My Sick Mind

Today was parade day in Philadelphia. The World Champion Philadelphia Phillies boarded flatbed trucks and made the slow trip down Broad Street to the ballpark, where 40,000 fans waited to see them. The parade started at 12:20 and they didn't get to the ballpark until well after 4:00, two hours behind schedule. How they could make a schedule is anyone's guess, since most of the 2 or 3 million people who came to Philly would wind up on Broad Street. There were a few glitches in the area of public transit, but if you came from New Jersey it mostly involved waiting in long lines to get on the train. This is the inside of the Lindenwold station of the PATCO Hi-Speed line at 9:20am. We had to wait in line 45 minutes just to get to the ticket machine. Thankfully, a train left every 6 minutes and, since this is the start of the line the train was empty when we got in. Three stops later, however, it was clogged full of people to the extent that the conductor was telling people that th...

A beautiful new Reese's cup, ripe off the vine. They grow on vines. He eats around the outside, taking the chocolate and leaving the delicious peanut butter center. Then ... poof! It's gone. All the delicious peanut buttery goodness in one big bite. Yummers. Now, say a a little silent prayer for me as tomorrow I venture to Broad Street for the big Phillies World Series parade. I will also be at Citizen's Bank Ballpark with a primo seat 5 rows behind the visitor's dugout. Photos and text to follow.

A special greeting to those of you who stopped by here between 11:00pm last night and early this morning expecting to see some cheery baseball talk, but instead found a half-naked woman and an essay about sex. This isn't a baseball blog. Now, the people of this city can stop talking nonsense about curses, statues of William Penn and other superstitions. They can stop thinking about how it will never happen in their lifetimes and how all the teams do here is lose. Even the functional moron who runs Major League baseball couldn't screw it up. Last night's movie-length baseball [quote] game [unquote] was a made-for-TV spectacular that started in prime time and ended early enough for the local news to send their reporters to the street to try to interview people who mostly screamed and waved their arms in joy. For some reason, among the jumping players and screaming fans after Brad Lidge's final pitch, I found time to focus on the people from Major League Baseball who ...

We're always out for the quick buck. However we can do it. Whether it's selling Phillies paraphernalia or trying to sell some junk on TV that people watching TV are convinced they want. What we're about is the buck. T he easiest way, and the way most people won't talk about is the sex way. It takes several forms. One is the Sarah Palin form. The form that says that the electorate (you and I) will fall for the pretty face, and the prettiest face we can trot out there will balance with the old guy, thereby guaranteeing our vote. We are witnessing the destruction of that idea I hope. The tried and true idea is that sex sells. It sells in the generic sense at least. In politics we want a little more than sex, but in real life we'll settle for sex. Sex is an easy road because men will almost always fall for form over substance, and the sex angle falls right in. It's easy to sell sex to guys, especially on the Internet, and the forum has made it especially easy to...

Phillies fan and climatologist extraordinary Joe Bastardi 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." At 6:30 p.m., rain was falling without a break from the Carolinas through Central Pennsylvania at an intensity and coverage that was rapidly expanding. And why did a crew of umpires that has performed at a rookie-league level throughout the Series wait until the Rays tied it, 2-2, in the top of the sixth to order the ground crew to cover the partially submerged infield? - Bill Conlin, Philadelphia Daily News, 10/28/2008 Tuesday night in October. The 45-degree temperature matches the wind speed. We're stuck in some sort of sports time machine where games take days to play and the complaining lasts longer. There is snow in the forecast for Wednesday and the paranoia for the local baseball team is so thick you could cut it with Bud Selig's rule book. Welcome to Philadelphia. We...

I went to evening classes at Widener for 8 years, and for the greater part of that time I had a class on Monday night. The biggest issue was when the Eagles were on Monday Night Football. Some students would cut-out at 8:15 (or during our first break) to get home to see the game. I always thought it was short-sighted, since the education was the thing. Tonight, I'm sure there is a class going on and I'm wondering if the profs have a heart and just cancelled class, figuring that nothing is going to be accomplished anyway. Yesterday, before I left, one of the local stations was running the original NBC broadcast of the Phillies' 1980 World Series game 6. The thing that always strikes me about those old broadcasts is how simple the broadcast is. There isn't the constant barrage of junk on the screen, the graphics are simple and they don't replay every play. Now, there are replays of balls and strikes, baserunning and tons of shots of the dugout and the fans. In 198...

It's 2:25am and I'm just now waddling in from the Phillies game. It was a long day, of sorts. It started at The Field House, a sports bar in Philadelphia, where I watched the Eagles game with a random acquaintance who happened to be a pilot for FedEx. So, of course, I had to ask the necessary questions about "Cast Away" and all that. As it turns out, the general opinion of the FedEx pilots of the film isn't all that positive, especially the scene where the navigator comes washing on shore. That wasn't taken very well at the Memphis hub. Generally speaking, no FedEx plane could go down in any area without the FedEx people knowing where it is, so that much we know is bullshit - but the film is a hundred years old by now, so I guess I'm nitpicking. The Phillies slaughtered the Tampa Bay Rays 10-2, and even after an afternoon of Eagles football and drinking, I could appreciate the effort. It was an evening of high-fiving friends and strangers, hugging peo...

As faithful readers with good memories know, I'm headed off to game 4 of the World Series today. Since there is a The Who concert at the Wachovia Center at 7:30pm and an Eagles game at Lincoln Financial Field at at 1:00pm, the sports complex will be a quagmire [a difficult, precarious or entrapping position]. Giggity giggity goo. Because of that (or in spite of it) I am going out of my way to take two trains to the ballpark. In the meantime, I'll be stopping at a local pubbery to watch the Eagles game before hitting the second train to the ballpark for the real event of the day. It sounds like an inconvenience, but it may actually wind up being a good day. Go figure. The official word is that the city wants Eagles fans to vacate the premises immediately after the game, but they like to tailgate and hang around to wait for the traffic to thin out. Question: If everyone waits for traffic to thin out, does it ever thin out? I'm thinking that the police will have to go dow...