Philadelphia Sports

I know Utley deserves to be in the All-Star game, and easily makes the case for himself that he should be the 3rd straight Phillie to win the MVP award, but after watching the Home Run Derby last night (ok mostly only Josh Hamilton’s 28 HR’s in the first round), I can’t help but think I would have rather seen National League HR leading Ryan Howard swinging for the fence.

Utley is magical the way he hits balls out of the park with his short, quick swing.  It baffles me how he is able to get that much power and still wait on the ball so long.  But in all honesty he had NO CHANCE of winning that competition last night, and he basically admitted it himself.  After his 10th out, he walked back to where the players were standing and said something to the effect of, “I’m glad at least hit one”.  He knew he couldn’t win.  He just doesn’t have the pure power you need to muscle that many pitches into the seats.  But guess who does?

Ryan Howard.  Yet he was nowhere to be found.  Just because he got off to a slow start, he is being penalized even though he leads the league in HR’s and RBI’s at the break.  Maybe they should make an exception.  It would’ve added more drama to the competition, not that it was needed.  Hopefully Howard and the Phillies will have the last laugh come this postseason and make a run.  I’m not saying World Series, or even NLCS.  Just please, please don’t get swept in the first round.  If they finish in first place, they have to get out of the first round for this season to be a success.  After that, anything can happen.

Either way, we welcome you with open arms.  Now if we could just get a shooter…

Hopefully a new month will bring with it a clean slate for the Phils.  They have played horribly in June, and playing the best teams is not an excuse.  Every team goes through ups and downs in a 162 game season, but this is getting ridiculous.  If they don’t turn it around soon, I’m going to start counting down the days to mini-camp, and I really don’t want to have to do that.  It looks like Chase Utley is getting out of his slump, but the rest of the team does not.  The last 2 season MVP’s look like they forgot how to play baseball, and one of them looks like they don’t care.  Ryan Howard has the attitude of someone who just got paid - oh wait, that’s what happened.  He’s like the new Derrick Coleman of Philly sports.

Speaking of the Sixers, who did they draft?  I have never heard of this guy but at least they got a big.  If they can sign Iguodala, next year could be interesting.  Yet, they still have so far to go.

I have not been posting much due to an extraordinarily busy personal life, and also because there is just not that much going on.  It’s not fun to write about a team that is getting beat and beating themselves every way possible.  My biggest concern at the beginning of the season, Brett Myers, is still as much of an enigma as ever.  I’m not sure he’ll ever get it together.  Too bad we can’t have 2 closers.  Brad Lidge is unbelievable - when he gets in the game.

If you have a Mac, why not add this widget? You get 4 styles to choose from, and now you can literally know, up to the second, how long it has been since we’ve had a championship in this town.

This is where we are as of this post

* Download here.

Check out my blogged.com page where you can rate and review this blog!  It’s pretty awesome, I think.  I claimed ownership and put this cool link on my navigation bar to the right.  They don’t make you put anything up on your site, but after I checked it out and liked it, I figured it was good promotion.  I don’t care where you read my posts as long as you can get them!  Anyway, now that there is only 1 team to root for during the next few months, I’ll be posting less until the Eagles start their preseason.  I don’t want to blog just for the sake of creating content; I want it to be good and have a purpose.  So as often as I can, I’ll write about how the Phillies are doing.

Man, Chase Utley is a beast.