Philly Journalists Mock Your Dumb Concerns About Phillies Sucking
By Justin Klugh
The Phillies look comically inept lately, to the objective fan. To the subjective fan, its a far from comical situation that requires all the meaningless concern to you can muster. It also means that beat writers and other local journalists get to look down at the rest of us, laugh patronizingly, and then convert that laugh into a 200-word article about how stupid we are.
First, there’s Frank Fitzpatrick, whose column, “Giving ‘Em Fitz,” is intended to be so provocative, off-the-cuff, and irreverent that you’ll be left foaming at the mouth and twitching on the floor. Surely, he has no sympathy for anyone growing upset at the Phillies’ recent play! Let us have it, Frank!
"Maybe this September swoon means something. Maybe it doesn’t. We won’t know until October. That’s what makes postseason baseball so intriguing.–Frank Fitzpatrick"
Gaaaah, Frank, you really know how to get our goat!
Or you would have, if that sentence meant anything. But instead, our goat is still wandering out there, totally ungotten, gently chewing an empty soup can of hope.
I started reading this abbreviated list of reasons I should shut up under the assumption that I would be berated by someone whose words are actually read by other people. Instead, Frank explains why baseball is intriguing. Which is nice, but we don’t to know that right now. We need to know why our every action is childish and unnecessary.
Maybe Jim McCormick can help.
"With these slumping 2011 Phillies, such a “Phold” is impossible, at least in the regular season sense. With everything clinched from the division to home field throughout the playoffs, including the World Series, the concept of meaningless games has emerged.–Jim McCormick"
Damn it, Jim. None of this is effective if you default to the “Meehh, these games don’t matter anyway.”
What if the September call-ups we’re seeing are proof that our farm system is a clogged septic tank?
What if this “John Bowker bounce back” is never going to happen? And more alarmingly, what if it already did? Has he had a walk yet? That may have been it.
What if the post season goes exactly like this?
What if the Phillies have been dead the whole season and we haven’t realized yet because we are also dead?
All of the Phillies are broken?
The key is to ask these questions swiftly, in almost a darting fashion, without waiting for an answer before asking the next one, even the one at the end there that wasn’t really a question, just an overreaction with a question mark at the end of it.
"There is no sense worrying about it, about the fact that they have scored fewer than four runs in 12 of their last 13 games. It is just something to talk about between now and the time when the postseason begins, the lead up to when – with all apologies to Grantland Rice – the One Great Scorer marks against their names, not how they played the game but whether or not they won the damn World Series.–Rich Hofman"
You didn’t save us.
And now we have to trudge on with a flicker of hopeful light , instead of the natural feeling of sloppy, depressing sludge churning within us. Thanks a lot.