Tough Way to Drop a Game You Were Going to Lose Anyway

By Pete Lieber

All across the Delaware Valley, those inclined to have the number of a bookie in their phone, and the lack of fortitude not to use it, dialed their daily bets in and probably laid wood on the Mucking Fets tonight. You'd have been ridiculous not to if you had a few bucks to put up. Of course, you'd have had to lay a lot more on the line than you were going to win with Johan Santana on the bump against Chan Ho Chi Minh Happy Trails After 3 Innings Park.

But a funny thing happened on the way to collecting your winnings. South Korea had something to cheer about, and in as much as Fightins fans can get excited after one outing, you should be that excited. Park went out and pitched, and pitched well. Mixing his pitches (could Ruiz have something to do with that), moving in and out of the strike zone with deceptive cunning, coming up with big outs when in a rock-rock game, big outs were needed. And who knows how much longer he could have gone, had not Uncle Chuck lifted him for Eric Bruntlett with a runner in scoring position and 2 outs in the top of the 7th. Bruntlett went gently into the good night after 3 pitches. Park, by the way, had made Santana throw more pitches than any other Phils hitter all evening.

As Phils fans, when your pitcher keeps you in it against a guy the caliber of Santana on the road, a 1-0 loss is tough to take when you consider that they scored an unearned run in a season where unearned runs have been all but non-existent. Should Pedro Feliz not have thrown that ball to first? Probably. Should Jayson Werth have come up firing instead of trying to keep Carlos Delgado in a rundown from 200 feet? Probably. But how often do these things happen? And in a season when bats are loud, in baseball, there are always nights when they are humbled. It was just one of those nights.

Take heart in these small tidbits Phightin Phans: the clientele at Citi Field, a cavernous stadium where left-handed power goes to die, is about as impressive as the Iroc-driving, Brittany Spears-listening, fake gold chain-wearing knuckleheads that try and take over Citizens Bank Park when the Fets are in town. There's idiots in every stadium, but I particularly enjoyed the two Met fans with their hats on sideways wearing sunglasses and screaming (God knows what because I guarantee it was linguistically indistinguishable) in the ninth inning. They probably act as the Turtle and Johnny Drama to Frankie Rodriguez, a super acquisition for the Fets talent-wise, but he just feels to me to be a little to Fet-ish. A little too cocky. A little too fits in that locker room. Which as Phils fans, you should absolutely love, because that locker room couldn't finish a team-building exercise for short bus students.


And to put one more smile on your face before we finish up the series tonight, think about how much Jose Reyes looks like the criminal mastermind Victor Duncan from Jim Belushi's classic "The Principal."