2006 Philles Season Thread

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

if you want your hillbilly manager fired, you'll be happy when my yanks take 2 out of 3 in philly. 

2 of 3 is a given.  If you want to talk trash, you should be referring to brooms and such.

Whoops.

[hunt]

if you want your hillbilly manager fired, you'll be happy when my yanks take 2 out of 3 in philly. 

2 of 3 is a given.  If you want to talk trash, you should be referring to brooms and such.

Whoops.

the yanks aren't very good this year & have guys named melky & bubba in the outfield...that's why i didn't predict a sweep.
but i'll stand by my 2 of 3 prediction.

[PhillyGirl]

Playing the game the right way
Insider
By Jerry Crasnick
ESPN.com

Before Ben Roethlisberger and Kellen Winslow indulged their inner Hell's Angel, Aaron Rowand was just as unpredictable on two wheels. After the 2002 season, Rowand was riding his dirt bike in the California desert when he lost contact with a trail, fell off a 25-foot drop and landed in a dry riverbed.

Rowand suffered a broken shoulder blade, a punctured lung and two broken ribs in the accident, and cracked his helmet. The damage would have been even worse if he hadn't landed on the best possible place -- his head.

It's an anatomical article of faith in the Rowand household. Through the years, as Aaron fell off skateboards and bicycles and careened from this asphalt playground to that concrete surface, his most valuable attribute was an industrial-strength noggin.

Rowand's mother, Connie, a nurse in Scranton, Pa., was aware of the history the night of May 11, when her son went full-bore in the line of duty. After catching a Xavier Nady drive at the track, he crashed into an unpadded metal bar and left a chunk of his nose and cheek on the center field fence at Citizens Bank Park.

"My mom thought I might have hurt my body," Rowand said. "When she saw it was my face and head, she didn't worry anymore."

No matter how many World Series rings or Gold Glove Awards Rowand eventually wins, this will remain his signature moment in the game: a combination of Jim Edmonds' athleticism and the tenacity of Uma Thurman chopping her way out of a coffin in "Kill Bill: Volume 2."

The same exuberance that prompted Rowand's former Chicago White Sox teammates to call him "RoboCop" has earned him the captaincy of ESPN.com's All-Run-Through-A-Wall-Squad. It's also won him the admiration of players throughout the game.

One of them, Tampa Bay pitcher James Shields, grew up a half hour from Rowand in Southern California. He also happens to be Rowand's first cousin, and he's heard the stories about little Aaron, a bruiser as a toddler, bouncing off furniture and coming back for more.

"It didn't surprise, me," Shields said. "He's like Pete Rose, man. He's one of the toughest guys I know in baseball. That's just him."

A love of baseball and competition makes up Rowand's foundation. His father, Robert, runs an air-conditioning business, and routinely took the boy to his recreational softball games. When one of Robert's teammates failed to show, the squad would turn to 10-year-old Aaron, and he would step in and outperform half the players on the field.

Father and son spent a lot of time at Angels and Dodgers games, and Aaron was always more partial to scrappers than stars. He liked Brian Downing and Bobby Grich, and later, Rex Hudler and Lenny Dykstra. When he'd see a big league player hit a routine grounder and jog down the line, he would turn to his father with a sense of bewilderment.

"Why isn't he running?" Aaron asked.

"Because he's not playing the game the right way," Robert Rowand replied.

Robert Rowand half-jokingly points out that the serious carnage didn't occur on his watch. While playing college ball for Cal State Fullerton, Aaron ran full-speed into a cinder block wall at Long Beach State's Blair Field and knocked himself out trying to steal a home run at UC Santa Barbara.

In the majors, he plays the same way regardless of the circumstances. It was one thing to bang up his shoulder in an attempt to preserve teammate Dan Wright's no-hit bid in 2001. It was something else to take the commando approach with the White Sox holding a 12-run ninth-inning lead against Boston in the division series last October.

Before Chicago sent Rowand to Philadelphia for Jim Thome last November, White Sox general manager Kenny Williams and outfield instructor Gary Pettis spent years trying to convince Rowand to temper his aggressiveness. In spite of Williams' personal affection for Rowand, he had grown weary of watching long fly balls and envisioning his center fielder being rushed to the hospital.

"There's a way to play the track and play the wall," Williams said. "Just because you run into a lot of walls doesn't mean you're any more of an outfielder than a guy who doesn't. It just means you didn't take to the lessons of how to play balls at the wall, or you chose to disregard it. In Aaron's case, he chose to disregard it. The one thing I've learned about people is, you are what you are."

Judging from the reaction Rowand has elicited since his highly publicized face plant, baseball fans are perfectly happy with what he is. A Vietnam veteran wrote a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News with the headline, "Aaron Rowand's the kind of guy you want in your foxhole." Even a paper in Australia called him "an example of courage to emulate."

On the night of his return from the disabled list, Rowand received a prolonged standing ovation at Citizens Bank Park, and sales of Aaron Rowand T-shirts spiked from 12 to more than 70 a game. Even fans on the road yell out to him during pregame stretching and tell him how much they enjoy watching him play.

"It's overwhelming," Rowand said. "You can't compliment me any better than that."

While the Phillies have added padding to the portion of the fence that victimized Rowand, hazards still abound. Last year in Baltimore, Rowand caught his spikes in the rubberized warning track and scuffed his knee, split his pants and smacked his head against the ground. Camden Yards won't be in his future much now that he's switched leagues. But the solid wall of brick beneath the Wrigley Field ivy is certainly inviting.

At age 28, with a wife and two young children, Rowand is doing his best to show some off-field maturity. He sold his dirt bike after the accident 3½ years ago and now confines his offseason fun to golf, which inflicts scars of a purely emotional kind.

The broken nose and 15-stitch cut he suffered six weeks ago left him with some interesting souvenirs. As for when the marks will fade or disappear, Rowand neither knows nor cares.

"I wasn't all that pretty to begin with," he said.

Jerry Crasnick covers baseball for ESPN Insider. His book "License To Deal" was published by Rodale. Click here to order a copy. Jerry can be reached via e-mail.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Both Jayson Stark and Jerry Crasnick have written recent articles on Rowand:

Stark
Crasnick (insider only)

[JTrotter Fan]

Ryan Howard.  What more can be said about this superstar stud?!  He is now tied for the league lead in HR's and is one behind for the league lead in RBI.  All-Star Game indeed!

[SunMo]

Ryan Howard = gawd

[BigEd76]

Howard is currently 5th among NL 1Bs in All-Star voting

All 7 RBIs tonight.  Amazing....

[BigEd76]

Rhodes comes in and gets nobody out.  8-7 Yankees.  A-hole 

[SunMo]

Mr. OBP strikes out twice in the last 3 innings.

Howard can't drive in 10 runs...Phils lose.

[LBIggle]

ryan howard basically raped the yankees.  and it was hot.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Pitcher Robert Person was the last Phillie to drive in seven runs in one game.

Ha!

[Rome]

Phillies 2006 = Murphy's Law.

A guy gets two jacks and a triple, drives in seven runs by himself, yet the Phillies still find a way to lose the game.


Amazing.   

[Wingspan]

if abreu happened to have the night that howard had last night, people would be screaming at how unclutch he was for dribbling out on the 1st pitch in the 9th with two outs. and all the empty numbers he had built up in the beginning of the game.

you know it's true.

[SunMo]

if abreu happened to have the night that howard had last night, people would be screaming at how unclutch he was for dribbling out on the 1st pitch in the 9th with two outs. and all the empty numbers he had built up in the beginning of the game.

you know it's true.

for Abreu to have that kind of night, he'd have to swing the bat once in awhile. 

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Abreu loves him some walks.