I arrived at the NFL Eagles mini camp early, by about twelve-days.  But I wanted to show the fire in my belly was equal to the actual size of my belly.  I got Eagles Head Coach Andy Reid to give me a tryout based on two things, flat out lying and whining.  In the end I have to give the nod to whining.  I was no standout in college but what do you expect from somebody who gave up the sport in eighth grade?  Nevertheless, once Andy saw my highlight reel, thanks Industrial Light & Magic, he gave in.

Day One of Eagles Mini Camp

They get up way too early in the NFL as far as I'm concerned and after sleeping in my car for twelve straight days I was ready for some serious rack time.  So I did what any great athlete does, I paced myself and slept in.  Lunch was more of a brunch to me and quite frankly after my third time through the chow line, I was ready, ready for a nap, so I bought separate pints of mint schnapps, gin and vermouth and headed back to my room to have a couple of Mintini's.  We'll get 'em tomorrow.  I hope the veterans don't make me sing my college fight song at dinner tonight because it was "Memories" by Barbara Streisand, come on, what else would the Fighting Arch Supports of St. Pugnacious Junior College of Podiatry, Agriculture & Mining sing?

Day Two of Eagles Mini Camp

I got to be honest with you, football jerseys are not slimming at all and quite frankly if its been a while since you went down a flight of concrete stairs wearing football cleats the dream starts to lose its luster.  A bunch of guys with whistles spent a lot of time drawing X's & O's on a chalkboard and kept glaring every time I did my dead on John Madden impersonation. 

They kept flipping through their clipboards muttering, "Who is this guy?" while I kept repeating my success mantra, "Put me in Coach" even though we were sitting in a little room with those uncomfortable desks that have the chair attached so you either have to suck your gut in or just exhale and feel like Fatty McFatso.  The psychology of the game is fascinating even at this level. 

We headed onto the field and I lined up with the wide receivers until two things became very apparent, those guys are slippery fast and the quarterback throws the ball way too hard and much farther than I like to walk at a brisk pace.  So I looked around and there were my people, ten guys who looked like Reebok upholstered furniture, the offensive linemen.  So I waddled on over and kept myself firmly planted at the back of the line until lunchtime.

After several heaping platefuls of mini camp food I was barely able to reach the training room and ease myself into the whirlpool.  It was a good thing I didn't waste anymore time hanging out with the O-Line because right as I got finished my steam bath and massage, the guys came in off the field and it would have been wait-in-line-city for the spa. 

I bumped knuckles with my sweaty new friends and invited them up to the room for shots of bourbon with pigs-in-a-blanket chasers, or Bourb-O-Cue as we call it down South.  Then we all piled in our cars and hit Moe's House of Drunk's and took advantage of their $9.99 All-U-Can Drink Wed. Nite Special, did you know there's a brand of vodka that's below bottom shelf vodka?

Day Three Eagles Mini Camp

There was a note on my locker to see Coach Reid and bring my playbook.  Wow what luck, my third-day as an NFL'er and the Coach wants my advice.  So I drew up a couple of plays on a cocktail napkin from Moe's and headed to his office, where an assistant was nice enough to take my playbook, which, quite frankly, was way too heavy to lug around, and he ushered me through a door.  Here's a shock, Andy Reid's office is in the parking lot behind the training facility and those cheapskates didn't even give him a desk!

I looked all over but Andy apparently screwed up when we we're going to meet.  Luckily my car was there and I decided as much fun as its been, the football life isn't for me.  So I taped the cocktail napkin to Andy's door, (because I owed him that much--besides that three-quarterbacks in the backfield for 3rd down--is can't miss football gold), and headed for my tryout with the Phillies.

I figure with all them MLB steroid guys dropping like flies, and not being very good liars either, I'd be sure to make the squad, besides those guys spend a lot of time just spitting sunflower seeds and I'm pretty darn good at that already...

OK, so I nuke a couple of Hebe Nats and wrap them in foil, and pour me a bucket of Diet Dr. Extreme soda, a generic ripoff of Dr. Pepper from H-Teeter that's awesome, and I sits down to watch the Wed. night ESPN Phillies v. Mets game. 

Two out of three ain't bad, but in this case I damn near broke my TV by the 3rd inning.  The game, what little I could see of it was great, Johann and Chan Ho sitting down batter after batter, but ESPN decided, screw baseball, let's try something radically stupid.

The broadcast, and I use that term loosely, was like trying to watch a baseball game on a pinball machine in a Japanese video arcade.  There were graphics flying around like Superman on a grain alcohol bender, studio flashbacks to update everything from the  Schools for the Blind National Volleyball Championship, to the Westminster Kennel Club's, fascinating behind the scenes coverage of their dog show called "Sniff This." 

In between all the visual claptrap the play by play guy and Moral Orel Hershiser  kept blathering like two homeless guys on a steam grate arguing over whether pissing yourself in the winter was better than doing so in the summer accompanied by graphs, charts and you guessed it, even more graphics.  I swear to God, at one point I was longing nostalgically for the annoying FOX football robot...

I think the Phillies lost one to nothing, the real losers were anybody who stayed all nine innings, I'm willing to bet the Lifetime Movie Network's "She Bang, the William Hung Story" had a higher share of the male demographic age 25-54...all I know is ESPN, who manage to turn every sporting event into a Chuck E Cheese From Hell birthday party, will never suck me in again...

It's not that Rocket juiced, or even lied like a carpet to Congress that galls me, it's the fact he cheated on his smoking hot wife with whatever happened to stick to his shoe.  I get it, athletes have groupies but Mindy McCready?  Or a porn star named Abby Rode?  That's like Hugh Hefner leaving the Playboy Mansion to go bag someone at the Herpes Halfway House.

Just like Bloat Bonds the details are tumbling exponentially out of the rubble of Clemens feeble denials.  The NY Daily News not only gutted Roger like a fish they slipped him in a bulletproof vest and delivered him to the Corleone compound where Bud Selig is holed up with nothing to say.  You can read it here:

"American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime"


Once again the shared experience most baseball fans in America will experience is the urge to shower with their clothes on and try and imagine a happy place.

MLB, Bud Selig, the Owners, Players, and hot dog vendors need to wake up and smell the cat crap stuck to their shoe.  Until they take responsibility for the entire mess, completely clean it up, restore the polluted records, and stop pulling an ostrich, we'll have every season covered in a melted goo of accusations, denials, deceit and pure disgust.

I've told this story a thousand-million times and must apologize for repeating it here, Harry Kalas, the greatest voice in baseball died with his boots on today in the Phillies broadcast booth, a fitting a way to go as any I could imagine.  Harry was more than just the voice of the Phillies, he was the voice.  The voice of NFL Films, the Voice of Campbell Soup, the voice of NFL Football on Westwood One radio broadcasts, Notre Dame Football, etc.,.

He was a gracious human being who epitomized baseball in all its glory with a mellifluous, sonorous delivery, punctuated for many years by the great Richie Ashburn.  Whitey and Harry redefined baseball broadcasting.

But it wasn't just handed to Harry on a silver platter.  There is a story behind the voice that won the hearts and minds of Phillies fans for generations and it all starts back in 1971 on a perfect summer night.  When a not-so-good Phillies team punted another game like countless others before, the great teams of the mid-to-late Seventies that culminated in the Phillies first World Serious victory in 1980 weren't even a whisper, let alone a glimmer of hope for fans in a franchise that elevated losing to an art.  Back then Schmidt's referred to a hometown beer rather than the greatest 3rd sacker to ever play the game, Mike Schmidt.

The Phillies games through the Sixties had been broadcast by two good announcers, By Saam and Bill Campbell, notably Campbell who had a unique drunken stentorian delivery, a fraternity drunk Walter Cronkite pawing your date affability that endeared him to the blue collar sensibility of the City of Brotherly Love.

In 1971, The Phillies decided to replace Bill Campbell, who was no slouch having broadcast the Eagles and 76'ers games for years, (Campbell received the Curt Gowdy Award from the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005).  In short Campbell was incredibly popular with the fans.  Philadelphia surprisingly does not count shrinking violets among its sports fans and they were voluble in their dismay.  Many of them blamed Kalas personally, who by all accounts left his job with the Houston Astros completely unaware of any conflict.  

This is where I blunder into our story,  I received tickets from the late John Vukovich who was the Phillies 3rd-sacker.  After the game we went down to the players entrance of Vets Stadium to thank Vuke for the tickets.  There was a small crowd, less than twenty people, waiting for players, chief among them children and fathers waiting for autographs.  When Kalas came out, an eager 8-year old kid ran up with a baseball and squeaked, "Hey Mister can you sign my ball?"  Harry beamed a thousand-watt smile and bent down to take the ball.  Whereupon the kid's lout of a father grabbed the kid by the arm, yanked him away from Harry and barked, "Not him he's nobody!"  Harry kept smiling at the kid, turned around and went back inside the stadium, while the kid's dad muttered about Bill Campbell.

I never forgot the class Harry Kalas exhibited that night, in front of the kid and the other people.  A lesser man might have given the lout a piece of his mind.  I'm pretty sure those twenty people respected Harry Kalas from that moment forward.  When Harry finally won the Ford C. Frick  Award from the Hall of Fame in 2002, I couldn't help laughing, thinking back, that idiot father kept his kid from getting the only Hall of Fame autograph he could have ever gotten from anyone on that 1971 team.

The story doesn't end there, Harry Kalas went on to become the beloved iconic voice of the Phillies with Richie Ashburn as well as one of the most recognizable voices in the history of sports broadcasting, even if you think you've never heard Harry Kalas, trust me, you have.  In 2002 I ran into Harry the K's driver and told him that story.  It might have ended there, but it didn't, the next time I saw his driver he had something for me, a small cardboard box, inside an autographed baseball inscribed,  Harry Kalas, HOF '02, the note was pure Kalas, "Only twenty people in a city of millions know that story and my driver had to run into one of them, best wishes, Harry."  That's all I have to say tonight, Best Wishes Harry.

    "...One strike away; nothing-and-two, the count to Hinske. Fans on the their feet; rally towels are being waved. Brad Lidge stretches. The 0-2 pitch - swing and a miss, struck him out! The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions of baseball! Brad Lidge does it again, and stays perfect for the 2008 season! 48-for-48 in save opportunities, and watch the city celebrate! Don't let the 48-hour wait diminish the euphoria of this moment, and the celebration. And it has been 28 years since the Phillies have enjoyed a World Championship; 25 years in this city with a team that has enjoyed a World Championship, and the fans are ready to celebrate. What a night!..."

Harry Kalas, ( March 26, 1936 - April 13, 2009)

We can finally ween ourselves off natural disasters as the 2009 MLB season has arrived. The Phillies are laser-focused on repeating as World Serious Champs, which as you know, is like spitting in the face of the Greek Gods shortly before attempting to slay a three-headed dog at the gates of hell, when armed with only a quick wit, a diet Sprite and a BIC ballpoint pen.


















I did listen to the last three-innings of the Phillies--Rays game where Bluto Blanton allowed 2 over 5-frames, and the relief corps threw a shutout, (God Bless you Mr. Lidge for hoodwinking the dimmest of bulbs in baseball, Eddie Wade), and the photo-finish Phillies bases-loaded win, ninth-frame disaster for the Rays pitchers made it seem like the sequel to the Natural...
















The movie of course, as B. Malamud would never stoop so low as to allow Hobbs last hit to breach the wall, Redford had the acting chops to play the real Hobbs and make the movie a classic but the studio demanded a happy ending. For those of you who think Hobbs blasts one over in his final AB in the book, hate to pop your bubble, he doesn't, buy the book and learn how a thoroughly unlikable character's core truth can transcend his many faults...














That 3-2 Phillies victory against the Rays in the final Graper, held all of the Phillies magic of the 2008 season like a snow globe, an ephemeral, shimmering, gloam, keen eyes could discern but not pierce, (or in my case, ears), nevertheless like holding quicksilver tightly, it spilled betwixt my fingers as easily as Lindsey Lohan soaks up booze before shucking her panties and shooting her biscuit at the paparazzi.














Now it counts, Phillies v. Braves, the thought of a dynasty hovers just out of reach as the dark forces gather like a South Sea typhoon around the once and future Phillies, the Champs, intact with the slightest of subtractions, a Chan Ho Park for a Kyle Kendrick & a Raul Ibanez for the hairdo who played LF, the Slump: Pat Burrell, now loved though well-deserved Phillies fan whipping post, are they the stuff dreams are made of? Or like Howard Hughes ill-fated Spruce Goose are they set to fall from grace and  the sky after one brief flight?