Local Journalist Breaks Hot News Story on Phillies Limp Offense

Well, hello there, Jack Mcaffrey; he of the “In my day Phillies fans booed the fuck out of everybody rabble rabble rabble” infamy.

But it wasn’t enough to call out the fans for being… like, receptive of the players, or whatever, was it?  There was that sharp scratch on the innermost part of your soul that wasn’t at all stifled or slowed by the first round of pointless needling.  Like a rhincerous beetle of complaints, it continued tunneling through your guts, creating a pain so throbbing and intense you could do nought but return to the keyboard to tell the world what else the (first place, best record in NL) Phillies are doing wrong.

Below are my favorite portions of his latest masterpiece.

Phillies Pitchers Can’t Carry Them all the Way

"“More than baseball, more than hitting, more than managing, more than how to wear a sharp suit to a parade, Charlie Manuel knows people.That means he knows pitchers.”"

So, does he know pitching more than those other things you listed?  Or does he know people more than all those things, and pitching the same amount as them?  But if he “knows people,” and in turn, that means he “knows pitchers,” then that casts a pretty wide net over the people Charlie Manuel “knows.”  Air traffic controllers?  Chuck buys them a round of drinks every Tuesday at The Bishop’s Collar.  The 1988 women’s gymnastics team?  They’ve got “OBX trip with Chuck!!!” written on their calendar in mid-July.  Serial killer clowns?  They skip Chuck’s house, obviously.

Either way, isn’t Charlie Manuel more of a “hitting” coach, anyway?  Isn’t this statement, in any form it chooses to doppelgang itself, fundamentally wrong?

Jack goes on to picture a future where Phillies pitchers, “demoralized” from months of zero run support, give up.

And if they give up, then we’ll lose even more games and sink into third, possibly fourth place.  Fans will stop coming out, and the ones that do will spend the first five innings reminiscing about the good old days, then leave.

With fewer people coming through the turnstiles, the Phillies will be forced to let larger and larger parts of the payroll go, from the players to stadium employees.  With less workers, Citizens Bank Park will slowly crumble into a dilapidated ghost town; puke puddles going uncleaned, vegetation overtaking the 100 level, a starved, delirious Phanatic turning to whatever sweet samples of human flesh he can find just to survive, backed only by the sound of toilets overflowing and the whispering echoes of the past.

The Mets play the Cowboys in the World Series, William Penn falls off of City Hall and kills Michael Vick, hipsters eat the Liberty Bell, the earth is swallowed by flames, world without end, amen.

This is the unavoidable future the Phillies offense has created.

"“It’s not exactly what happened to the Flyers recently, but it’s close.”"

The giant amorphous brain that lives underneath the sports complex and remotely controls all Philadelphia sports teams is really dropping the ball this year.

Just for the record–the Phillies don’t have to maintain first place for 162 games.  They could just maintain it through one, on the last day of the season.

"“The Phillies waited through 38 picks the other day for their first chance in the baseball draft … then selected a guy who had a season perforated by a broken ankle.What? They couldn’t find a guy with two broken ankles?”"

I don’t… think this was a slight against the paralyzed guy the Rangers drafted, but… I mean honestly who knows.  I’m not going to decode this argument, which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has quite seamlessly become about the draft now.

But wait!  We’re not done here.  Jack’s got some thoughts on the beach, too:

"“As much as I never got TV reporters standing in the snow to report on bad weather, the newest trend is an all-timer: Reporters on the beach on big summer weekends. The beach is where news does not happen. It’s why people go there.I do not —- and I mean do not —- get making that a news story.”"

Yeah, its like, why even bother telling people about something that either everyone knows about already or has been discussed in painful detail to this point, right Jack?!  We sure “get it,” don’t we.  We’re the only ones who do.