Today would be the birthday of one of the most interesting players in baseball history, Eddie Gaedel. At 3’6″ tall, he was by far the shortest player ever to play in a major league game. St. Louis Brown owner Bill Veeck talks about the genesis of one of his wildest stunts ever.
“Eddie,” I said gently, “I’m going to be up on the roof with a high-powered rifle watching every move you make. If you so much as look as if you’re going to swing, I’m going to shoot you dead.”

Where I will drink too much beer, eat too much junk food, and yell vociferously at our moron manager while sitting in the rain. And not wanna be anywhere else. Go Phils!

This is an updated tweaking of a story I did last year. Bonds and the Giants visit town this weekend.he was still the worst player in the history of the game. And let’s face it; was it not brutally obvious that Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were on the juice during that great chase of ’98 that gave us all the fuzzies? So why does Barry not get treated like the star athlete that he is when he comes to Philly? Because he doesn’t operate under a facade of niceness, b/c his p.r. people don’t tell him to offer up a bunch of b.s. about “taking it one day at a time” and giving “110 percent”? You people always complain about how boring athletes are, then you get a guy who speaks his mind and you decide to hate him. Ridiculous double standard.

But what this really comes down to is the rules. Should Cy Young be villified b/c he was allowed to throw the spitball, which is now against the rules? No, so why should Bonds be villified for using steroids at a time when they were not only legal in baseball, but encouraged? It’s obvious that McGuire woulda never hit all those homers and gotten all those endorsement deals without the help of steroids, so why should Bonds be treated any differently than McGuire? The fact that baseball encouraged steroid use is baseball’s fault, not Bonds’s fault. He saw an opportunity to improve his game, and make himself better and his team better. And he did so in a way that he knew could potentially hurt his own health. He did what all the great ones do: He put it all on the line to improve his game within the framework of the rules. And you people, who call yourselves baseball fans, continue to boo him.

I have never seen an inning quite like the 9th last night. The Phils score 3 to take an insurmountable lead. And then the meltdown. It was unbelievable. The stupidity of Dobbs going home with the ball. Dobbs felt terrible afterwards. He told Marcus Hayes, “I’m praying I didn’t aid in Brett being out for a long time. I’m sick to my stomach. I want to go over to him, but I can’t even talk to him right now. I’m praying to God he’s going to be OK.” Then with two outs and a one run lead, Jason Werth made an excellent throw home to end the game. Or at least would have ended the game if the Phils had a Little League catcher in the game. But not with Rod Barajas, who decided to stand up and quit guarding the plate, something you often see in T-ball games but not so much in the majors. Barajas should be kicked off the team today. He is a disaster, one of two of the worst free agent acquisitions in the majors this year (the other being Wes Helms). Then, while trying to record the fifth out of the inning, Myers blows his arm out. Incredibly, we won it in the 10th. If it wasn’t for the Myers injury, we could maybe laugh about it. But a couple of questions need to be raised: would a well coached team be making nearly as many stupid decisions as this one seems to make almost every night? And should Myers have pitched yet again with a 4 run lead? I don’t know. There is nothing else for Charlie to go to in the bullpen, and thanks to Gillick not doing anything about a terrible bullpen in the offseason, our season is essentially over if Myers is out more than a couple of weeks.
RELATED: Beerleaguers take.

The Boston Celtics, a professional sports franchise, decided to lose games on purpose in the hopes of acquiring Greg Oden. The Philadelphia 76ers did not. Two storied franchises (yes, the Sixers are a storied franchise, despite their recent past) decided to do two completely different things. The Celtics sat their best players. The Sixers did the honorable thing and played to win. And there are people in Philly who are mad about the way the Sixers handled it. In fact, there are radio hosts that think the Sixers should have tanked. That reasoning is absurd, pathetic, and remarkably unethical.

I have a friend who worked for an entity that got a lot of government assistance. He said that every year they would dump all their leftover fuel in the woods, lots of it, because if they had extra fuel left over at the end of the year, they wouldn’t get the same amount of money from Congress the next year. And every year,they got a ton of money for fuel. Do the ends justify the means? No, because they engaged in unethical behavior. It was wrong. It was fraud.

The Boston Celtics are a fraudulent franchise. They are paid to try to win every basketball game they put on a jersey for. What is the message they send out when they don’t? That it is OK to shave points in pro basketball, as long as it’s the front office doing it and not the players on the floor? A lot of children attend basketball games. What message did the Boston Celtics send to their young fan base? That it is OK to quit, as long as the ends justify the means? That doing something that is ethically wrong is OK if there is a big payoff in the end?

Of course, the beauty of this is, there was no payoff in the end. The losers in Boston got exactly what they deseved, a kick in the crotch for unethical behavior. And yeah, the Sixers will pick 12th. But the Sixers will have something that the guys picking number five don’t: A front office and a coach who don’t pack it in when the going gets tough. A front office that, while it makes plenty of bonehead decisions, doesn’t engage in fraud (insert Sean Bradley joke here). Do you know how hard it’s going to be to train a team to try to win again, after almost a whole season of trying desperately to lose every game? Players that were told they weren’t good enough to win by trying will now have to, well, win by trying. Or will the Celtics just continue losing on purpose, embarrassing themselves, their players, and their city in the meanwhile?

The NBA playoffs were dealt a major blow when, in the midst of a 7 game series between the best two teams in basketball, it decided to suspend two of Phoenix’s best players for leaving the bench, despite the fact that they didn’t lay a hand on anyone. It was a gutless, thoughtless decision by the NBA, and Willie thinks it ruined this years playoffs. Here are his thoughts:
Believe it or not, I was actually proud of the National Basketball Association and its commissioner David Stern before Tuesday. I was really enjoying the action of the NBA playoff for the first time in years as the game appeared to be returning to its former greatness of the late 1980’s that made me love it initially. Although he would not admit it, Stern seemed to be acting in a kinder and more benevolent way, which I feel is certainly good for the game. It is like he once again understood the competitiveness and intensity of the playoffs. While last year we saw James Posey and Ron Artest be suspended for doing barely more than breathing on an opponent too hard, this year’s NBA seemed more committed to pleasing the fans and not taking away from the competition unnecessarily. It seemed to start when Stern admitted that the new ball was a mistake and thus changed back to the old one. Then, the league refused to kill the excitement of the NBA playoffs by not suspending Baron Davis, Jason Richardson, and Bruce Bowen for physically borderline play. It seemed that the NBA had once again realized that this is the playoffs and to be overly strict on the players was to kill some of that natural intensity which the postseason breeds. Moreover, they seemed to realize what the fans wanted as opposed to forcing on them a corporate, watered-down product. I was actually proud of the NBA for a change, which felt weird but definitely good at the same time. For a moment, I had back the game I loved.

Continue reading “The NBA pisses Willie off” →

Cole Hamels flirted with a no-hitter last night. But, in typical fashion, Charlie Manuel pulled such a bonehead move that people have already forgotten about it and are instead pitching a fit, and rightfully so. With a 4 run lead and 12 pitchers to choose from, there was absolutely no need to use your closer, especially with a freaking day game tomorrow. Especially when that closer had pitched the last two games and 3 times in the last 4 days. Yeah, the other relievers are bad, but if they can’t protect a 4 run lead for one inning, they really shouldn’t be pitching in the major leagues. But Charlie used Myers, and will continue to use him until his arm wears out in September. Charlie Manuel knows as much about pitching as I do about stitching. But at least I’m not teaching a crochet class. The faithful commenters over at excellent Phillies blog Beerleaguer are as furious as I am. As were the guys at the Black Sheep I watched the game with. In fact, anyone who has watched more than 20 games of baseball in their life would do a better job of managing this team than this moron. My suggestion? It’s time to start going to games and chanting, “Joe Gir-ar-di!”
RELATED: The Inky gives 4 reasons why the Phils won’t fire Manuel.

Food for thought: Utley, Howard, Rollins, Hamels, and Myers are all Wade guys. Ryan Franklin, Rod Barajas, Adam Eaton, and Arthur Rhodes are all Pat Gillick guys. Oh, and Gillick traded Bobby Abreu for Matt Smith and a bag of baseballs. That one is working out well.

And I hate to complain after a win but the intricacies of the double switch once again confounded bonehead Charlie. Brett Myers batted 2nd in the 9th inning (when the game was still 6-3). That being said, I am more than happy to have the starters go 7 every game and Myers pitch the last two. Screw the middle relievers. Seriously, Myers has a strong arm.. Let him pitch the final two innings of every close game.

Barry Bonds is just 11 homers away from the record, and guess where he’s playing in about three weeks? That’s right, the Illadelph. So the question must be asked, “What would you do if you caught Bonds 755th or 756th home run?” Of course the easy answer is keep it and sell it. You’d make a couple hundred thousand, and that would great. But this is baseball, and here is your chance to become a part of baseball lore. If you were the guy who hated Bonds so much that you didn’t want the filthy money that came from that ball and threw it back onto the field, your name would live in baseball infamy forever, and certainly Philadelphia infamy forever. You would go from being some schmuck who was in the right place in the right time to being a national hero. Would anyone give that a thought, or is it all about the Benjamins?