Continuing Lack of Effort

A preview to this week's obviously baseball-centric article: yet another Twitter post demonstrating an utter lack of baseball savvy.

Can't we just have a 1-2-3 ninth?
about 18 hours ago via web

No, because our "closer" has a WHIP of 1.63. Until he's replaced, we'll virtually never have a 1-2-3 ninth... and probably never a 1-2-3-4 ninth, either.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Phils 'Photo Day' picture perfect

Are you even trying any more, Morsch? Even the puns seem limp and effortless these days.

The Phillies organization has always tried its best to be fan friendly and last Saturday was no different at the annual “Photo Day” promotion.

One assumes that, in the infancy of his newspaper career, Morsch wrote actual news stories. Did they all feature lead-ins as lame as this one? "August is traditionally the hottest month of the year, and this year's August is similarly hot." Come on!

The heat, which approached 100 degrees that day, didn’t seem to bother the fans or the players. Thousands of fans lined the designated areas on the field to get pictures of the players, many of whom stopped and posed with the faithful.

I am having a vision of MM gushing about how friendly the players were to the fans. Dare I also suggest that he use the words "gracious" and "kind"?

Son of Blonde Accountant and I had a pretty decent spot in rightfield

I would like to think this is a shout-out to me. Is "rightfield" a compound word?

where we waited for the players to appear. The youngster is celebrating his birthday this week and the ballgame was one of his birthday gifts.

The limited time of the event prevented us from getting pictures of all the players, but we were fortunate enough to have a few stop and pose. Primary among them was leftfielder Raul Ibanez — by all accounts a standup guy and class act — who put his arm around Son of Blonde Accountant and smiled for the camera.

Woah woah woah - he SMILED for the camera? This is a thing unheard of. Nothing demonstrates your qualities as a "standup guy" more than smiling for pictures and putting your arm around someone.

Other players who stopped for us included J.A. Happ, Jose Contreras, Danys Baez, Joe Blanton, David Herndon and Vance Worley,

Who?

who later made his major league debut in the game pitching a scoreless ninth inning, then was shipped out immediately after the game to Triple A Lehigh Valley to make room for Happ, who was coming off the disabled list to pitch on Sunday.

Oh, neat! Wait, no, the opposite of that. Dumb. Because all that information about Vance Worley contributes nothing to the story of "going to get pictures taken with the Phillies." It's useless. A good editor (perhaps even a good EXECUTIVE editor) would probably cut that.

But I was particularly impressed with manager Charlie Manuel and the entire coaching staff — pitching coach Rich Dubee, bench coach Pete Mackanin, third base coach Sam Perlozzo, bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer and new hitting coach Greg Gross.

I'm actually interested to hear why he's so impressed. Did they engage in some generic banter during the picture-taking? Maybe give a thumbs-up in addition to smiling and arm-draping?

Each took plenty of time, especially with the kids, to chat and pose for pictures.

Ah, so in addition to posing for pictures (who would have thought they'd do that on PHOTO DAY???), they chatted. This reminds me of Morsch's article on the great, great Robin Roberts, who once signed autographs for people despite it being a hot day.

Charlie took so much time that his handlers had to remind everybody within ear shot that there was a game to be played and we ought not to delay the skipper any further. Charlie didn’t seem to be in any hurry, though.

Charlie probably is a very nice guy. He seems like it. But this is perhaps the most lame example of his niceness I've ever heard.

We got a lot of pictures. And the Phillies won big that day. It was a good day to be at the ballpark.

An ending with all the style and creativity of an elementary school essay.

Labels: Mike Morsch, Montgomery Newspapers, Outta Leftfield, Phillies