Phillies Encourage You to Win a Dinner with Shane Victorino Quickly, Before Something Happens
By Justin Klugh
You may have heard of this Victorino fella. Plays center field for the Phillies. Runs pretty fast. Throws pretty hard. Grounds out pretty suddenly. Falls down a lot.
You wanna have some dinner with him? Sure you do. Get over here.
Hurry.
As is their charitable nature, the Phillies are sponsoring a contest to give their fans something to work in 2012. Unfortunately, the “something” in question is the very team that’s letting everyone down. The Phillies aren’t going to give you money–that would be completely counter productive.
Instead, what they can give you is the one commodity they have too much of: The Phillies.
Simply by entering your information (I know, right?! What possible risk could I run!), you can be entered to win a grand prize of having AT&T coming to your house and turning it into a “Phan Cave.” Or, if for some reason the idea of phone company reps redecorating your studio apartment doesn’t appeal to you, you could just hope to win some Phillies tickets!
But that Phan Cave is really where it’s at. Not only do you get a truckload of AT&T crap, but you get to PARTYwaitforitWITH A PHILLIES PLAYER!
No, not of your choosing. You could run the risk of the team promoting Michael Martinez from Triple-A just to party with you.
The strange part of all of this, or maybe no strange, maybe just openly suspicious, is that the prize used to be a very specific player named Shane Victorino. Shane, obviously, is the ultimate party animal in the Phillies stable. Why he would suddenly be unavailable for a good time is puzzling.
Unless, of course, you follow the news at all, and are aware that the Flyin’ Hawaiian seems closer to the trade block with every devastating loss. The Phillies will almost certainly be “sellers” at the deadline, with only two games left to make enough of a stir to calm down Ruben Amaro and his front office cronies with their fingers on various buttons.
This little switch from “Party for you and 20 friends with Shane Victorino!” to “Party for you and 20 friends with [A PHILLIES PLAYER!]” might be the first hint we have at any sort of direction the team may move.
Is Shane already gone? Is he just one of the possibilities and the Phillies don’t want to promise you a party and have Jake Diekman show up and you spend the whole going ‘…this is nice, but when’s Shane getting here?’ That’s bad for everyone’s confidence. Mainly Jake’s.