Denial is a river running through baseball punditry today.  Look around and all you'll find are stories extolling the virtues of the Rays while damning the Phillies with faint praise.

For those of you living under a rock on the moon, the Phillies beat the Rays last night 3-2, in a game those same pundits assured us the Rays would win because scientific wild ass guessing (SWAG) proved it so.  From imagined 6-day rust to wholly fabricated lunacy like Tropicana Field rendering the baseball invisible to visiting teams or the artificial turf being spongy, so spongy the Phillies would relax because they'd be gellin' like felons.

Take this quote from a baseball scribbler I admire, it reads like the desperate raise of dead money holding a deuce & trey in the hole with nothing paired after the river in a Texas Hold 'em tourney, "No, they're not going away. Heck, even if the Rays fell behind, two games to none, they still would stand a reasonable chance with Matt Garza facing Moyer in Game 3 and Andy Sonnanstine facing Joe Blanton in Game 4."  Good Lord, what will he scribble after they're down 3-0?  "If the Phillies are foolish enough to push the Rays to 4-0, there's no telling what might happen!"

While another scribe gravely intoned, "In winning the opener 3-2 over Tampa Bay at Tropicana Field on Wednesday night, Philadelphia may have exhausted its full supply of good fortune."  How much fortune did the Phillies start with?  A bucketful?  A bathtub?  Or maybe a 2-liter bottle?  How about this sentence instead, "Phillies beat Rays to a pulp."

Mark my words, Philly will never get any credit for winning in any of the stories.  Tunnel vision is the saddest clown of them all when it comes to the national media.  Hamels didn't shut the Rays down, Howard and Rollins didn't hit.  Why that helped the Rays lose eludes me but that's the party line, in the real world, you need one more run than the other guy.  Whether Matt Stairs or Ryan Howard hits it, when you stack the pancakes if you're pile is bigger after nine, cue the fat lady, it's all over.

Tonight the Phillies look to do what they've done in the last two series.  Put the Rays in a deep hole, that doesn't mean the Rays can't win but it does mean if or when they lose the pundits ought to wake up and smell the toast burning and give credit where credit is due. 

The Rays?  Are you kidding me?  How fast did the national media forget how stupid they looked annointing the Dodgers sure-fire NLCS champs in 2008?  About eight days.  I'm getting tired of pointing out the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, but here goes.

The Phillies pitching staff?  Lights out in the 2008 post-season, with the exception of Jamie Moyer, the Phillies have shutdown two good hitting teams and made short work of two straight series.  For that I get to hear about the dynastic pitching of the Rays that took seven games to beat the bloated ghost of the Red Sox Past?  Puh-lease. 

The Rays don't have anywhere near the bullpen the Phillies do.  Madson and Lidge?  The Phillies are unbeatable if they lead in the 8th frame.  Period.  Lidge has half a century's worth of consecutive saves in 2008.

Hitting?  Utley, Burrell, Victorino, Werth and Ruiz alone can beat your head in.  If Rollins and Howard wake up the Rays will get shelled like Fort Sumter.  Add in the absolute delight the Phillies take in duking it out like a barroom brawler and no lead is safe for the Tampa Guppies.

Intangibles?  Two words, true grit.  The Phillies are pluggers.  Bring your lunch pail Tampa cause the Phillies come to play nine.  They finish off opponents.  They can and will throttle the Rays and unlike the Rays the Phillies are great at finishing this season.  Once the Phillies get the Rays down 3-1 in the series stick a fork in the X-Rays.

The secret weapon?  Phillies manager, Charlie "Bat" Manuel.  He talks like Mutley the mumbling  dog from cartoons salting his unintelligible post game reflections with homespun words like whumpadoodle and gullywumper.  Add in his Double Bubble Chewing gum bubble blowing during close games and quite frankly Manuel is perfectly inscrutable.

Finally as a true Phillies fan I have unbridled guarded pessimism going into the World Serious and that's way more exciting than what I felt in '93 against Toronto.  Except this year we got Pat Gillick and that might be all we need. 

Just ask the Dodgers if they'll ever forget Matt Stairs.  That kind of home run sticks the big fork in you forever...see you at the Trop.  After the first two games all those same media suckup Ray-aholics will be scrambling to explain how the Phillies aren't so much pasting the Rays as the Rays are not living up to their idiotic predictions...I know cause that's what they said after the Dodgers got smoked...

Penguin's, tuxedoed grifters sliding on vodka rocks, swimming in martini bays and floating on oceans of gin fizzing beneath wings so contemptible they don't even make for honest flight, might be the perfect sports analogy.  They suffer from the exact same problem Chris Henry, Pacman Jones and Tank Johnson do, expectation will surely be the death of us all.

Penguins despite their anthropomorphic appeal are really feathered fish if we are to believe the old saw, you are what you eat.   They am what they am and in any case it ain't any bird I'd blast from a blind.  Can I get an amen from the sweaty sister sitting in the third pew?  Hallelujah.

The aforementioned spoiled buffoons and thugs of the fill-in-the-blank professional sports league serve a greater purpose than mere hooliganism, like the penguin, they delight and amuse us with their minstrelsy antics.  After all isn't pro-sports just a glossy minstrel show?  

Instead of huckstering their snake oil from a traveling medicine show they palaver from glittering stadiums and arenas stolen unaware from their marks.  They wear all manner of gaudy, ill-fitting clothes and afterwards explode like bling-encrusted peacocks on a world drenched in champagne, vamps and money that slips through their fingers like mercury.  The good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away.  Amen.

What was once fairly proscribed escapism in the form of lines, rules and heroics has slipped its tether and spilled like milk into our daily lives.  No longer is there pride in their mastery or accomplishment just an incessant buzz and whine for more money, fame and publicity.  

I'm not condemning their behavior.  Judge not I say!!! In fact I applaud it as the full measure due from our modern gladiators.  Like ancient Romans, I too want to be entertained and diverted while Goths spill over the walls.  I too want to believe the sports nostrum delivers all it promises even though deep in my heart I believe it isn't much more than brightly colored sugar-water and tomorrow when I get up my joints will still ache and my feet will still hurt no matter how much I rub on of the empty promise spilling from the sports oil bottle that replaced my last bottom dollar.  Don't forget the collection plate dollar, brother's and sisters, our building fund needs new shoes.

No these penguinistic athletes are nature's way of abhorring a vacuum.  If Henry, Jones and Johnson didn't exist we'd need to invent them.  There ain't much use for a David without a Goliath!  Is there?  Daniel wouldn't be worth a line of ink on a dusty scroll if he'd been thrown in the rabbit's den and if a guppy swallowed Jonah it wouldn't have made the local gossips let alone paper.  Can I have an amen for the ladies?  

Ishmael needs Moby as much as vice-versa.  Sports needs Calamity Jane as well as Buck Rodgers.  Heaven needs Hell and Abbott needs Costello as surely as the baby Jesus needs three wise men!   Goodell got it wrong the other day when Pacman swatted his babysitter.  He should have said, "Enjoy, this is the  cherry on top of the sundae of sports..."  Praise God!

Excerpts taken from a sermon delivered by Bishop E. Merton Spilborg at the National Sports Cathedral in South Bend, Indiana.  Bishop Spilborg is the spiritual leader of the Church of Looking as Good as You Feel which broadcasts regularly on cable access channel nine and author of God Didn't Plan On You (Pulpit Press 2001).

For an organization that kills 8.5 out of every 10 animals it lays its hands on PETA sure is nuckin' futz. After hearing the Phillies Flying Hawaiian, Shane Victorino liked SPAM, a Philly area PETA wackjob dashed off the following letter...

October 14, 2008
To: Shane Victorino, c/o Philadelphia Phillies
From: Dan Shannon
One page via fax



Dear Mr. Victorino:

Can I call you Shane? When I was young I had a dog named Shane until he was kidnapped for medical experiments when he was really old, at least that's what my teenage sister's boyfriend told me, I cried and cried but I'm way, way better now.









On behalf of PETA and our half-a-dozen, hundred and twelve, thousands of members and imaginary friends, sock puppets, supporters sleeping on steam grates in the Philadelphia area, I'm writing in regard to the recent revelation that your favorite meal is a Spam dish. Not that a Spam plate would be a significant improvement. A plate's as good as a dish unless you're serving soup then a plate is pretty much worthless compared to a bowl which is also technically a dish.










While Spam might be a popular foodstuff in your native Hawaii, before you take another melt in your mouth, absolutely delicious, mouth-watering, cholesterol-packed bite, let me tell you about the nightmarish scenarios concocted by fat hairy dateless PETA chicks, completely phony crap we make up so we can bag those same fat PETA chicks cause we're pimple faced dorks, horrific abuse of animals at the hands of Spam's pork warlords, pig slappers, suppliers.









PETA recently conducted a double secret probation, undercover investigation on a factory farm, it was Old McDonald's farm, maybe you've heard of him, we call him, E-I-E-I-O for short, that breeds pigs who, look suspiciously like PETA chicks except they're prettier, are slaughtered for Hormel, the maker of Spam.












PETA documented staggering cruelty to animals, making them into succulent strips of bacon, perfectly round tubes of lip-smacking pork roll, thick chops, baby back spare ribs, and that a supervisor shoved a cane into a sow's private parts, at least I think it was her private parts because I got too embarrassed to look, that would be like eye-raping the sow and then he struck her on the back approximately once, twice, five-times,17 times without even wiping off the cane. A potentially unsanitary practice at best and downright icky at worst.





Multiple pigs and by that I mean at least two, were beaten with metal gate rods, and nobody, a homeless guy named Earl, two men were witnessed jabbing foam--We're #1, fingers, pillows, cheese doodles, clothespins into pigs' eyes and faces. Luckily the pig's eyes weren't put out not that he'd really need them much longer.





A supervisor kicked a young pig, at least it looked like a young pig, (it's hard to tell because some pigs look older than others), in the face, abdomen, and private parts to make her move and told PETA's investigator, "You gotta beat on the b-word,(an accurate slur commonly associated with PETA chicks). You gotta make her cry." I don't know if you've ever seen a pig cry but it's sadder than when Bambi's mother died and that was really sad.  Not as sad as when Shane got dognapped but pretty gosh-darn close.






Virtually every factory farm that supplies tasty pigs to Hormel confines mother pigs to metal crates or waiting rooms without any current magazines, that are so small that they can't turn around or do jazzercise and cuts piglets' tails and man nuggets off without painkillers. Not that the rest of the pig doesn't end up chopped into little bits at some point, I guess they all do otherwise they wouldn't fit in a Spam can but that doesn't really sell the pathos here does it?








In addition, a whiny, silly, idiotic, waste of everybody's time and effort, complaint is currently pending with the Food and Drug Administration regarding this particular farm's use of a cancer-causing substance (Lucky Strike unfiltered cigarettes), on pigs who were to be killed for human consumption.










As you might know, PETA has named Citizens Bank Ballpark the Most Vegetarian Friendly Ballpark two years in a row, which doesn't mean poop to anybody but the three of us who get to pick the winner every year, for its astounding variety of bland tofu based approximations of, protein-packed, delicious animal-friendly fare, including mock-chicken sandwiches, that taste like chalk, "crab-free crab cakes," taste free too they remind me of eating tin foil, Philly faux-steak sandwiches, we have nothing to fear but faux itself, veggie dogs, or tube barf as we vegans call them, and flame-grilled Gardenburgers that go right in the trash after every Phillies game because nobody eats that swill when real hoagies, cheese steaks, crab-cakes and hot dogs are sold at the very same counter.





We urge you to abandon the Spam, unlike 100-million Americans who eat tons of Spam every year, take advantage of the park's putrid, foul smelling, vomit inducing, delicious veggie options, and consider joining other knucklehead, moronic, compassionate vegans and athletes--including John Salley, Ricky Williams, and Tony Gonzalez--none of which know I'm throwing their names around, in pointless, annoying, healthy and humane vegetarian eating.










Best of luck to you and the rest of the Phillies in your championship run even though you use the skin of an innocent cow on baseballs and mitts and cut down beautiful trees to make bats.
Best regards, unless you keep eating Spam in which case I hate your guts,
Dan Shannon
Assistant Director of What?

(Los Angeles) --The City of Angels where streets are paved with starlets and nightmares are the only dreams that come true. The Dodgers made their final curtain call in this shimmering celluloid mirage located in the State that catches fire and I'm here to soak it all in like a parched wino in a vat of malt liquor. Everything might be going to hell in a bowling bag across the rest of the country but here in LA you can still scrape celebrity vomit off your shoes and tip guys like Webster & Gary Coleman to park your rental.

It's a town where celebrities who don't want to be seen go to great lengths to be seen and I'm smack dab in the middle of the Marxist Sodom & Gomorrah where Michael Moore belly flops into swimming pools filled with caviar and Paris Hilton tries every trick in the book to make the soda straw wrapper she's wearing look less baggy...

It all starts with a phone call...

"Get on the next bus to LA"
"Is this the voice in my head?"
"Didn't the phone ring?"
"Well yeah...so what's your point?"
"The Dodgers are down 2-1 and you still have those Greyhound frequent traveler miles."
"I told you they'd come in handy, OK but I want a room with AC, windows, cable TV, Oh and meal money."
"AC, no window, basic cable and tell you what, make it McHappy meal money and you got a deal."
"Alright but I keep the McHappy toy..."




I get a primo seat behind Joe the Busketeer...

...and crack open a tasty cold Schlitz. Joe's been driving the great wide open for thirty years and knows the middle of this great country like the back of his paw grinding the gears.

"Driving the 'hound is like being a riverboat captain just you and the big muddy. Used to be on the 66 you'd stop for coffee at a joint shaped like a percolator and stay at a hotel that looked like a cruise ship...good times...

Joe's voice fades into the whuppity-whup of the tires as the Schlitz nestles me gently in its arms and hums its all too familiar lullaby. Before I know it we break through the Rockies, empty Schlitz bottles roll up and down the crenelated rubber aisle in time with the peaks and valleys and the Dodge 'ems are down three games to one after a nail biter that seesawed like greasy eggs in the pit of my stomach after a 3-day binge in Poughkeepsie.

I jump in a cab...

...that's equal parts rat crap, busted upholstery and a guy wearing a turban or a toupee made out of a dirty Ace bandage.

"Please to not rob me."
"The Hotel Cabrillo near Dodger Stadium and make it snappy."
"I am pleased to take you and many thanks for not robbing me."
"No sightseeing Bub, I got a date with an expense account at the hotel bar."
"As you wish, would you like to hear some music from a country you never heard of?"
"Absolutely and whatever that smell is, crank it up..."

I check in and head for God Mother's...

...the swank bar for the Hotel Cabrillo smart set. According to my watch it's quarter-past martini...The hotel is in a nice neighborhood. The hookers are pleasingly proportioned. The graffiti is tastefully apportioned to every square inch of wall space and the homeless seem more or less grateful to serve as a reminder no matter how bad off we think we are there's a whole 'nother level of failure we haven't begun to scrape...I head for the remaining empty barstool...









There to my surprise...

...sits FoxSports.com baseball guru Dayn Perry.

"I don't think this is meat. I never heard meat make that sound before..."
"Hey Dayn, how's it going?"
"I was supposed to get a suite and all I got was a lousy coupon for $5 off any continental breakfast."
"How about them Dodgers?"
"I could be typing on a Gulf beach near Tampa inspired by bikini technology I never dreamed existed instead I'm watching Joe Torre flick boogers while the Dodgers look like Barbaro after the Preakness."
"How did they get the cat to sit on a slice of bread before they microwaved it?"
"I dunno...he even wore a bread hat...hey I thought cats exploding in a microwave was an urban legend..."
I guess BBQ sauce is more volatile than we thought..."

I go to Dodger Stadium...

..and find Matt Stairs standing by a tub of Gatorade.

"Matt, way to be, how many times have the haircuts asked you what you were thinking when you cheap-seated Broxton's heater?"
"Every one of them."
"Eleven teams in sixteen seasons your closet must look like a HOF uniform exhibit."
"The shoes are rentals, they never tell you that. It's like bowling shoes they spritz them at the end of the season with disinfectant and that's that. I always wonder who had the shoes before me."
"If you could have hit anyone in the head with that home run who would it be?"
"Wow...um, Oh it would be Steven Seagal because he'd be all, I'm going to Gong Fu you! and I'd be all, Oh yeah? Then he'd waddle up and we'd belly-butt, cause he's as fat as me...Yep, that would have been classic."
"My Map of the Stars says Seagal has mad buffet skills..."

I talk mechanics with Jimmy Rollins...

"Jimmy you have to stop dipping the shoulder and square your stance. MVP's cannot blame fans when they suck."
"I know but they hurt my feelings."
"Come on Jimmy, they're drunk half their lives, work crummy jobs and spend what little they have left watching you paste a baseball, can you blame them for booing when you play as shitty as their life?"
"It still hurts. Ask Ryan or Chase."
"Jimmy, this isn't about them, it's about you. Try this, visualize yourself swatting a dinger in your first at bat tonight. Go ahead shut your eyes. Do you see Billingsley wincing?"
"Yeah but are you sure this will work?"
"As sure as I am booze is the answer to almost every other problem in your life, J-Roll."



I run into Dayn again...

...and this time he's really steamed.

"I was just on eBay and that crummy hotel has half my stuff up for auction."
"What about the other half?"
"I don't know they ended those auctions early for some reason."



Joe Torre was very gracious...

...for a guy looking down the barrel.
"Joe when you look all sinister in the dugout is it indigestion or what?"
"When I squint like that it makes the pitcher look like a lima bean. then when I un-squint they look like a string bean. Try it."
"Now that Broxton got shelled like a Middle-Eastern village who are you going to use as a closer?"
"Andruw Jones, that fat @$#%! isn't worth the ink on his paycheck."
"Are you happy you left the Yankees?"
"Those @$#%!-ing Steinbrenner brats had it coming."
"I'll put that down as a yes. One last question do you validate parking?"
"I'll see what I can do. Have you been parked for more than a full hour?"

The game leaves the Dodgers in the lurch...

...Rollins pastes one in his first AB and gives me a wave as he rounds third sack. Back at you, J-Roll. Then the Curse of the Dodgers kicks in with a vengeance. Rafael Furcal tries to rack up as many errors as possible in the fifth that sums up the Dodgers' NLCS. First Rafstafarian pooches the ball and then throws it away pulling off the double Lutz of baseball committing two errors on the same play. Raffles then throws another one away and ties the record for most errors in a single frame! Call him a cheese steak, he's on a roll...

Casey Blake distinguishes himself by swatting into rally killing, soul sucking double plays and the good ship Dodgerpop starts sinking like a brick.

The only bright spot? ManRam, the Monster from the Blue Lagoon, swatting a solo sputnik to dot the i on his cup of coffee as a Dodger while the law firm of Hamels, Madson & Lidge drop the hammer on LA once and for all. The Phillies put it in the books four games to one.

Dayn and I meet...

...at God Mother's and put the rocks in the baseball box.

"Look at this...their top shelf stuff doesn't even have a label."
"Oh yeah? The mini-bar in my room is stocked with rubbing alcohol in tiny bottles."
"Did you see the maid? Is that a mole or a mustache?"
"That was a girl?"
"I'm 43% sure it was a girl but this is LA and that makes the math dicey at best..."



I hop the 'hound red eye back to DC...

...tiny bottles of rubbing alcohol liberated from the mini-bar clink in my bag while fond memories of Carla, the dollar-an-hour hostess working her way through charm school who really can tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue, dance like bourbon-drenched sugar plums in my head.











I hope she likes my faux-alligator wallet...

...as much as I did, I guess she left in a hurry this morning and didn't realize she grabbed it by mistake from underneath the mattress. I guess I'll have to get the bean counters to cancel my FOXSports debit card...Luckily, my bus ticket is pinned to the inside of my pajamas, a little trick I learned from researching my book Bus Terminal or Fancy Hotel? Once You're Asleep it Doesn't Matter (Harper-Collins, 2007-out of print)