The Phillies just beat the Pirates 11-6. They had 16 hits, six extra-base hits including two home runs, one of them a three-run homer. They had one meaningless sacrifice and no stolen bases. Twice they had the man-on-second, nobody-out situation and tried to make the stupid baseball play of the hitter giving himself up to move the runner over. Both times they failed and the runner ended up scoring anyway.
So John Marzano is now on Comcast’s post-game show saying the Phils won tonight because they gave themselves up, moved runners over, did the little things, etc.
Come on.
Seriously, though, this was a good win for a couple reasons. 1. The pitching matchup was a lefthander who was 11-5 with a 3.3 ERA against J.D. Durbin. 2. A couple guys who’d been struggling at the plate and had awful at bats in the Washington series - Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Aaron Rowand - smacked the crap out of the ball. Rollins and Burrell had three hits each and Rowand had the 3-run homer.
Earlier, Pat Burrell was a triple away from the cycle, and Charlie took him out for defense. With a six-run lead. In the sixth inning. Of course, Burrell being a triple away from the cycle is like me being an anonymous tip away from a Pulitzer.
I actually watched some NFL preseason football tonight. Don’t say I don’t sacrifice for TJC readers.
Donovan McNabb was fine as expected, which left us to consider what is really the key question of this Eagles season: If Jeffrey Lurie stops walking suddenly, will Dave Spadara break his nose?
No, no, no. The question is, will they stay with the offense they played the latter part of last season?
Recall that when McNabb went down last year and Jeff Garcia became the QB, Andy Reid supposedly went from having McNabb win the games to having Brian Westbrook win them.
In truth, he went to having the offensive line win them, which is what the Birds should have been doing all along. When the talk-radio crowd (callers, not hosts) pined for Garcia this summer, they were really pining for a balanced offense.
Too early to tell, of course, but the Eagles have done some drive-block running tonight, especially in their first TD drive, with McNabb and most of the first-team offense on the field. And this is without the injured Shawn Andrews, their best run blocker and overall lineman.
Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” is back for football season, and that’s a good thing, even though the normally-prescient Easterbrook has tried the defend the indefensible in this year’s first two editions: Michael Vick and the NFLPA’s pension funding for retired players. Give him credit for swimming upstream, at least.
Eric Alterman asks a relevant and scary question: Is democracy by its nature ill-suited to foreign policy?
Quote: “As James Madison wrote Thomas Jefferson, “The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
