Northeast Sports Discussion

[xzmattzx]

Cowher's probably going to the Giants, since many believe that he would like to be closer to his daughter, who plays basketball at Princeton.

A lot of people think that Coughlin was brought back just as a seat-warmer. He certainly hasn't earned the opportunity to keep the job.

[xzmattzx]

Phils are up 6-0 in the 8th, and the Mets are down 7-4 to the Marlins in the 7th. 13 K's for Cole Hamels in 8 innings. Things are looking good.

[xzmattzx]

This article from espn.com is exactly right: this stuff never happens for Philly teams.

This never happens in Philly ... but it is


PHILADELPHIA -- In Philadelphia, life is not supposed to work like this.

In Philadelphia, it's the home team that's supposed to make its own seven-game lead disappear.

In Philadelphia, it's the home team that's supposed to forget how to win at all the wrong times.

So in Philadelphia, what they're witnessing now, as life on their sporting planet turns completely upside-down, is practically an out-of-city experience.

They know that miracles happen in sports. They have heard about them. They have read about them.

Except they always happen somewhere else. Everywhere else. Or that's how it has always seemed.

In Philadelphia, life is not supposed to work like this.

On Sept. 12, the Phillies were seven games out of first place. With 17 games to play. This isn't normally how teams set the stage for their happiest ending to a season in 14 years.

But 15 days later, that seven-game Mets lead was gone. Vanished. Defunct. In 15 days. How was that possible?

And that brings us to Friday night at shocking, rocking Citizens Bank Park. That brings us to the events that transpired on the glistening green field below and the suddenly friendly out-of-town scoreboard.

Phillies 6, Nationals 0.

Marlins 7, Mets 4.

Do the math. Check those standings. They don't seem real, but they are.

Somehow, when those scores were final, it was the Phillies who led the National League East by a game, with two games left to play.

Somehow, it was the Phillies who were on the verge of pulling off that miracle that was always the specialty of someone else's house.

Somehow, it was the Phillies who had a chance to become one of those teams that people talk about for years, for decades, for centuries.

"I know that," said closer Brett Myers on Friday. "And it gives me chills to think about it. I mean, not to sound like a wimp or anything, but just seeing the fans and the way the town is lighting up, it makes you tear up, man, I mean with happiness. It's just really cool to see this happen."

This was not what Philadelphia looked like, of course, back on April 20, when this team was 4-11, just 15 painful games into such a hopeful season. More specifically, this was not what Philadelphia sounded like back then.

A 4-11 record -- now THAT was a story they were familiar with. That was a story they knew exactly how to respond to. We bet we don't even need to spell that response out for you. Do we? Let's just say it rhymed with "blue." And "zoo."


"You know what?" Myers said Friday, all these months later. "I understand. We started 4-11. We deserved to get booed. I've said it all year. It's a love-hate relationship with these people. They hate it when you do bad, but they love it when you do well. And I think this year, in this clubhouse, we understood it more. It wasn't that they were booing us because we were a bad team. They were booing us because they weren't happy with what the results were."

Those results could have buried this team, you know. That's the way it usually works. And not just in Philadelphia. That's the way it usually works everywhere.

In the 104 years since the invention of the World Series, only four teams have started a non-strike season 4-11 or worse and recovered to finish in first place -- the 1914 "Miracle" Braves, the 1951 Bobby Thomson Giants, the 1974 Pirates and the 2000 Giants.

But none of those teams had to do what this team had to do -- not just recover from 4-11, but recover from those all-but-impossible seven-out-with-17-to-play mathematics.

No team in history has ever been seven out with 17 to play and lived to tell about it in October. But one more Phillies win, one more Mets loss or two more of either finishes off that tale -- of the Mets' historic collapse, of the Phillies' historic reincarnation. Shockingly, it could be over by the time the sun sets Saturday.

Asked if his team smells that finish line now, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel replied: "Yeah. Of course we smell it. And we want it. Matter of fact, we might want it bad enough where we've got to take it easy, just relax and just play."

Hey, great plan. But how the heck does a team relax at a time like this?

The town is a giant thunderclap. The rally towels are lighting up the night. The throats are hoarse. The eyes are glazed. Something crazy is happening here -- something that has always happened to someone else. Not to this team. Not in this town.

Just 16 days earlier, this same Phillies team had gotten steamrolled by the Rockies, 12-0, in its home park. Up the turnpike, the Mets had just won for the ninth time in 11 games. The lead was seven. The future didn't exactly seem ripe for fairy tales.

Asked if he could have envisioned this same group being this close to October, barely more than two weeks later, shortstop Jimmy Rollins couldn't resist a laugh.

"Yeah," he said. "For the wild card."

Now, though, the wild card barely seems relevant anymore. Now all those insane tiebreaker scenarios barely seem relevant anymore. If the Phillies win the East, all that stuff is somebody else's problem.

Undoubtedly, much of America is going to view what's happened here as an epic suffocation by the Mets, not a miraculous resuscitation by the Phillies. But these are parallel story lines, each of them monumental on its own merits, each one dependent on the other.

Yeah, the Mets have lost 11 of 15. But the Phillies had to win 12 of 15 to make that matter.

Yeah, the Mets' pitching, defense and psyches have self-destructed. But the bigger story may be the way the Phillies' pieces have somehow magically morphed together -- even pieces that never seemed to fit all year.

All of a sudden, at almost exactly the same time that the Mets' bullpen was unraveling, a Phillies bullpen that lit bonfires for five months finally found a formula that worked -- J.C. Romero to Flash Gordon to Myers.

Half a season ago, Romero was in limbo after getting dumped by the Red Sox. And Gordon and Myers were hurting members of the all-M.I.A. team. So who could have foreseen them turning into the Phillies' version of Stanton-Nelson-Rivera at a time like this?

But here those three are, pitching just about every darned day in September. And of the 13 games this month where all three of them have stomped out of that bullpen, the Phillies have won 11 of them.


And 16 days earlier, there was no Cole Hamels around to serve as the legit No. 1 starter every team needs at times like this, either. At the time, Hamels had been out for three weeks with a sore elbow. And no one was too sure if he'd be back before 2008.

But there he was Friday night, in his third start back, practically toying with a Washington lineup that had just finished putting up 32 runs in three games at Shea Stadium.

Hamels gave up four hits to the first nine hitters he faced. Of the 21 hitters he pitched to after that, only seven even managed to put a ball in play. Thirteen of the other 14 whiffed.

"If he can keep going out there and pitching like that," said Myers, "there's not going to be anybody who's going to hit him."

Then again, the only way he can keep going out there, period, is if the Phillies tag a happy ending onto this incomprehensible script and find themselves in the playoffs for the first time since 1993.

And in Philadelphia, there is normally no reason to think that happy ending is right over the horizon, no matter how idyllic life may look at any given moment. But there's something about this group that doesn't feel like all those other Phillies teams, that doesn't play like all those other Phillies teams.

And maybe that's why this Phillies season might not end like all those other Phillies seasons.

"This is the best team I've been on. I know that," said Myers. "I know the past couple of years, we've come close. But -- and I mean no disrespect to the guys who used to play here -- it's just that now, as a unit, we're a better team. Our mentality, the way we go out there and attack the game, is: just have fun. There's no pressure. Nobody has to be a hero. We feel like you're going to be a hero if you go out and play relaxed.

"Hey, I know there's pressure, man. But we just take it as, let's just go out there and have fun, and see what we can make of this."

Huh? See what they can make of this? Heck, they can probably barely even comprehend what they have a chance to make of this.

They can make an indelible mark on baseball history, for one thing. But that's not all.

More important, at least for that town they play in, they can make a whole lot of ghosts disappear -- the ghosts of all those seasons that ended just the opposite of this one: The ghosts of 2003. And 2005. And 2006. And, especially, 1964.

In 1964, the Phillies were the team on the wrong end of the Greatest Collapse in History. Now, 43 years later, they could be just a win or two away from being the team on the right end of somebody else's Greatest Collapse in History.

In Philadelphia, life is not supposed to work like this. Everybody knows that. But apparently, this team never got that memo.

[Sabretooth]

Got my Winter Classic tickets today...

What's interesting is that all the legal disclaimer stuff on the back specifically references the New York Yankees.

[Evergrey]

not a good day for Northeastern D-1 football programs... ugh

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

not a good day for Northeastern D-1 football programs... ugh

A good day for Delaware so far. 42-7 at halftime, even if it's against lowly Monmouth.

[xzmattzx]

October baseball in hilly!!!!!

The top of the 9th to take the NL East

[TalB]

The Phillies will probably loose in the NLDS anyway.

[xzmattzx]

IT'S NOT OFFICIAL, BUT NL EAST RACE IS OVER


August 26, 2007 -- MEMO to Jimmy Rollins: The best team won.

Yes, it's still the dog days of August and the Mets have to travel to beautiful Philadelphia tomorrow, but the NL East race is over. Though the Yankees are fighting for their playoff souls, the Mets are merrily on their way to another October.

This really wasn't much of a race. Despite all the Mets problems, despite the fact they left the door wide open in the division, the Phillies and Braves have not been able to step through the portal.

So at 6:47 last night when Aaron Heilman got Luis Gonzalez to bounce into a 1-6-3 double play to give the Mets a 4-3 win over the Dodgers at sweaty Shea Stadium, the NL East race came to a close. Sure, there are magic numbers ahead and the official champagne clinching, but the Mets have no worries until October.

Even Carlos Delgado got into the act, banging a two-out, two-run-single in the fifth after Grady Little intentionally walked Jeff Conine to get to Delgado.

Though he's been frustrated by his season-long slump, Delgado said there was never any reason for him to start throwing bats or helmets, "and the fact you have a six-game lead helps," he said.

It sure does. The Mets know where they sit.

As soon as Delgado made his statement, the first baseman was reminded the Mets lead was 6 ½ games (the Braves and Phillies played last night).

"But who's counting," he said with a smile, later adding there is still a long way to go.

No there isn't. The Mets biggest challenge is to stay interested in the final five weeks of the season and to have the eye of the tiger when they get to the postseason.

Orlando Hernandez continued his magic and was brilliant for six innings before allowing back-to-back home runs in the seventh. The Mets are 9-0 in El Duque's last nine starts.

On this day the Mets didn't even have to use closer Billy Wagner, who has been used too much of late and told the team he needed a rest and to let Heilman finish the job.

Jose Reyes stole his 70th base after a leadoff single in the third, and David Wright knocked him in to put the Mets on top, 1-0. Reyes became only the second major leaguer since 2000 to notch 70 steals. Scott Podsednik stole 70 in 2004. At this rate, Reyes is likely to have the most steals since 1988 when Man of Steal Rickey Henderson swiped 93 bases for the Yankees.

Conine knocked in the Mets final run on a double to left that scored Wright in the seventh. Wright owns a ridiculous .790 on-base percentage over his last 19 plate appearances. The Mets simply have more weapons than anyone else in the East.

What the Mets were missing was a resolve to win at home. Tom Glavine, who was with the Braves when they used to be automatic division winners, noted that has changed. The Mets know they are good, even though they haven't always played like the best team.

The players will not admit that the race is over, but the Mets are confident in their abilities and have been from Day 1.

"We have the talent to win," Glavine said. "When you come off a year like we had last year and you have as much or more talent in the room the following year, you just look around and see a team that you think is a good team and a team that can win, regardless of what everybody else is doing or what other people think."

The Mets didn't think this would be a runaway like last year.

"We knew that our division was going to be tougher this year because the other two teams that we beat last year struggled, and you knew they were not going to do that again," Glavine said.

Wagner agreed.

"We just have to continue to play."

"We're in a great position," Glavine said. "All we have to do is take care of business and win our games and it doesn't matter what anybody else does."

Considering the talent disparity in the division, it never really mattered.

----------
kevin.kernan@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08262007...st_.htm?page=0

[Evergrey]

How will the Connecticut Sun do this year?

[MasonsInquiries]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

October baseball in hilly!!!!!

The top of the 9th to take the NL East

you guys are goin' up against a scrappy bunch from the rockies. don't underestimate these guys. they mean business.

[TalB]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

How will the Connecticut Sun do this year?

They lost to the Indiana Fever in the Eastern Confrence Semifinals this year two games to one.

[TalB]

Originally Posted by MasonsInquiries

you guys are goin' up against a scrappy bunch from the rockies. don't underestimate these guys. they mean business.

The Rockies are one more win away from their declaration of victory over the Phillies.

[TalB]

Was that the Phillies who got swept by the Rockies?

[xzmattzx]

At least we made the playoffs. You Mets fans will have to live with that meltdown for a very long time.

By the way, my friend was walking down 30th Street in Manhattan, where he lives, last Wednesday night. He saw David Wright walking towards him, talking to some girl. As they crossed paths, David looked up, and my friend tipped his Phillies cap and smiled at him. David Wright looked like he had seen a ghost.

[xzmattzx]

DANNY BOY IN LOOKS ONLY
New Flyer hopes to prove once again that he plays much bigger than his size


IF YOU WORKED behind the counter at a local liquor store and Danny Briere walked up with a six-pack of beer, you would be forgiven if you asked him to produce an ID. In fact, this has happened more than once to Briere, who at 30 years old could pass for a high school sophomore. Briere looks so young that when Hugh Douglas happened to run into him with Flyers teammate Mike Knuble, the former Eagles star and radio personality joked on the air that he wondered if Knuble had had his son with him.
Such playful kidding is scarcely new to the Flyers forward who has spent his whole career proving that looks can be deceiving. Ever since his parents laced him into a pair of skates at age 2, it seems as if he has always been the smallest player on the ice, a circumstance that caused him to work harder than he thinks he would have had he been blessed with a larger body. "It gave me a competitive edge," says Briere, who also had to overcome some early obstacles in his career to become one of the finest players in the NHL. By virtue of the 8-year, $52 million contract bestowed on him by the Flyers in July, Briere also has become one of the highest-paid players in the league. While he has scored three goals so far this season - including the game-winner against Calgary in his Flyers debut - he had yet to begin cultivating his customary "playoff beard."

"I am shaving twice a week now, up from once a week a few years ago," says Briere, who is listed at a generous 5-10. "So I have some time to get it going."

The evening the Phillies beat John Smoltz and the Braves to stay on the heels of the New York Mets in the National League Eastern Division, Briere donned a Phillies cap and threw out the first pitch. He signed a baseball for Atlanta outfielder Jeff Francoeur, a hockey fan who said he occasionally skated with the Thrashers, and then joined his parents, wife and three children at their seats. There, as the Phillies opened up a 6-0 lead (before eventually winning, 6-4), he became acquainted with how much fun it can be to play for a winning team in Philadelphia.

"I love how the fans are so excited by the Phillies," says Briere, seated one day last week over lunch at a South Jersey restaurant. "I want to be part of a team that people can get excited about."

Growing up in Gatineau, Quebec, it would have been easy to overlook him were it not for his impressive skills on the ice. During the cold Canadian winters, his father, Robert, would flood the back yard to form a sheet of ice. A former amateur player himself - yet, alas, too small - Robert Briere remembers that the 14 x 20-foot rink with 10-inch-high boards became a meeting place for the neighborhood kids. Briere smiles. "The first thing we did when we came home from school is play hockey," he says. "We would come in for dinner, do homework if there was any, and usually go back out again and play under the lights from the house. It was so much fun."

Whatever shortcomings Briere had physically, he had a passion for hockey that was obvious at an early age. Coach Bob Fernette coached him as a boy for 2 years and says, "He was very small but he understood how to play. And he had a fierce determination." He was so exceptional that he was invited to try out at age 14 for a midget team in northwestern Quebec, a 5-hour or so drive from his home in Gatineau, which sits across the river from Ottawa, Ontario. While his mother, Constance, expressed doubts about the idea, Briere told her he expected to be back in a week to 10 days. Briere says, "I did not think they would take me." But they did. A year later he starred for a midget team back in Gatineau and at 16 left home for good to play junior hockey with the Drummondville Voltigeurs, where in three seasons he scored 177 goals and 246 assists.

The Phoenix Coyotes drafted him in the first round (24th overall) in 1996. But while he had a fine initial year as a pro with the Springfield, Mass., Falcons and won a job with the Coyotes in training camp the following fall, he buckled under the pressure of playing in the NHL. By February 1999, he found himself back in Springfield. It was not an easy period for Briere, who remembers that the passion that had always propelled him in hockey had ebbed. When the Coyotes placed Briere on waivers in October 2000, not one of the 29 teams in the league was interested enough to pick up his $660,000 contract.

"What happened was for a little span I kind of lost my love for the game," says Briere. "Looking back on it, it was probably the worst time of my life. I was miserable. I dreaded going to the rink every day. Things were not going the way they were supposed to go. I had never faced that kind of adversity before."

He says he blamed everyone around him for his problem.

But then he looked in the mirror.

"I said to myself, 'You know what? You are the problem,' " says Briere, who says he was not physically strong enough to play in the NHL at that point. "I had always been blaming the coach or the referee or even the ice for the problems I was having. But once I realized I was the cause of them, it helped fix some of the issues I had."

To enhance his strength, Briere began a conditioning program in Canada set up by Hugo Girard, a frequent participant in strong man competitions. Until he played at the NHL level, he says he had always been able to succeed by using his speed and vision. Because of his size, he says he "always had to find a way to get the puck somehow, by being smarter or using other techniques." While he says it would have been an advantage in a certain way if he had been 6-2, he is not so sure he would have had the same drive to prove himself.

"Being smaller and younger looking forced me to be very competitive," says Briere, who spoke only French until early in his NHL career. "Because I always had to prove to people that I belonged in the NHL, or that I belonged at each level growing up. But I had to get stronger."

The Coyotes traded Briere to Buffalo for Chris Gratton in March 2003. And he began living up to the expectations he had always had for himself. In the course of three-plus seasons, he scored 92 goals and contributed 138 assists in 225 games. He was awarded a $5 million contract by an arbitrator in July 2006. And he won MVP honors at the 2007 All-Star Game with a goal and four assists. When the Sabres did not re-sign him at the end of the season, Briere found himself in some demand as a free agent. While he was under some public pressure in Canada to sign with Montreal and play in his home province, he says he was intrigued by the opportunity to play in Philadelphia, despite the fact that the Flyers were coming off their worst season ever.

"This has always been a classy organization," says Briere, who loves the idea of playing on the same line as Knuble and Simon Gagne. "Last year was an off year, but you have to look at what they have done to turn it around. Until last year they had always been a tough team to play against - always physical and their building is not an easy place to come into. Even 2 seasons ago, when [Buffalo] played them in the first round of the playoffs, the Flyers did not hand it to us. Yes, I think one of the games was 8-2, but we came out of that series banged up."

He pauses and adds, "This is the place we wanted to be, 100 percent."

And it is the place he wants to stay. While he still has close ties to Gatineau - he writes an occasional column for the local paper there during the season - he has settled in comfortably with the Flyers. He and his wife purchased a home in Haddonfield, N.J., and he says his three children love the school they are in. "We have no trouble getting them up in the morning," he says with a laugh. "We used to have to fight with them to get them out the door." When he is not playing hockey himself, he is usually watching his son play in a recreational league.

"I have been welcomed here with open arms," he says. "By the city, the organization, the other players and the fans. I could not be happier."

How well does he think the Flyers will do? Briere is optimistic. With the blend of veterans and young players that general manager Paul Holmgren has assembled, Briere senses that there is some energy in the dressing room, that the Flyers will be good this year and "for many years to come." Says Briere, "There is a big upside here."

He then adds with that boyish smile: "I just feel like the luckiest person on earth to have had the life I have had a chance to live. I have had a chance to live my dream."

Danny Briere with parents Robert (left) and Constance at recent Phillies game in which the Flyers forward threw out the first pitch.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/...OOKS_ONLY.html

[MasonsInquiries]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

...my friend tipped his Phillies cap and smiled at him. David Wright looked like he had seen a ghost.

talk about COLD!!

[xzmattzx]

We already shared pictures from Thursday night’s game, but this one’s a doozy. Via email from West Virginia’s finest, The Mighty Mighty MJD, it’s two Mountaineers defensive ends hanging on the sideline, catching a blow.

For the record, that’s senior Johnny Dingle and freshman Scooter Berry. Separately, they’re rather innocuous components of one of America’s top-five teams. Together, they form the world’s largest dingleberry, weighing in at a whopping 535 pounds.

Roster

[Sabretooth]

From George Carlin's latest CD (2005):

Another word you don't hear too often is "dingleberies." You know? You never hear it on "Meet the Press." I think it's because "dingleberries" is one of those words you don't say too much past your tenth birthday. It's not a grown-up's word; it's a kid's word. "Dingleberries!" It alaways sounded kind of Christmas-y to me. Don't you think it has a holiday ring to it? Dingleberries. "John, you might want to hang some dingleberries over the front door! Then when Mary Anne comes over, she can kiss you under the dingleberries! It is to be devoutly wished that she would kiss me... under the dingleberries."

[MasonsInquiries]

baltimore-17
buffalo-6
good 'ole willis comes back to buffalo!!!! any predictions?