Charlie Manuel and Ryne Sandberg Schedule Cool-Sounding Hang Out

If you ever wanted to hang out with Charlie Manuel and Ryne Sandberg, maybe dish on some baseball or how it feels to be born in a car or what being traded for Ivan DeJesus feels like, you finally, finally, have your chance.  So hang up on the Make-a-Wish Foundation; you’re wildest dreams are about to come true, and you don’t even have to fake a terminal illness.

Charlie and Ryno–I feel like I can call him Ryno, since he’s decided to stay with us after all that “managing in the big leagues” nonsense–are headed for DeSales University in late January for winter banquet in their honor.

No one’s really sure what goes on at these things, except the people who inexplicably have $80 to spend on a ticket.  So like, Congressmen, I guess.  Foreign dignitaries.  Drug dealers.

But I would assume they sip mead out of huge goblets lined with diamond studs in the shape of baseballs, in between Chuck’s anecdotes about tracking and slaughtering an increasingly terrified pack of deer in the Virginia wild.

However, the event isn’t all good times, big laughs, and disturbingly descriptive accounts of what a deer looks like when it’s stricken with sheer horror as its family is picked off one by one around him.  They’re doing this for a point, and that point is to raise money for IronPigs Charities.  Last year, they bagged around 25 grand, which is pretty good, considering a lot of the Phillies fans I know are moving into “the bad neighborhoods” or sending their children to “boarding school” (“sending them to boarding school” in his case means “selling them”).

But I guess not everyone is as financially drained as unprofessional writers, so it’s good that not only will people enjoy the company of two great baseball men, but that people will be helped by them doing so.

And hopefully everyone will be able to keep hold of their more intrusive emotions and avoid screaming “WHY IS JIMMY SO INTENT ON HURTING US?!” in the middle of a speech about… well, probably baseball.