“The Phillies insist that all is well.”

Let me just stop you right there.

“…and that their jittery fan base needs to remain calm.”

The Phillies held a press conference to address solely the fans?  And then called them “jittery”? And then told them all to “remain calm”?  I think you’re confusing “the Phillies” with “the pilot on the intercom the last time I was on a crashing jetliner.”

Anyways, I said “stop.”

(more…)

Fortunately, all the Phillies, even the ones we let go, seem to be playing for teams that should do very, very well this year, according to some statements said in public.

"... and we used to laugh. Do you remember how we laughed, baseball glove?" "DUDE I AM TRYING TO FIELD HERE."

“This easily could conceivably be a championship team,” Clay Condrey said of the Twins, blanketing his confidence in a cozy little layer of adverbs.  With a Joe Mauer-powered squad, its like being on the Titanic (Oh no!), only to find out the captain is Superman (Oh, I guess… I guess we’re fine, then).

Pedro Feliz, fielding grounders while silently reminiscing about summers past, is being asked to make a tangent replacement of Miguel Tejada with Houston’s rookie shortstop, Tommy Manzella.  Asking Pedro Feliz to step up his offensive production is one thing.  Depending on him for it… hell, if they can do something to get his bat hot, Phillies, take notes.  We sure couldn’t figure it out.

Loved that glove, though.

“I’m trying to get a ring.  I couldn’t get it the last two years,” explained Chan Ho Park.

Chan Ho’s plan to slide into the starting rotation for a World Series contending team is… half over, I guess.  He’s certainly with a contender, in the same way that you’re with that hot girl standing across the bar, surrounded by dudes.  You’re in the same room; I don’t see why you couldn’t just say you were with her Friday night.

“Does it mean it’ll work out? No, but it clearly gives us a deeper pen in a lot of different ways,” explained Yankees GM Brian Cashman.

Sh… She doesn’t even know I’m here, does she?!

I’m starting to smell out Chan Ho Park for what he really is, and that is a nomadic ring-whore.  Sure, he wanted to stay with the Phillies.  Not badly enough to stay with them, though, even when an offer was presented to him.  But of the “fresh starts” Ruben Amaro was handing out this winter, Park’s got the best chance of having his WS dreams be more than fictional rambling.  Though the odds of him starting… I’ve got to think they’re low.

Brett Myers is also thriving down in Kissimmee.  Having been unable to truly relax and enjoy himself in Spring Trainings past (probably because he had to worry about being good, to, you know, make the team), Myers turned to a source of inspiration valued by all middle-aged men with facial hair and a history of domestic violence:  children.

“I coached my son’s little league team this year, and it kind of inspired me a little bit to see how much fun those kids had.  That definitely helped me this offseason.”

Good, yeah.  What was missing from Brett Myers’ game was that he wasn’t having enough fun.  That was a slip-up on my part.  I should have checked these numbers months ago.  Yup, here it is.  Brett’s Fun Percentage (FuPg%) was down to  .437, and now, after coaching a little league team and reporting to camp, it’s blasted its way up to a stoic .649.  Of course, that doesn’t take into account OFA (Off field antics) or, and this is the important part, just how undependably bad a pitcher can be.

I just wish we could have made baseball more fun for Brett Myers while he was still in Philadelphia.

Matt Stairs, who found out he had an offer from San Diego while at a cheerleading competition (Sweet!) for his daughter (Never mind!), mentioned nothing of the Padres’ World Series aspirations and just swung six bats at once to warm up for the last of his (scheduled) offseason bearfights.

Meanwhile, Eric Bruntlett scrounged up a job being a body for Stephen Strasburg to throw baseballs at.  He’s the baseball equivalent of a sack of old hamburger meat.

“Who the hell is ‘Eric Bruntlett?’” even the Nationals asked.

WHAT THE HELL

It’s just a matter of the party they choose to attend.  Some, like Brody Colvin, show up at the chance to go ten car bombs deep down Shitshow Drive.  Others, like Ehren Wassermann, like to party by disemboweling college baseball teams with a dominant, wildly angled pitching style.

Meet Ehren Wassermann, a side arming ex-knife salesman with a history of pitching the hell out of opposing players as a Samford Bulldog.  Oh, and when he was six, he had an unassisted triple play.  So he was already as good at baseball as Eric Bruntlett. When he was six.

His last year in college, as a closer, he showed up in 25 games, saved three, threw 91.1 innings, and maintained a 4.04 ERA with 65 K’s.  On March 26, he turned eight batters into hamburger meat in a 6-2 victory against the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This was after he spent 2001 with the Jeff Davis Community College Warhawks, going 8-1 with a 1.85 ERA.

Those numbers are high and low in the right places.

IS HAPPENING

The 2003 White Sox agreed with me, retroactively, and signed him as an undrafted free agent. He was an exciting prospect, possibly capable of blowing the doors off any minor league challengers, and the anticipated day of his premiere with the Bristol White Sox soon rolled around.

He promptly went 0-1 with a 14.23 ERA in four appearances.  The numbers were now in the wrong places.

But this wasn’t enough for the White Sox to give up on him, for some reason, and he spent 2004-06 going on tour through a series of minor league clubs in Kannapolis, Birmingham, and Winston-Salem.

He popped in the majors on July 7, 2007.  A brief surfacing, but long enough to retire both the batters he faced in Fenway Park.

Watch him twang that ball in there.  Twang.  Twaaaaannnng.  He looks like he’s triple jointed, or… made of… slinkies.

WITH HIS ARM

After spending 2008-09 with the White Sox affiliated Charlotte Knights, the Phillies winked at him and a minor league contract appeared before his very eyes, along with several of his other Spring Training nonroster invitee cohorts:  Ozzie Chavez, Ryan Vogelsong, Kevin Nelson, and Dane Sardinha.

So, I don’t know what Wassermann’s got planned for his next arm trick.  Maybe snapping it off and watching it turn into a snake.  Either way, his signature style was both eye-catching and paramount enough to set off klaxons in the heads of the Phillies brass.  We may see the 29-year-old righty and his sentient being of a right arm chuck a ball or two. If it doesn’t try to escape from him while he’s asleep or something.

Ha, ha!  Who’d have thought this much time would pass and we’d still be making Eric Bruntlett jokes?!

Everybody, that’s who.  God, he was a terrible baseball player.  Let’s not talk about him.

Images courtesy of daylife.com and farm4.static.flickr.com