Reading Phillies are All Best Friends

They try to tell us that minor league baseball is all hard and Bull Durham-y, but the truth is, I’ll bet, that its more like dicking around on a baseball team of your 25 closest friends.  Only there’s the continuous risk that some or all of them will leave at any moment, and everybody’s trying to get jobs at grocery stores during the off season.

But having only played the game as a youth, I can tell you, there’s nothing quite like athletic performance backed by the splendor of true friendship.

I would be all, “Yo guys, look how long I can balance this bat on the flat of my hand,” and they’d be like, “Dude, shut up, you just cost us the game by sobbing through the final at bat with the bases loaded.  Even the kid with crutches got on base,” and I’d be like “Well, baseball is hard.”

So trust me, I know a little something about having your friends rally around you in a team-like sense.

The Reading Phillies will be extremely familiar with this concept all season long, as a recent story points out, they’re all best buds with each other.  Why fate would stick this many compatible personalities on the same team is unknown, but truly a blessing, as their common interests such as “baseball” will undoubtedly drive them toward a Double-A Awesome Job Trophy, or whatever the award is called that is given to the winner of whatever the hell is going on down there [EDITOR’S NOTE:  Its way less complicated than you’re making it sound].

Until now, Reading was known as the storage bin in which we kept hot young prospects on whom we piled insurmountable pressures, like “future closer” Justin De Fratus or”returning infielder” Cody Overbeck or  “Home run every time” Matt Rizzotti (who has obviously moved up).  And today, it is still known as that same bin.  But apparently, the team chemistry down there is simply staggering; unlike their Major League affiliate, who can’t seem to stop being unsupportive or stealing each other’s shit.

What does new manager Mark Parent think about all this?  Well, he hates friendship, and plans on poisoning his locker room with a whole mess of unprovoked antagonism and vicious lies in order to turn the team against each other.  Yes, the papers do say the exact opposite:

"As the 2011 season is set to begin, Parent sees the team chemistry as a very positive sign in the club.—Reading Eagle"

But a new coach entering a situation like that is going to feel alienated and chronically depressed enough to put his job on the line via a series of merciless emotional attacks.  Come on.  We all saw Mighty Ducks 3.