PHILADELPHIA -- Mike Alvarez is a lifelong Philadelphian with a Cole Hamels haircut and a vintage maroon Phillies cap who spent his Sunday in a parking lot. Alvarez didn't have tickets to the Eagles-Giants game in the afternoon. He didn't have tickets to the Phillies-Yankees World Series game at night. What he did have was a parking space for his truck, a seemingly bottomless supply of beer and enough slightly slurred wisdom to know that there was no place he would have rather been than this particular parking lot on this particular day, surrounded by his fellow Eagles and Phillies fans.
"They got flat-screens over there," Alvarez said, waving his beer can in the direction of a nearby RV. "Everybody's grilling food. I've made a ton of new friends. What more could you want?"
You can look at Cliff Lee's pitching line from Wednesday night's Game 1 win against the Yankees and know that he pitched well. During the game, though, you didn't need to do anything more than catch a closeup of Lee's face to know that he was in a serious groove. All game he wore the look of the guy who knew that he had his best stuff working and that he wasn't afraid who knew it.
If the look on the face or the darts he was throwing didn't convince you, there was always this play:
We're through the first two days of the baseball season so I figure it's about time we start talking about the World Series. Who you have going? I think it's pretty obvious after two games that both the Blue Jays and Marlins are going to go 162-0 and are on a collision course for October, though this opinion may be a bit premature. Still, MLB and Fox Sports are already talking about the World Series.
A high school football coach in suburban Philadelphia gave nine of his players the boot after they defied his orders not to skip school by attending the Phillies championship parade last Friday. Not surprisingly, the decision has generated a lot of negative attention, especially when you consider attendance at all public high schools in Philly was down 20 percent the day of the parade.
What's the harm in letting the kids have a little fun, right? Surely the coach is on an unfortunate power trip ... right?
Before you make a knee-jerk reaction, consider this: the kids were forced to sit out Friday's game due to the local high school association rules, which presumably states a student is ineligible to participate in an event if he didn't attend school that day -- a common rule that a lot of high schools enforce.
You'll have to excuse Chase Utley here. After all, winning a World Series is pretty awesome, and when you get to celebrate that achievement in front of all your fans, sometimes the emotion can get the best of you.
So what if your celebratory rally is being broadcast on live television throughout Philadelphia, sometimes you really need that F-bomb to drive your point home. Oh, and the video is NSFW if you haven't figured that out already.
Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske to record the final out in the World Series last night. Maybe he wasn't concentrating enough at the plate because he was worrying whether or not to start Ryan Grant this week. Grant did just finally have a productive fantasy game and is coming off a bye week, but they are facing the vaunted Tennessee run defense. Man, what should I - STRIKE THREE!
No, seriously -- CBS Sports is running a fantasy football league with with 13 major league players. B.J. Ryan is apparently dominating right now, running his record to a spotless 8-0 thus far. Hinske, who is said to be a "fantasy football addict", is facing off against Lidge this weekend, coincidentally. Both sport 3-5 records and need the win badly to stay relevant.
No word on if Maddux plays mind games with opponents, or if Hafner drafted a bunch of guys who ended up injured. I am sure Wright's 5-3 record is bound to get worse as the playoffs approach, though (zing!).
Brad Lidge struck out Eric Hinske to record the final out in the World Series last night. Maybe he wasn't concentrating enough at the plate because he was worrying whether or not to start Ryan Grant this week. Grant did just finally have a productive fantasy game and is coming off a bye week, but they are facing the vaunted Tennessee run defense. Man, what should I - STRIKE THREE!
No, seriously -- CBS Sports is running a fantasy football league with with 13 major league players. B.J. Ryan is apparently dominating right now, running his record to a spotless 8-0 thus far. Hinske, who is said to be a "fantasy football addict", is facing off against Lidge this weekend, coincidentally. Both sport 3-5 records and need the win badly to stay relevant.
No word on if Maddux plays mind games with opponents, or if Hafner drafted a bunch of guys who ended up injured. I am sure Wright's 5-3 record is bound to get worse as the playoffs approach, though (zing!).
From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.
You've hopefully heard the news by now. The Philadelphia Phillies are the World Series champions of baseball after knocking off the heavily favored Tampa Bay Rays.
The other night, during a live chat, I mentioned something about how the die-hard Phillies fans deserve this more than the Rays fans. It's a slippery slope to be sure, and likely just a bad choice of words, to say something like this. Frankly, no fan deserves anything. We voluntarily spend our time and money on these teams, and probably care way too much about them -- if you ask the majority of Americans. That's the thing, though, we die-hards know this and embrace it.
You want to know why I said the fans of Philly deserve it more? Because they've had more suffering. The only reason a fan puts himself/herself through the ringer for six months every season is the hope that there will eventually be some sort of payoff. The fans of Philadelphia had been waiting for another one since 1980. The Rays didn't even come into existence until 1998.
After a 46-hour rain delay, the Philadelphia Phillies finally finished off the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 of the World Series with a 4-3 win to clinch the 2008 World Series. They got lead off doubles from Geoff Jenkins in the sixth and Pat Burrell in the seventh and both runs came home to score, which gave them the edge after the restart in the sixth inning at 2-2.
It's their first World Championship since the 1980 World Series and Philly's first title in any sports since 1983. It's likely that Phillies' fans could care less if Peter Gammons thinks the rainout made this the worst World Series ever. Cole Hamels didn't get the win, but he did pick up the MVP award for the Series thanks to his two solid starts in Games 1 and 5.
As for the Rays, well, every key player should be back from their 97-win team that came awfully close to winning the World Series. They're incredibly young and the sky is the limit for many of their players. They're in an awfully tough division, but they're not going back to the punchline that they used to be.
Two days after it was suspended, the 2008 World Series is finally continuing. If you can think way back to Monday, the Phillies and Rays are tied at 2-2 going in to the bottom of the sixth inning. It's still cold in Philly tonight, but the rain seems to have passed and that means that we're going to have baseball tonight. Given the situation, with the Phillies having an extra at-bat at a 3-1 lead in the series, we might even have a celebration.
This is an unprecedented happening in baseball, which means that we've got a full slate of FanHousers here to detail the proceedings in tonight's live chat. There's no pregame show, but I'm going to open the chat up around 8:15 to take some pregame questions get the ball rolling early. The 188th pitch should be coming from Grant Balfour (Ryan Madson is "starting" for the Phils) shortly after 8:30 PM EST, so join us after the jump for the conclusion of Game 5 and anything that happens afterwards.
We're through the first two days of the baseball season so I figure it's about time we start talking about the World Series. Who you have going? I think it's pretty obvious after two games that both the Blue Jays and Marlins are going to go 162-0 and are on a collision course for October, though this opinion may be a bit premature. Still, MLB and Fox Sports are already talking about the World Series.
A high school football coach in suburban Philadelphia 
