Phillies Swear Not Playing Players is all Part of Plan

It’s hard to shut people up about us being the oldest, slowest, most decrepit team in baseball when a lot of our players are suffering from serious-to-regular-to-precautionary injuries.  You know when you hear the phrase “Michael Martinez captained the scoring,” nobody is where they are supposed to be.

As you may have noticed throughout the Phillies’ Spring Training thus far, there aren’t as many familiar faces as you wanted.  Where are all the players?  Are they okay?  Are they mad at us?  Why won’t even look at us?  Are we ugly?  We’re ugly, aren’t we?  Of course we are.  Oh god…we’re so, so ugly.

It took a few games for Placido Polanco to show up, but he and Brian Schneider both overcame their preseason invisibility in yesterday’s loss to the Yankees.  Ryan Howard is obviously out, but we also have not caught a glimpse of Chase, as well as internet meme Layne Nix.

As a catcher, Chooch is being wrapped in SafeGuard until the last possible second, as he may explode at any moment and at least all that adhesive will keep his parts in the same vicinity if he does.  Chase, though.  Where is Chase?  Can I keep assuming he’s giving handsome lesson to local at-risk animals?

"“…you see him walking around out there hitting, don’t you?”–Charlie Manuel"

Well… yeah, but… he’s… like… not smiling or… winning all the… things.

It doesn’t take a lot of hazy memories to recall last spring, when Chase was suffering from Beautiful People’s Toe.  Sure, it was a gorgeous injury, but it kept him out of baseball for far too long, which is to say, while the rest of the team was playing it.  And that all started by Chase sitting out, and when the Phillies front office told us what was going on, through a series of graduating lies that eventually became the truth, we were horrified.

Nobody likes to be horrified twice.  Or, once, usually.  So you’ll have to excuse us if we just need to see Chase do a cartwheel or hit a home run or pitch a no-hitter or fly to the moon.