2009 Philadelphia Phillies - Season's Over, Time to Move On

[SunMo]

i don't get the argument, the douchebag factor AT games is off the charts...all you have to do is go to a game and see it.  more than half the people are there just to hang and don't give a shtein about the game. 

[QB Eagles]

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/12400370#

Look at all the loser comments.

There's more hustle in Steve Phillips' pants than there were in the Dodgers.

Nice.

[reese125]

no bandwagoners are bandwagoners...this isnt nucleur physics...go to the bank a few times and youll see who im talking about....five thousand douchnozzles sitting in ashburn alley texting the whole game...or sitting in the stands on their cell phone telling friends they are at the phillies game and wanna know whats up afterwards and proceed to make plans for the next half hour...watching about 10 total at bats the whole game...then when a run scores jumping up and being the #1 phillie fan in the land

sounds like every baseball stadium in the country ever since cell phones became common place.

pretty much...but get with it sarge...unless youre not wearing radio headphones, jotting each batters stats in a score book and have your face painted red YOU are not a true phillies fan

[MDS]

You're both right. There. Now can I finish jerking off now?

[SunMo]

no bandwagoners are bandwagoners...this isnt nucleur physics...go to the bank a few times and youll see who im talking about....five thousand douchnozzles sitting in ashburn alley texting the whole game...or sitting in the stands on their cell phone telling friends they are at the phillies game and wanna know whats up afterwards and proceed to make plans for the next half hour...watching about 10 total at bats the whole game...then when a run scores jumping up and being the #1 phillie fan in the land

sounds like every baseball stadium in the country ever since cell phones became common place.

pretty much...but get with it sarge...unless youre not wearing radio headphones, jotting each batters stats in a score book and have your face painted red YOU are not a true phillies fan

no, but it would be nice if you paid attention to the game and didn't make comments like "when did we get ibanez?"

[reese125]

christ I can go home and cut my grass and come back to the park before the next pitch an inning takes so damn long. thank god for cell phones

now if youre talking about a post season game different story where each pitch actually means something

[Sgt PSN]

i don't get the argument, the douchebag factor AT games is off the charts...all you have to do is go to a game and see it.  more than half the people are there just to hang and don't give a shtein about the game. 

82 home games a year probably has something to do with that.  you're just not going to fill a stadium with die hards for every home game.  sports is very much a part of our social conscience these days and since baseball is a slow paced, more relaxed environment than any other sport so is it really suprising that people go simply for the sake of going instead of intensely following the game?  people go to games on first dates.  they go for a family day out.  they go for a hundred reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with actually watching the game from start to finish.  it's been like that for as long as i've been going to baseball games. 

now if youre talking about a post season game different story where each pitch actually means something

this

[Munson]

All the people IGY's complaining about are exactly the same people who showed up for the parade....the people on their cell phones half the time trying to figure out what they're going to do that night.


Not one person in the crowd the night they won gave a farg about the next day. It was in the moment, and it was awesome.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Both sides are right; the hell are you guys arguing for?

The douchebag quotient is off the charts high. It always is when a team is good. The people who didn't give a shtein four years ago all of a sudden are the biggest Phils fan ever. This was a phenomenon for Cowboys "fans" during their run in the 90's. After the glory run was over, they were nowhere to be found. They reemerged when Parcells came to town and made them somewhat relevant again.

[PhillyPhreak54]

We've got a bunch of nice guys in here,'' one Dodger said. "Those guys over there, they are tough. (Shane) Victorino is a tough SOB. And (Chase) Utley, he drops a knee whenever the runner comes in at second. When Larry Bowa managed those guys he warned (Utley) that guys would get mad if he drops a knee on (baserunners), and Utley told him, "I don't give a ----.''

About the Phillies, Dodgers GM Ned Colletti said, "They're a tough club, not just wins and losses but how they approach the game. They play it hard, and they play it that way all the time. They play with a relentlessness, and they absolutely refuse to be beat.'' Using the Phillies as a measuring stick, the young Dodgers still have a little work to do. One young Dodgers star made it a point before every game to seek out Peter Gammons with the intention of high-fiving him. The Phillies players don't suck up to anyone.

If I wasn't so unbias in my analysis of players I'd say Utley was the best player in baseball.  I love stories like this.  Top 5 isn't bad though.

Grits!!

Cool story. And who the hell seeks out Pete Gammons for high fives? He's creepy. I wonder if Petey strong armed the player into buying one of his awful CDs?

[PhillyPhreak54]

SI.com - Ibanez has an abdominal tear and has been playing with it for most of the year.

Raul Ibañez was a 36th-round draft pick who took four years to get out of Class A, five years to find a position and 10 years to escape the minor leagues for good. He spent his youth learning to be a catcher and his prime sitting on the bench in Seattle. He was nontendered by the Mariners, designated for assignment twice by the Royals and nearly exiled to the Orix Blue Wave in Japan. After he finally secured his place in the majors, in his late 20s, he played for mediocre teams in small- to middle-sized markets, a fixture only on "most-underrated" lists. So when Ibañez joined the defending-champion Phillies this year, a few months shy of his 37th birthday, he could not bear to waste any more time. He had waited 17 professional seasons for this one.

He batted .312 with 22 home runs in his first 2½ months, a welcome splash of cold water for a team still groggy from a World Series hangover. But by the third week in June, Ibañez was suffering from a sore left groin and, unbeknownst to the public, a small but serious muscle tear near his abdomen. On a trip to Toronto he was confronted with an excruciating decision: He could have surgery to repair the tear and miss a large chunk of time, or he could return after a short stint on the disabled list and play his dream season hurt. "We all asked him if he would have the surgery," Phillies first base coach Davey Lopes says, "and he told everyone, 'I won't do that. I'll do anything but that.'"

After consulting with a neuromuscular specialist in Toronto and a surgeon in Philadelphia, Ibañez chose the DL, followed by aggressive rehabilitation. Every day he drops onto a mat in the Phillies' clubhouse, performs core and hip exercises with trainer Scott Sheridan and then heads for the field. Lopes believes that Ibañez's swing, speed and statistics have suffered because of the injury—he batted just .232 with 12 homers in 72 games after coming off the DL—but his clubhouse cred clearly spiked. "A lot of guys in his position would have said, 'Oh, my God, I'll just have the surgery,'" says Phillies utilityman Greg Dobbs, who played with Ibañez in Seattle. "But he's the type who says, 'You tell me I can't, then I will.'"

The playoffs are a potent pain reliever. After hobbling to the end of the regular season, Ibañez batted .308 with a .471 on-base percentage in the National League Division Series against the Rockies. In Game 1 of the National League Championship Series he hit a three-run homer off Dodgers reliever George Sherrill, the first Sherrill had allowed to a lefthanded hitter all season. After Philadelphia thumped the Dodgers 11--0 on Sunday night, the Phillies led the series 2--1 and Ibañez was experiencing exactly what he saw on television last fall, shortly after which he told Dobbs, "I got goose bumps. I want to be part of that." As for his health, Ibañez insists he has not been limited, regardless of the statistical evidence. "Absolutely I worry about it," says his wife, Tery, "but how do you tell him not to play?"

Ibañez is to baseball what Kurt Warner was to the NFL, a late-blooming talent no one knew how to develop. The Mariners drafted him in 1992 but were unsure whether he was better suited to be a catcher or a first baseman. Neither, it appeared, and he was moved to the outfield, where the club had him sit behind the likes of Rich Amaral, Brian Hunter, Butch Huskey and Stan Javier. When Ibañez did get to play, he wanted so badly to prove himself that he developed an uppercut in his swing and a tendency to pull every pitch he saw. After the Royals signed him as a nonroster invitee in 2001, then general manager Allard Baird told Ibañez, "Raul, I believe you're a better hitter than you do. And that's a problem." The Royals put Ibañez through waivers twice in '01, and both times he went unclaimed by all 29 other teams.

After passing through waivers the second time, in June, Ibañez called former Royals third baseman Kevin Seitzer, who was giving hitting lessons in nearby Overland Park, Kans. Before reporting to Triple A Omaha, Ibañez met with Seitzer, who instructed him to shorten his stroke and try to line every pitch the other way, at the shortstop's head.

The following spring Tony Peña took over as Royals manager, and he told Ibañez, "Just let me know when you get tired." Ibañez replied, "I won't." He got more than 300 at bats for the first time and over the next six years was a .291 hitter who averaged 22 home runs. Meanwhile, the teams for which he played—the Royals (2001 through '03) and the Mariners ('04 through '08)—averaged 91 losses per season. "Even I sometimes lost track of him," says Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez, who knew Ibañez when he was a student at Sunset High in Miami, where Gonzalez was a part-time security guard.

Ibañez was a devalued treasure, same as his father. Juan Ibañez was a college-educated chemist in Castro-ruled Cuba who fled to the U.S. in the late 1960s. He eventually settled in Miami, where he took a job stocking warehouses for Carnival Cruise Lines. Outside of family and friends, few recognized what this overqualified man had to offer. Juan would tell Raul, "Never complain, but believe anything is possible." An avid baseball fan, Juan died of a heart attack in 1992, two months before his son was drafted by the Mariners.

The Phillies seemed to be out of their minds last winter when they signed Ibañez to a three-year contract for $31.5 million, given the bad economy and the fact that he would be 39 when the deal expired. Philadelphia could have kept leftfielder Pat Burrell, who signed a two-year deal for $16 million with the Rays, or made a run at former Phillie Bobby Abreu, who signed a one-year deal for $5 million with the Angels. But Benny Looper, the Phillies' assistant general manager, was a Mariners scout when the team plucked Ibañez out of Miami-Dade Community College. Ibañez reminded Looper of a lefthanded Edgar Martinez, the sweet-swinging former Mariners DH who was just getting warmed up when he hit his 30s. Ibañez used to study Martinez and think, That's how my career is going to go.

To stall his biological clock, Ibañez bought an $18,000 hyperbaric chamber, hired a chiropractor and a masseuse, and employed every physical-therapy technique from joint alignment to muscle activation to Brazilian jujitsu. "Everything he does is as hard core as it gets," says his off-season trainer, Pete Bommarito, who also works out NFL running backs Frank Gore, Marion Barber and Maurice Jones-Drew.

Fans have heard this story line before, about ballplayers who defy the aging process. In June the blog midwestsportsfans.com posted an article about Ibañez that included this passage: "Any aging hitter who puts up numbers this much better than his career average is going to immediately generate su****ion that the numbers are not natural, that perhaps he is under the influence of some sort of performance enhancer." The piece might have faded into cyberspace, but the next day Ibañez told The Philadelphia Inquirer, "You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool—anything you can test." And if he tested positive? "I'll give you back every dime I've ever made."

For Ibañez, just making the blogs represents some sort of progress. After Philly's Game 3 victory on Sunday night, he reflected on his potholed path and laughed uproariously at some of the more difficult moments—.220 seasons, minor league demotions, the close call with Japan. "I'd be lying if I told you I always thought it would work out," Ibañez said, "but this is what you do it for."

[Munson]

Sounds close to the dreaded sports hernia.

[QB Eagles]

su****ion

[Don Ho]

Not many on this board older than the Don.  I've followed and loved this team since 1971 and have been through some rough times and some great times, more rough than good.  Enjoy every minute of this.  This is just awesome right now.  JRolls winning hit was one of the greatest feelings I've ever had watching the Phils.  I am trying to think of a bigger moment other than the two WS wins that can top that.  Stairs home run & Vic's grand slam off Sabathia last year come close - two of the greatest "Sit down bitch" statements I've seen.  Dykstra was right there in game 5 against Atlanta in 93 when he blasted a homer late.  Del Unser in game 5 at Kansas City.

Bandwagoners go ahead and jump on but you ain't gettin off.  Die hards you keep representing.  If this goofball all the way in Hawaii can stay loyal for almost 40 years than any one can.  Jump on my canoe.  Surf's up!  Savor every one of these moments.  This is some good shtein happening right now.

[Rome]

More iceholes at the ballpark make it more difficult for me to take a leak or buy a beer in a reasonable amount of time between innings.

Personally, I miss the days when 25,000 would show up at The Vet on a good night.  Those fargers were die-hards and so was I.

Oh, and farg the faggy rally towels too.   Gayest thing I've ever seen especially since farging Steelers fans invented them.