Phillies Unveil Newest Attempts to Get You to Pay for Jonathan Papelbon

There’s a lot of money floating around the Phillies’ office these days.  Word is they’re about to be worth a billion dollars.  That’s not just because of a sexy baseball team in it’s most thrust-worthy golden age.  That because of consistent cash flow.

Why has Ruben Amaro been able to afford the stars of the game who dream of donning the red pinstripes of glory and also more failure than anyone?  Because when he opens his office window, he is cartoonishly buried in a sea of American currency.  And that’s not just any money nearly choking him to death.  That’s your money.  And the Phillies are about to get more of it.

Baseball sure is an intense game.  You know when the pitcher rubs his face, and then throws over to first 30 or 40 times in a row and then the umpire calls time because there’s a plastic bag blowing around in right field and the second baseman takes the opportunity to ties his shoe because he saw the pitcher wince after the last throw and wanted to give him some time?  That’s the best.

But when that endless moment, or others like it, present themselves, some of us may be fighting the desire to get up and walk around.  We already paid for gas, parking, and a beer, so naturally we’re very deep into our youngest child’s college fund.  But we caught a glimpse of that new hat on the way in.  And that guy’s got a Vance Worley jersey… we gotta pick up one of those before he gets too popular (Worley, not the guy).  And we’ve been staring at the popcorn box under our seat that was here when we sat down and is still half full and not all of it has bugs on it… can we really afford one from the vendor?

And that’s when the Phillies pounce.  They relentlessly unveiled their newest line of merchandise and food, available for your copious, irresponsible spending starting now.  When you are at your highest level of self doubt, innocently wandering toward the Majestic Clubhouse store and considering that maybe your youngest child just isn’t college material; he does eat a lot of crayons for a 25-year-old–

Whoa.

This says this welcome mat is made out of Veterans Stadium astro turf.  Just 100,000 of these and we could rebuild the vet!  Or at least we’ll finally have a prop for our one man show about the 1993 World Series.

And these bottle openers… these bottle openers are made out of the players’ bats.  My god.  It’s like cracking open a cold one with Jim Thome.  Only he’s not yelling at me to get out of his kitchen.  With one of these, I wouldn’t have to make my crayon-eating mid-twenties son open all my beers with his teeth.

There are a lot of bills to pay for the Phillies, including the one that keeps Ryan Howard in the lineup, except he isn’t, and another one that keeps Jonathan Papelbon in the bullpen, though he only shows up for one inning a game.  Then there are like 60 others, ranging in price from a hundred million dollars to whatever they pay Michael Martinez to play without a broken foot.

And so, we readily hand over our money in exchange for Phillies Yahtzee, even though our weird son will probably eat the dice.  We’re keeping this team together.  One $20 withdrawal and $4 ATM fee at a time.