As the sun sets...

Welcome, Deadspin readers.

I'm off to refill my batteries. The freaks come out at night, and before tonight ends, I predict (another) riot.

And a few last ones

And the Obama chants have started!

Camera totally out of batteries, too bad cause there's some hilarious drunken costumed revelers out there still. Broad Street still totally shut down, and the radio is reporting that the players can't even get off the parade buses to get into the ballpark for the celebration, cause there are too many thousands of people mobbing the buses.

For the last two minutes, directly outside my window, a drunken fool has been standing down a slow-moving firetruck, Tienanmen Square style.

And more...

More...

Live from Broad and Spruce

Here's what's going on outside my window right now.

We did us!

So that happened.

Last night was nuts. More, including photos and eyewitness accounts from Broad and Locust, later today I hope.

Eamus, Illaphi!

No need to put your words into my mouth

Don't need convincing at all

I love this place enough to know I have no doubts

Whoa

It's a mess, it's a start

It's a flawed work of art

Your city, your call

Every crack, every wall.

Pick a side, pick a fight

Get your epitaph right

You can sing, 'til you drop

'Cause the fun never stops

Oh, and fuck Bud Selig too.

“That (expletive deleted) guy,” one pitcher said as he saw commissioner Bud Selig before walking out the back door of the clubhouse. “I wouldn’t let him supervise one of my (bowel movements). He has no clue. Not one (expletive deleted) clue.”

-Michael Radano (h/t 700 level).

in which Alex channels his anger at last night's game at a local sportswriter

Let's take a page from the peerless Fire Joe Morgan, and dissect Bill Conlin's column (at least the first half of it) this morning.

Bill Conlin: On a rainy night in Philly, MLB drops the ball

By Bill Conlin Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Sports Columnist
'ONE DAY it started raining, and it didn't quit for four months. We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain . . . and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.'' - Forrest Gump, describing Vietnam rain

Yes sir. Very timely reference there. Continue, please.

It began during Rays batting practice, a fine mist with the texture used to moisten indoor plants wilting from low humidity.

These plants wouldn’t happen to be in your living room, where you’re currently typing, would they?

Then it increased - in dribs and drabs, so to speak - to what I fondly call "Chub Feeney Rain."

I’ve already got a Chub Feeney for this column.

It is rain substantial enough to cause umbrellas to pop open in the stands.

Spontaneously, and on their own. I for one welcome our new umbrella overlords.

And play they did. Or at least they got in five and a half disgrace-tainted innings. It was in the low 40s when Cole Hamels delivered his first pitch to Rays leadoff hitter Akinori Iwamura. A keening wind hammered at his well-stretched back.

Bill Conlin has a Chub Feeney for Cole Hamels.

Before the game went totally to watery hell, Shane Victorino ripped a bases-loaded single in the first for a 2-0 lead off lefthander Scott Kazmir.

I picture watery hell as kind of like a sewer, only crowded. Your boatman is Tim McCarver.

Rays first baseman Carlos Pena arose from his profound lumber slumber with a fourth-inning double off the fence in right high enough to bring rain - were it not already raining.

When lumber slumber strikes, ask your doctor about Cialis.

Fellow slumper Evan Longoria sliced the Phils' lead in half with a single to left that raised a rooster tail of spray aquaplaning to Pat Burrell.

WTF?

And by the bottom of the inning and with the KPHL Doppler radar showing that South Philly was on the edge of a curtain of moderate rain - stinging rain, thanks to the blustery wind pushing it - half the crowd was waving rally towels, half was drying their faces with them. Not even Forrest Gump himself would play in that kind of weather.

Forrest Gump, however, was not a baseball player. He was a soldier. And soldiers don’t really get to choose the conditions in which they “play”. Hence the term, “soldier on”, which is precisely what the players, the umps, and the fans did. Also… “curtain of moderate rain”? That’s one hell of an oxymoron there. If, someday, I find myself in “watery hell”, I’m gonna be one disappointed damned soul if the rain is only moderate.

Kazmir walked Ryan Howard and Burrell, then left with a pitch count of 103. Longoria stood uncomfortably in a growing puddle behind third base.

Like a child, abandoned by his father at the tender age of 9, waiting for a school bus that he has already missed.

The basepaths were turning into glop. The mound was a skating rink.

Rain + dirt = glop ≠ ice. Try again.

An army of ground-crew ants scurried out with bags of quick-dry clay and tried to stem Mother Nature's onslaught.

Wait, this is Mother Nature’s fault? I thought it was Chub Feeney’s? I’m so confused.

Phillies fan and climatologist extraordinary (sic) Joe Bastardi

Yes, this is actually the guy’s name. In a world of Storm Phoenixes and Hurricane Schwartz, Joe Bastardi stands alone.

had fired off an angry 6:30 p.m. update to his blog on AccuWeather's professional site under the headline: "Cancel the Game Tonight."
Bastardi wrote there was no way in hell or Sea World the rain would let up.

Apparently, Sea World is now some sort of weather control machine. At last, we can harvest the arcane power of dolphins to mist our houseplants! Bwa-hahahaha!

Indeed, a rapidly developing coastal storm off the Mid-Atlantic States had slowed the progress of a massive upper low funneling cold air across the Great Lakes.

I am 100% certain that this sentence is directly plagiarized from some online weather reportage site.

Result: The worst weather fiasco in World Series history and another stain on the boobs who run the cash-obsessed national pastime.

I’m not so sure… the midge game in the 2007 ALDS might have this one beat. Or, you know, the 1989 world series, if earthquakes and insect infestations count as weather.

Bastardi's take: "Cancel the game tonight, and even tomorrow, and then play this when it's warmer, less windy and there is not precip in the air. It's the World Series, for goodness sakes . . . "

Um, like when, May? This is Philly. Rain, 40 degrees, and windy is the best we’re gonna do for the next six months.

Tell that to the used-car salesman running baseball and a Fox network paranoid over the prospect of being forced to play a Friday night makeup game, when America is off watching high school football in thousands of towns.

High school football: ruining America’s pastime one Friday at a time. Look, when you’re this concerned about the effect that a high school sport will have on your sport’s championship, your sport has already lost.

With two outs in the sixth, a trained seal named Hamels was pitching while surrounded by an infield closer to an Everglade than major league.
Now Conlin has a Chub Feeney for seals. Someone alert PETA.

Moyer can us

In case you needed another reason to love Jamie Moyer.

"Our toilet seat should go to the Hall of Fame."

We Can Us

Best play ever.

PS - Joe Maddon, you know you're allowed to let Price pitch, right? Like, he's sitting right there. He brought his glove and everything.

This is NOT beginning to feel like the dawn of a loser forever

Ok, here we go. 1 hour before game 1 starts, and I find myself joining my adopted Philly brethren as a total nervous wreck. My love for the Phillies is what it is: Confused, two-timing, and different, yet there it remains. While I don't feel the attachment to them that I have to the Yankees, the altered reality that has been Philadelphia this October has rubbed off on me. All of a sudden, Philly seems like a place where everything isn't always content with being just good enough. We don't always have to lose. I find myself dreaming about scenarios where this attitude is brought to bear on the city's real problems: corruption, filth, poverty, violence, despair.

Maybe I'm putting too much on the shoulders of athletes. But in a city where the new (in every sense of the word) Mayor is raffling off his box seats, I feel, for the first time in all my years here, a sense that anything is possible. The audacity of hope, if you will.

In lieu of any attempt at rational analysis, I'll simply say this:



(Thanks PhillyPhellas, via Daulerio)

Now THIS is marketing

Big ups to the marketing wizards at Philly.com, for meeting the massive public need for Chase Utley masturbatory aids.




Junior Chase's Chicks across the 5 county area are rejoicing this morning.

WS, the DH, and David Price

So, the Phillies date is set with the Rays, starting Wednesday night.
I can unequivocally say that I have never felt anywhere near this excited about a series that doesn't involve los junkees. The Phillies are awesome, Philadelphia is awesome, and made even more so when the Phillies are awesome. Yes, get used to that level discourse, as I am utterly incapable of rational analysis of the Phillies right now. I have tickets to game 3, in Philly Saturday, and will be witnessing postseason baseball in person for the first time. Ever. Suffice to say that I have never seen anything in Philadelphia like last Wednesday night, when they closed out the NLCS. Check it (first video - and note the brief celebrity couple sighting). Philadelphia fans can be positive. Who knew?

So... on to the analysis...

Lots of hemming and hawing around Philadelphia this week, about what to do in the World Series games in Tampa, where they will have to appoint a DH. Against left handed pitchers, the choice is pretty clear - Greg Dobbs, or Jenkins (with Dobbs playing 3B). Against righties, it's really unclear - possibly the 30 year 0ld rookie, Chris Coste (which should also involve adding a 3rd catcher just in case).


Anyway, Philly writers are all aflutter with the possibilities, and of course some are using this moment to break out the anti-DH soapbox. While I find these arguments tired and pretentious (nautral beauty of the game? fuck you), I find myself agreeing with their position more and more over the years, even if I hate the way they build their case.


More importantly, this remarkably useless column led me to a totally fascinating story about how the DH was voted down in the NL, which I had never heard:


"At least real baseball is still alive in the National League, and for that, we can thank former Phillies owner Ruly Carpenter, who was fishing on the Atlantic Ocean one day in 1977 when the DH came up for a vote among the NL teams. (The American League had begun playing with a designated hitter in 1973.)

Carpenter instructed then-executive vice president Bill Giles, who would be representing the Phillies at the meeting, to vote in favor of adding the designated hitter in the National League. The Phillies had two very good hitters in the organization, Greg Luzinkski and minor-leaguer Keith Moreland, neither one of whom could catch a cold.

"But when I got to the meeting, I was informed that even if it passed, the DH would not become effective until the [following] season because the players' union had to approve it," Giles said, in the book Change Up: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball.

"The National League needed seven votes [out of 12] to pass the DH. There were six teams in favor and four against when the vote came around to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh," Giles said. "Harding Peterson, general manager of Pittsburgh, was told by owner John Galbraith to vote the same way as the Phillies because the teams were big rivals at the time. I tried to reach Ruly by phone but was told that he was out on the ocean fishing."
Not sure if the year's delay would affect Carpenter's opinion, Giles abstained, which counted as a no vote, and so did the Pirates. The addition of the DH was defeated by a single vote. It was never brought up for vote again."


I'm so proud to live in Pennsylvania.


Also: David Price was absolutely tits last night. If he's going to sling around fastballs and his own testicles with that kind of dominance, holy shit, the AL East is in serious fucking trouble. I'm a little afraid of how much affection I have for Price. He looks like a cuddler, that Price. I like that, I like to be held, I like to be pampered. Wait, what?

See You Next Trainingcamp

A tradition unlike any other... Papelbon making a joyous ass of himself.



Now that we've served the hot dog, time for some relish.

In short... this is just as good as 2004, but also nothing at all like 2004. They're opposite halves of the same coin: one year they did it when nobody thought they would, and one year they did it when everyone thought they should.

This championship was so exceedingly normal that there is no excuse, period, for further reference to collapses and whatnot. The Red Sox franchise is for real, and they're not going anywhere for quite a while.

So who else is coming to the parade? Lehr, you in?

One last thought: fuck you, Scott Boras, for ruining the 8th inning. Die in a fire. (Hey, there was already a DIAF tag! Wonder what's in there...)