Feb 21, 2012; Peoria, AZ, USA; Seattle Mariners pitcher Kevin Millwood poses for a picture during the Mariners photo day at the Peoria Sports Complex. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

For those who do not remember, Millwood pitched for the Phillies from 2003 to 2004, and will be best/solely remembered for his no-hitter, during an era of Phillies baseball when he would be congratulated after the game my a mob including Marlon Byrd, Vicente Padilla, and David Bell.

Thankfully, we’ve moved on to an era when the guy throwing the no-hitters is noted no-hitter specialist Roy Halladay.

But not too long ago, the Phillies rotation wasn’t a crew of perennial Cy Young contenders and Kyle Kendrick and John “barfing noise” Lannan.

Millwood, ironically, was once part of such a rotation, pitching behind Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz.  He had a hell of a 1999 season, made the All-Star Game for the only time, and eventually left Atlanta for Philly in exchange for Johnny Estrada.

2003 was no special year for the Phillies.  Millwood even led the league in steals allowed (41), but made up for it by hurling the second no-hitter in Veterans Stadium history.  It was an odd sensation; a no-hitter, thrown by a guy no one would really expect a no-hitter from, for a team that was probably not going to do anything special.  By 2005, Millwood was off the roster, continuing the 16-year, four-city tour that was his entire MLB career.

But I recall watching on TV as a teenager, realizing that for once, the Phillies were the high profile game.  I was six in 1993, and that team was the reason I became so obsessed with baseball and the Phillies.  But ten years after the fact, the Phillies being relevant in any way was so foreign that I wanted to hold onto that feeling forever.

By the time they were putting “MLB Post Season” on the Citizens Bank grass in 2007, it was a lucid dream.  I had Millwood to thank for a day in late April, five years prior, when my enthusiasm for baseball had been replaced by the futile pursuit of girls and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for reminding me what a glorious Phillies moment felt like.

Now, of course, we’re well aware of what that feels like, and we’ve become sort “junkies” for the team’s success.  But there was a time when a Millwood no-hitter was an oasis from the bland bitterness of early 2000s Phillies baseball.

UPDATE:

@tbohblog Dude, you could have at LEAST embedded some video of the Millwood no-hitter, dawg! mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp…

— John Stolnis (@FelskeFiles) February 4, 2013

Kevin Youkilis remained ardently opposed to any and all breaking pitches and sent the ball to live on a farm upstate, on the other side of the outfield wall.  It was not the ace’s night.  Roy’s concentration remained unbroken.  Erase. Recalibrate.  Attack.

Charlie Manuel broke into a bad-ass trundle on his way to the mound.  He nodded at Doc and said something soothing and Virginian.

“No point in locking the barn after the horses have already eaten your children,” probably was not it.

He took the ball from his starter and the great Doc Halladay stepped off his mound, capping the day off with a performance that saw him go less than six innings.  Later that night, before the vigilante crime fighting or marathon of rage-fueled sex that habitually served as outlets for Roy’s stress, he would address the press corps.

“A couple things didn’t go the way I wanted to early,” he said.

Dozens of reporters nodded and scrawled, typed, and recorded in unison.  They all needed an angle.  Roy Halladay, best pitcher in the game, had just gotten shellacked by a Boston team being pissed on for a slow start.  Why could they dethrone him so viciously?  Were the Phillies pushing Roy too hard?  Did the Sox already know the punchline for the dark, alarmingly precise, totally humorless joke that was Halladay’s pitching?

Six days later, Roy threw the 20th perfect game in the history of Major League Baseball.

Erase.  Recalibrate.  Attack.

(more…)

PICTURED: The past.

I understand why the girls in Philly all have “Utley” on their jerseys.  The cute face combined with his innate ability to perform well athletically is exactly what kept their hands off me in high school.  He might as well be wearing a varsity jacket and threatening to crush my larynx because the sound of my voice is “…just way too much like a bird farting.”

Cole Hamels, on the other hand, has a different kind of face.  Its skinny and shaggy and there just seems like there’s a lot of bones where there don’t need to be.  But Cole’s biggest problem isn’t his face anymore.  And for some reason, in regards to heterosexual women, it never was.

In fact, Cole doesn’t so much as have problems so much as he… is one.

Whether your predictions are positive or negative, everybody wants Cole to be better, so when he does well, we will of course be jumping the gun and claiming “He’s back!”

And then something like his last start night happens, where he hurls a delicate, spiffy little game until the Diamondbacks hit the detonator and explode for three home runs in one inning, and we learn, through the groans, punching, and arson that come with a Phillies loss, that Cole is not back.

The time may be upon us to acknowledge that Cole, that 2008, skinny-faced champ, who looked more like a smiling corn stalk during the World Series than an MVP, may never be coming back.  His paltry 2009 seemed to amputate all the untouchableness granted in 2008 (can you look at Cole Hamels facts today and still laugh?), turning 2010 into a seven month case of phantom limb.

Cole doesn’t suck.  Keep in mind, the degree to which he pitched in 2008 was stellar. He’s going to win, and he’s going to lose.  He’s going to be a major league pitcher.  He’ll streak and show hints of dominance, giving the purists a chance to fill up message boards and wet themselves.  But the days of a 20-win Cole are gone.  It happens.  It’s baseball.

You know Kevin Millwood once pitched a no-hitter as a Phillie?  He’s on the Orioles rotation now.  And he’s not the ace. He’s the grizzled vet in a pitching corps of guys who, for the last three years, were nothing but scouting reports.

This isn’t a white flag of surrender, more like a beige flag of… compromising.  It would be great if Cole was having his 2008 season in 2010, next to Roy Halladay, erasing all the discordant “EHHHHH’s” that come clanging out of the “We-Should-Have-Kept-Lee” brigade (No shit, we should have.  You sure know a lot about baseball by saying that).  But he’s not.  Chances are, he’s not going to.

We’ve all been watching the same Phillies for the last year and change, and we’ve yet to see a form of Cole Hamels that has gone beyond “Well, that certainly could have been worse.”

He’s being graded on a curve, which would be fair if we could expect him to do better, but if 2009 and 2010 are any indication, we can’t.

He is Cole Hamels, now, not Phillies Ace Cole Hamels.  I still like him.  I hope that we can one day be friends.  I hope that we share that “friends bond,” where he pretends not to notice my lingering stare following his wife’s ass out the door.  I hope we’re comfortable enough with each other that I can say, “Cole, these Xfinity commercials.  They’re terrible.  You smile like a crayfish,” and instead of punching me in the larynx, we’ll share a chuckle and down some whiskey.

“Please stop looking at Heidi like that,” he’ll say.

“No,” I’ll quietly reply.

And the sound of the ice cubes melting in our drinks will slowly be absorbed by the honking car horns surrounding Rittenhouse Square below.

His name will be Cole Hamels, and he will always be the Most Valuable Player of the 2008 World Series.  But now, it is 2010, and we need him to be something else:  consistent.  And until then, he’s the number two starter in a rotation that needs him more than ever.