much more sound reasoning is to tear this room apart with my bare hands, throwing bookshelves to the floor and hurling my laptop through into the dishwasher, then running it on “pots and pans” just to waste water and energy.

I know!  Let’s dig up some guy from our own camp and point at him until everybody cares.

Scott Mathieson!  Yeah!  He’s got a story.  Sure, that Lopez guy had open-heart surgery at the age of 12.  So he’s cornered the “heartwarming” market.  But that leaves “gritty determination” up for grabs.  Scott’s got that!  We all know about it, too, so I won’t even bother giving you the back story.  Okay, I will, but in as few words as possible:

Pitcher.  Tommy John.  Inflammation.  Peoria Saguaros.  Tommy John.  Success?

And there you have it.  In 2011, Scott’s going to give it a go again, but this time, he’s got a plan: throw only splitters.  Given the upgrades the Phillies made this winter, pressure has trickled from above into the underlings of the Phillies network, where Mathieson lives.  He knows that the threshold he dreams of crossing now includes an arsenal of insane people, capable of ridiculous things.  Which means a fastball/slider pitcher is only going to make himself more appealing by adding a third pitch, and what better way to improve that pitch by throwing it non stop for a month?

That’s how I learned to blog.  Just keep doing it, even if it’s not great yet.

“It takes time to acquire a feel,” Rich Dubee said about Scott Mathieson and not me.