Hey, the Camden Riversharks are playing at home on Thursday at 11:05 a.m. Any men or women of leisure wanna go to? Holla at me if you do. Word.

But I stayed up watching that ulcer inducing Phillies game last night that didn’t end until after 2. A 9-2 lead almost evaporated, as the Giants cut that lead to 9-7 before Alfonseca and Myers shut them down. But this victory exposed several major problems that this team has.
1) Let’s face it, Adam Eaton is exactly what we all thought he was when we got him: a giant waste of money. He is garbage, and gets shelled every time out. An $8 million dollar waste.

2) Charlie Manuel is like George Bush: A seemingly nice guy but a terrible leader. He left Eaton in too long, then, with a two run lead in the 9th and nobody out, he had the catcher steal 2nd! What???? Ruiz was thrown out by 15 feet. It was ugly. I mean, that is beyond stupid. Charlie’s got to go. We are wasting Utley and Howard playing for a guy who should be a bench coach, not a manager.

3) Speaking of Howard, he is in serious trouble. 0-5 with 4 strikeouts which is, in all honesty, probably what my statline would have been if I had played last night. He is killing team and we need to start wondering if we should move him down in the lineup.

On the bright side, we simply are winning because of one man: Jelly Roll. Without Rollins, this team would be 7-18 right now. No kidding. He is, at this point, quite possibly the NL MVP.

An injury did what our fearless manager couldn’t: took a remarkably worthless closer (this year) off the field. Charlie couldn’t move him because it would hurt his feelings, and Charlie wants to go down in history as the only manager in sports history to never hurt a single players feelings. So now, we will get Brett Myers as closer, which seems to make a hell of a lot more sense (if you had told me a month ago that Brett Myers as our closer made a hell of a lot of sense, I would have shaken you violently and told you to “snap out of it”.) Oh, and our prize off-season pick up, Freddie Garcia, totally stinks right now. But Howard and Utley have started hitting, so I’m hoping we’re gonna get back on track. And how many close games are we gonna lose to the freaking Braves? Geesh.
Related: Inky writer Jim Salisbury blasts Phillies for lying.

-A recent study by a couple of guys, one of them from Wharton, has come to the conclusion that white refs in the NBA don’t call as many fouls on white guys as on black guys.

-Did you know that there was a White Men Can’t Jump video game, and that it is widely considered to be one of the worst video games ever produced?

-Here is a list of the 20 funniest white boy basketball players ever.

If so, could they get back to me and explain it?

Maybe all it took was Charlie Manuel going after Howard Eskin for this team to turn it around, but they have been hitting the tar out of the ball ever since. Which leaves a couple of questions. Shoud they move Rollins back, since he is leading the NL in homers, so he can start hitting homers with runners on? Should they trade Aaron Rowan while he’s hot? Is Pat the Bat really as good as he looks? And will Matt Smith ever play in a major league game again? Your thoughts, concerns? Oh, and even better news: the Braves totally choked last night, in one of those games that can really start a team on a slump. Let’s hope so.
RELATED: Beerleaguer weighs in on Phils game last night.

…but the Phillies are 3-0 since Scrapplefest.

I’ve been watching baseball for 25 years, and yet I saw two things for the first time ever live this weekend. On Saturday, I went to original Nick’s Roast Beef (20th and Jackson) to watch the Phils game after being infuriated by Trash Gordon on Friday night. I was with Mike of the Minions. In the bottom of the fifth, the Reds got men on first and second with nobody out. Then one of the craziest things that has ever happened in my life occurred. Ploddingly slow David Ross stepped to the plate. Mike turns to me and says, I swear to God, “Well this is the one guy on their team who is so slow he could hit into a triple play.” On the next pitch, David Ross hit into a 5-4-3 triple play. I totally freaked. “No way!” I screamed “No freaking way.” The people in the restaurant, several of whom weren’t watching the game, turned and looked at me like I was crazy. It was the first time I had ever seen a triple play live, and Mike had called it. Then, on Sunday night, the Red Sox pull off back to back to back to back home runs, something I had ever seen live and the first time it had happened in the American League since 1964. I’m going to the game tonight, and we’re gonna kill the Astros, as long as we don’t bring Trash into the game.

Wow, things are really getting nutty now. Charlie Manuel reportedly challenged Howard Eskin to a fight last night. Now had he actually fought Eskin and beaten his ass, we would clamoring for the Phils to sign Charlie to a lucrative extension. But instead there was just some yelling and, at the end of the day, all we have is the second worst team in the majors (only the Royals, who my intramural softball team beat a few weeks ago, are worse) and Howard Eskin still on the air.

I have to admit, I like Charlie, and this makes me like him even more (We’re both from VA, so that makes us peoples). And it’s not his fault that the only player on this team that can hit is the one we were most worried about (Pat the Bat) and that if you sent up a decent junior high team against major league pitching I really don’t think they would do worse than .200 with runners in scoring position. But the fact is that he’s not a good National League manager, and I can’t understand why the Phillies will yet again let the best available manager get signed by someone else while we sit on our thumbs and get worse and worse. You would have thought we would have learned when we let Jim Leyland go. Yet Joe Girardi continues to announce games, will get signed eventually, and turn some team around. But hey, look at the bright side: since we are trailing every game by the 5th inning, we haven’t even really had to deal with our biggest weakness, the bullpen. So the $64,000 question is: Will Charlie make it out of April?