The Sporting Philadelphian

Deal of the Century

Unless you're in Iraq, or under a rock as the case may be, you've doubtless heard the news that the Phillies have locked up Ryan Howard through his remaining arbitration years. The three-year contract, which is worth $54 million, even includes added performance bonuses for things like World Series MVP, and Gold Glove award, honors for which the Phillies would gladly pay. This is a great day for Howard, the Phillies' organization and, most importantly, the Phillies' swollen legions of fans. Anyone who disagrees with me about this is flat-out wrong. Let me count the ways:

The Phillies have locked up their core for the next few years. This is very important, and was not at all a certain proposition. As the Phillies handed the reins to Ruben Amaro, he faced a fairly tough set of problems. While the Phillies have just won the club's first championship in a very, very long time, the team won the championship was built with a lot of home-grown talent; the Phillies benefitted from MVP-caliber seasons from Howard and very good seasons from Hamels without having to pay free-agency money for them. Sooner or later, push was coming to shove. Howard wanted to get paid, but he struck out a ton, was really, really streaky, and a bit on the beefy side as well. What, you wondered, would happen if his knees started to go, a couple of years into a megacontract? The Phillies, who probably wouldn't have meandered down this hypothetical path in the first place, would have to eat a bunch of money, and would probably be dissuaded from paying a talent again for the forseeable future. Same goes for Hamels. Was his back really that strong? Did he have it in him? Or was he as fragile as he looked? Would the Phillies even make an effort to sign them? Would they just be traded away once the bill came?

Phillies fans have reason to feel this way. In their recent history, the Phillies have had a bumper crop of very successful, homegrown players, and have done a good job of holding on to their bluest chips. Under Ed Wade this was a problem. Schilling cut his teeth in Philly, going from an erratic talent to a top-tier pitcher who was, as the saying goes, "a horse on the mound every five days, and a horse's ass the other four." Schilling was not coddled, was surrounded by a thoroughly incompetent ballclub, and jumped ship, demanding to be traded so loudly that Eddie Wade took Travis Lee and his unfilled Lexapro prescription, 19 game loser Omar Daal, Amaury Telemaco's wasted roster spot and some other pitcher whose name I can't even remember, just to be rid of him. Isn't it great to remember Travis Lee with bitter nostalgia rather than simmering rage? I vote yes. God he was awful. I remember this one time... oh, to Hell with it. You don't even want to remember. Just a bit later, there was the strikingly similar Rolen fiasco, when Scott was surrounded with Bowa, Dallas Greene, and WIP, all raising a brouhaha, saying "take our money or else!" and he couldn't get to St. Louis fast enough. He took his glove and bat, too. This was not, in retrospect, an intelligent and constructive way to handle talent.

But now, things have changed. Things have really changed, haven't they? The Phillies, in my estimation, have five players that are pretty much indispensable. Five keystones. Utley, Howard, Hamels, Lidge and Rollins are the Phillies' backbone right now. They are all, to a man, signed and happy. One could say: "Hey, they are coming off of a championship, and they are being paid handsomely. They ought to be happy." This is true. But do me a favor and look around baseball, and tell me how many teams won World Series in the crazy free agency period, and kept their core together, without much ado, without drama. Boston didn't, either last year or in 2004. The Marlins couldn't or wouldn't pay guys in 2003. In 2005, the White Sox won with a team that was built for that year. In 2006, the Cardinals won with their worst team in several years, dealing with Rolen controversy, a ton of injury craziness and a Tigers team that laid an egg, possibly in repayment for the Cardinals' similarly bad performance in 2004. Anaheim has gone through a bunch of roster changes after winning in 2002, and the Diamondbacks seemed to shed their scales after winning in 2001, and were playing a roster of young guys in 2002. The Yankees are never controversy-free, and buy everything anyway. I think you've got to go back to the mid-90s Braves and the (aaargh) Blue Jays to find teams who grew a core of great players, locked up the good ones well, and then proceeded to go about their business as usual. This is really a remarkable achievement by the Phillies, a wonderful dessert course after the salad days of October, and they ought to be recognized for it. The team won, the fans came, the owners paid the bill to keep it going. This doesn't happen much. Enjoy it.

Let's take a closer look at what this means. Coupled with the Hamels deal last month, Amaro has locked up the last two Phillies superduperstars. These deals come after Rollins was signed to a five year deal in 2005, at the tail end of Wade's tenure, which includes a club option for 2011, Lidge was signed through 2011, and Utley, correctly identified as the most-solid long-term bet, was signed through 2013 before the 2007 season. So, of the five most-important Phillies, four are locked up for three more years, and Utley, the crown-jewelled fulcrum of the Phillies' franchise, is under reasonable contract for five years. The Phillies have put themselves in position to be a winning team in the present.

Looking at the rest of the roster, the Phillies under Gillick seem to have set up the roster to dispose of contracts immediately prior to, or with, the end of the 2011 season. Ibanez' deal ends after 2011. So does Ryan Madson's. Moyer, Romero and Werth's contracts are up after 2010. Myers' contract ends after next season, as does Feliz', and Victorino, Blanton and Ruiz all signed 1-year deals to avoid arbitration. So, the Phillies have given themselves a large degree of flexibility here. Prior to the end of the 2011 season, the Phillies will face a decision about what to do in the future, with four large, expiring contracts approaching. The Phillies can choose to resign players, to let them go, to trade them, to do what seems reasonable. This is tough to forecast, as he picture will of course look much clearer then than it does now, but, barring injury or an unforseen tumble from greatness, the team is set to have three more years with a good, solid core, and the Phillies have not committed any contract errors or wild free agency plunges to get there. If the willingness to put out a $130 million team next year is any indication, they ought to have enough money to put out a quality team along with the core for the time being, the economy permitting. I think that the front office has done about as well as a fan base can ask for here.

This is really something. I've been a Phillies fan since I went to a game on my Dad's birthday when I was four, or so. Maybe five. They played the Padres. I kind of believed, I know I hoped, that one day I could open the paper, look at the sports page, know the Phillies were champions, know that the front office would do what it took, within reason, to keep it that way, and know that had I stuck it out, that I had been rewarded for my faith. Now, with pitchers and catcher reporting in less than a week, that day is here.

I have avoided this. I have sat in front of my computer, curled up, fetally, and gazed with bleak despair, I've questioned the existence of Howard Eskin, I've eaten Tastykake, I've become overtly, haggard. But no more. No more dilatory avoidance, no shirking of a blogger's duties to his fanbase. No excuses. But first, a primal roar: "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaahahahaha...."

Oh, jeez. Why, oh why do they do it? Why do our bumbling birdmen blow the damned opportunities they are given, after rising from the ashes to engage our hope and guarantee our interest and love captivity for life? Why do we do this?

I thought that I could watch McNabb grow. I thought that the years I had put in, watching McNabb scramble up to the cusp of greatness, watching him make the most of things, watching him come damned close so many times, I thought that I would see him take advantage of this year's weak playoff field, and come out a legend in this town. There were signs of this. McNabb had been on one hell of a run. He had blown up the Cowboys to get into the playoffs, and had done what needed to be done in Minnesota. He was facing the same quarterback he'd faced in his first NFC Championship game oh so many years ago, and he looked ready to me. I thought he could pull a Manning (either payton of Eli apply here) and cement his playoff reputation with one hot stretch.  But gosh I was wrong.

Say what you will about the end of the game, and much has been said, the fact of the matter is that it isn't really important that Curtis was held. This isn't the issue, and it obfuscates the point. McNabb's Eagles have always lacked the killer instinct, that extra gear to become great. This is true. It has been true for years now. The question is wether or not McNabb can find it. I don't know.

I think, at a point, and we are at this point, past it even, you accept what you have in a quarterback, and you know that you have reached the envelope of his skill and capabilities. You can push him no farther. McNabb, we now know, as we have all suspected, cannot put a team on his back and win it all without another weapon or weapons on the offensive side of the ball. The one season he had help, we ran into one of the best teams of the past two decades, and damn near walked away champions.

I thoughthe could do it. Before that last drive, there was that dumb Manning commercial, where he agrees that he is going down, he won't choke, that he will take that hike. I thought it was a sign-potentially. I was wrong. Where do you go from there?

Much has changed in Sixertown since last they have been discussed here. When last we spoke of them, the Sixers were a deeply dysfunctional rabble whose marquee free-agent had the unfortunate effect of pushing everyone else out of their accustomed roles, a team whose very identity was in question, a team that, in firing a coach who was a class act and a gentleman, seemed to be dodging essential questions about how to play the game as a unit. Were they a running team who, in the most significant free agency acquisition since Moses Malone, maxed out on a lumbering free agent mistake? Or had they simply not figured out how to run the offense with a big, brawny bear clogging the lane?

It was at this juncture, with these questions very much up in the air, that Cheeks was shown the door. I wrote at the time that this was a shame, that the classy thing to do would have been to give Cheeks a slightly longer leash, to show him some more faith. I was very unsold on the idea of giving the reins to some dude named DeLillo, who seemed to have some serious Randy Ayers potential, and I fretted that the only thing there was to do was to trade Young, and hope for the best. And then the Sixers all read my column, got all pissed off, and went out and started playing excellent basketball. Well, I feel like a jackass, thanks for asking. But, as we all know, the truth is never that simple.

There might, in some alternate universe, be some thread of reality where Brand stayed healthy, the Sixers gelled under their new coach, and this recent run of incredibly good play came with no elephants in the room. This is not that universe, and the elephant in question is named Elton.

No one seems to know quite what to make of the imminent return of Elton Brand. The reasons for this uncertainty abound. In this recent run of good basketball, the team has played with a new sense of purpose and tenacity, with real abandon. Watching the team clobber the Spurs, I found myself feeling that watching the team, a chore such a little time ago, had become a joyous exercise of being delighted by successive tough defense, well-run fast breaks, heads-up plays, and the dramatically improved and more dynamic half-court offense. The Sixers looked complete, looked like they did not need any more weapons.

In Brand's absence, several things have gone right. Igoudala, sprung from his unnatural prison at the 2, has been more free to do what he does best, playing heads-up, hard-nosed defense, and finding great opportunities in entropy. Speights, whose minutes have increased dramatically, has really looked good. Lou Williams has improved. The reason for this is that Brand, like any other low-post banger, must be fed the ball consistently to be effective, which has the converse effect of changing the rhythm of the game to a slower, more deliberate game, which for a team with such raw athleticism as the Sixers possess, is not necessarily a good thing. Remember the play in the third quarter when Igoudala spun around Bowen, narrowly missing the giant fork sticking out of Bruce's back, on the way to a reverse jam? With Brand on the court, there would not have been the space, within either the defense or the halfcourt offense, to do that.

Right now, the ball moves around like a pinball, the offense move like water down a mountain, swallowing and circumventing everything in its path, inexhorable; they are shooting the lights out, and the buckets are coming in bunches. It's been very fun to watch. When Igoudala sank the ball from behind half court tonight, it almost seemed like par for the course, the Sixers were in such a groove.

Interviewed after the Blazers' game, Andre Miller asserted that the team was not yet "around the corner." He was right. The Sixers did not yet have a statement victory. While they took care of that order of business tonight, the Sixers need to continue this stretch, need to prove that they can win without nailing nearly every shot they take, need to prove that they can battle a tough team and win in a close game when they are not at their best. They have not yet proven themselves as a playoff team. But for the first time in a while, maybe the first time since Iverson was here, they look good. They really look good.

Reports are that the Sixers will ease Brand back, that they don't want him to test his shoulder before he's really ready. In other news, Bush is leaving the White House because of a moving letter written by El Paso second grader Ellen Mifflin, which explained to him, in terms he could understand, that his presidency has been "kind of like poop." I mean, it make all the sense in the world not to test Brand's most-recent near death experience any more than is absolutely necessary, since he is at this point an investment on par with Bank of America's recent acquisition of Merrill Lynch, but this explanation smells more than a little bit. Given that the Sixers are now as hot as hot can be, and integrating Brand into the offense has already proven to be a problem, does it not make sense to hold Brand out until Doctors Ross, Green, House, James Andrews and of course Doctor J, have all been convinces that he is shipshape and seaworthy? Of course it does. You're with me or you're against me.

I think that Brand will be healthy when he comes back, for the simple reason that the Sixers have the luxury of easing him back in, holding off until he's fully ready. This is a good thing, a cushion wrought by the Sixers' recent good play. Whether he will ever be a part of a lean, mean, halfcourt machine is another question entirely, one that I am afraid to answer. Let me just mention that in a recent game of 2K against my bestest buddy Andyroo, I went with a Phoenix Suns lineup of Nash, Barbosa, Hill, Diaw and Stoudamire, effectively pretending that the Shaq trade never took place, since I wish ever so much that it had not. But alas. 

It's tough to integrate a guy like that, since it effectively changes the offensive dynamic of a team. The only successful running teams with a lumbering big man that I can think of are those Chris Webber Sacramento teams. With all due respect to Andre Miller, he's no Mike Bibby, and the Sixers haven't got a Peja either. Well. At a point, this is all academic. Brand will be back. The Sixers must find a way to integrate him. He is, let us not forget, a fabulous player. Time will tell, but I think that, with the Sixers on a roll, confident, sure of themselves, Brand is arriving under very good circumstances, with the team having proven that it can be successful independent of him. We must hope for the best.

The Eagles, Flying...

Sometime after McNabb's triumphant phone call, and Buckin' Aikman's bizarre grudge against the coming of 20th century telecommunications, or else any semblance of lightheartedness regarding a moment of gleeful exuberance, I found myself sitting on a couch, looking outside, a dumb little grin on my face, considering the world almost wholly anew. What a bright and beautiful world this is, when redemption can come so sweetly, when you hope for a thing so badly for so long, when, even as you cease to believe, you find a way through all the vagaries of life, of the NFC East, to see, clearly, a path to what you seek. I am blindsided by this. I keep knocking on wood, looking for the stains under carpets, looking the gift horse in the mouth, wondering where the anvil is lurking. But I can't seem to find anything.

I tried to explain this to my girlfriend. My girlfriend who occasionally wonders why "association football" is called soccer here. I tell her: "Katie, the Eagles are playing a team they crushed on Thanksgiving in the NFC Championship game." Katie replies: "That's great. How many wins before they get to the Super Bowl." Aaargh. I keep trying to explain the idea of conferences to her. Oh well. Even she can't believe that the Eagles are this close. "But wasn't the quarterback almost finished just a couple of months ago?" She gets some stuff right, does Katie.

The funny thing about all this is that it scarcely makes sense to me, either. A month ago, this state of affairs, the Eagles just one very manageable win away from the Superbowl, would have sounded ridiculous. But now? One reliable constant of football, over the years, has been the presence of some monolithic great team. Some team that was solid, that had guards at the door. Some team you really had to be special to beat. There were the Niners, the Cowboys, the Rams, the Pats. This year, that team went down with Tom Brady's knees, to the unending delight of everyone who feels that the word "door" ought to have an "r" sound in it. I remember telling Katie this, all the way back in August, that this was an opportunity for everyone else, not really thinking of the Eagles as being in that category. But now? Opportunity is knocking on the Eagles' door with both fists, hammering to be let in. This is the year, this is the moment.

Over the course of the next week, there will be an ample amount of commentary proclaiming the fact that Arizona played very badly on Thanksgiving, that they had no time to prepare for the game, that they just didn't show up, that they will most certainly show up for the next game. All of this is obviously true, and the Eagles must not look past their very talented opponents, or Kurt Warner will turn around and bite the Eagles in the ass faster than you can distract him with Bingo, shuffleboard and other things more appropriate for hobbling old men. Having said all of that, this upcoming game in the desert really ought to be a much easier game than the behemoth grudgematch in those Meadowy lands of Jersey. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't "No Country for Old Men" set in country that could well have been in Arizona, rather than west Texas? I'm just saying.

The Cardinals are coming off of a big win, having handily knocked off Carolina, the number 2 seed in the NFC. This was most certainly a big deal, and I was personally thrilled to see it. I would much rather go through the Cardinals than the Panthers. Having said that, these two teams, the Cardinals and the Panthers, are both soft seeds. They are very much overrated, according to the BCS formula, or would be if they were seeded that way. They have not proven themselves to be winners against good teams. One of the several wonderful things about the NFC East is the abundance of challenging games, of really tough matchups that really test your team and force you to prove yourself from Week 1. The flip side of this, of course, is the fact that the Eagles nearly missed the playoffs this year, due to the really tough regular season schedule, with New York and Dallas twice, and the Redskins no slouches either. But I digress.

The Panthers and Cardinals did not have this problem. The Cardinals, whose ridiculous division features the Niners, Seahawks and Rams, had the weakest conference schedule in ages. Their two best wins of the regular season, against (get this) Buffalo and Dallas, came in mid-october, and came after a) Knocking Trent Edwards out of the game, and b) blocking a punt, after having almost giftwrapped the game for Dallas. In other regular-season news, they were torched by Tavaris Jackson and his assorted cast of hoodlums, before being creamed by New England. (When you are lit up by Tavaris Jackson and Matt Cassel in back to back weeks, something is wrong with your secondary. Write that down.) The Panthers won against San Diego before the Chargers turned things around, split with the Falcons, beat the Cardinals, Bucs and Packers, and that's about it. These aren't very convincing wins. In the playoffs, the Cardinals beat a rookie QB and an incredibly shaky QB, and chewed up yards with the thoroughly over-the-hill Edge James. Call me crazy, but none of this really impresses me. Mcnabb is neither young nor shaky. The Eagles' LBs will haul down the Edge like so much dead old meat. Are the Cardinals a playoff team? Yes. A Super Bowl team? Not at all. 

I know the Eagles lost to the Redskins twice, lost to the Bears, goddamned tied the Bengals, but you know what? Football can be a chancy game, things can bounce strangely, breaks can go against you, Quarterbacks can forget the rules. We don't like to talk about luck, but if you look back at the year, the only game we could not have won easily was the Baltimore game. Think about that. There was only one game all season where, at the end of the day, you couldn't honestly look in the mirror and wish things had turned out differently. The reason we were getting so frustrated, all along, was that we knew that these boys had talent, that they were good, but they couldn't go for the jugular. They couldn't close teams out, they couldn't play good fourth quarters.

All that is changed now. The Eagles, though still frustratingly imperfect in the red zone, prone to sputtering on offense, look good. They look commanding. They look like world-beaters, to me. Of the other three teams, they've beaten two. Knowing that, knowing that McNabb is still more than pissed about the benching, in the Ravens game, knowing that he might get a shot at redemption, isn't there a lot to look forward to here? I can't wait to see this all unfold.

I will tell you this. As we all advance in years, as our lives come to be more about what has already happened that what might yet happen, as we look back across the sweep of our lives and find the good and bad nuggets that our Eagles have left us, we will remember these next three weeks. We will remember them for their hope. Whether we will remember them also for their joy, or for their pain, is in the hands of McNabb, of Westbrook, of Dawk, of Samuel. If we can extrapolate anything here, it is this: That's a hell of a lot better than Allstate.

Antonio Pierce Is a Big, Fat Idiot.

Just between you, me, the lamppost and everyone else we know, Sunday's rumble in the Meadow(lands) is really shaping up to be one of those old-fashioned cataclysmic NFC East grudge matches. You know the kind of game I'm talking about. Two teams who know and loathe each other intimately, going after each other over a frozen gridiron, each side trying to grimly outlast the other. Over my years as an Eagles' fan, I've seen a lot of games like this, all of them filled with good, old fashioned hate. Gosh, I can't wait for it. Who doesn't love to hate the Giants?

In an interview conducted the other day, Antonio Pierce stuck his foot halfway down his mouth, perhaps as a way to further spice this matchup. For once in my life, I feel grateful for his presence. In an interview that was posted yesterday on the Giants website, Antonio Pierce had this to say about his team's "psyche." According to the Giants' defensive captain: "The psyche of the [Giants] this year is a group that understands what it takes to win the championship.  We have 35 or 40 players that were on this team last year, coaching staff, front office, everybody. They know what it takes to win the championship.  So what we have this year is experience. And that is what we are going to use this Sunday."

The way that Pierce phrases this golden little nugget just about kills me. Up to a point, this is a perfectly logical, even bland, assessment of what he feels to be the strength of this year's crop of Giants. I can see where he's coming from, since the Giants are a veteran team that very closely resembles the team that won it all last year, (give or take a village idiot) most of whom do remember knocking off the Pats in Arizona. I can even follow Pierce in his thinking that the Giants feel themselves to be in possession of the sort of collective unconscious social memory that a championship brings. Winning it all is not an impossible thing to them, since they just did it last year. Fine. But let's do some unpacking of his narrative thread.

Does Antonio Pierce really mean that he expects David Tyree to catch another ball in his hat again? If you took Mel Kiper Jr., Stephen A. Smith, Michael Bloomberg, Kramer, my dead mother, Niko Bellic, Boris Yeltsin and Chewbacca into a room to reach a consensus about the single moment in which the Giants broke the Pats' back last year, they would come to agree on Tyree's catch faster than you can say "Giants suck, Eli swallows." Does Pierce mean to suggest that the experience of watching that play has so galvanized and inspired the Giants as to give them a decisive edge when the Eagles come to town? Let's consider Pierce's use of the term "psyche." According to those wonderful people who are responsible for the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun "psyche" derives from the Greek "psukhe," meaning the breath, life or soul of a thing, and has over time come to mean the human soul, mind or spirit. Huh. 

Applying this definition to the awkward phrasing of Pierce's statement, one might reasonably come to the conclusion that the soul, mind and spirit of the Giants (I didn't know they had a soul either, but bear with me here) hold the cherished memory of the most unlikely and unsatisfying championship in the history of the NFL so close that they feel armor-plated, ironclad protection from the assassins that will come in to kill them and their dreams of a repeat on Sunday. Remember this, when you hear the Giants talking about their title. They were one really, really lucky play away from letting the Pats go 19-0. So, from the horse's (ass's) mouth, the Giants are pinning their lives, souls and collective spirit to the hopes of getting similarly lucky again. Luck is what it took for them to win the Super Bowl, luck is apparently what they will hope for this time around.

This is all good news to the Eagles. Brian Dawkins knows nothing about luck. Brian Westbrook is under the impression that luck is what comes when you want it more than those other guys. McNabb is determined to make his own luck. I have it on a reliable source that Andy Reid is more or less an agnostic on the subject. Someone told Saint Samuel that he is lucky to be on a playoff team this year, and he just took their balls with him to the endzone. Point is, the Eagles know that this game is about more than skill, more than determination, even. This game is going to be brutal. This game will be elemental, it will be a classic, it will be a battle over the soul of our conference, simply a fight to see who hits who the hardest. And you know what? When I remember Westbrook scampering away from Pierce just a little while ago, when I remember Pierce's excuses and protestations that Westbrook has  "put up a a hall-of-fame career," I agree with him, I concur with his insinuation that he has not, and I start salivating, thinking about the game to come. Think that play was "irrelevant," Antonio? We'll find out.

Jesus Christ, Romero!

As I write this post, I'm wearing a shirt I got as a giveaway at the Phillies' second home game last year, which they billed as "Opening Night." It was probably the most-frustrating Phillies loss I've ever seen in person. My girlfriend and I got standing-room tickets (I almost said seats here) and were treated to the spectacle of Hamels holding the Nats to 1 run over eight innings, only to be outdueled by, of all people, Tim Redding. The Phillies only got 1 hit that night. Lost amid this recounting is my best memory of that game, in which JC Romero came in with 1 out and runners on base in the ninth, then induced a double play with 1 pitch, getting Cole off the hook and giving the Phillies new life heading into the bottom of the ninth, down by a run.

I remember turning to the guy next to me, who was also turning to me. We both had 1 finger up, as if to tell each other "1 pitch!" We high-fived instead, and I noticed that my girlfriend had made eye contact with his girlfriend, and the pair of them were looking at us like we were crazy. "Jesus Christ Romero," this guy announced, "has just saved my soul." It was pretty incredible. Far and away the best thing that happened all night.

Romero has been exactly that over his time here, a saver of souls, if not games. As fans, we worry about things. Pitch counts, motivation, talent or lack thereof, the psychological makeup of people we will never meet. We obsess, a little. Over my years as a Phillies' fan, I have probably worried about the bullpen more than anything else, have fantasized about Jose Mesa and Rheal Cormier being taken to the woodshed by a guy named Vito, have wished Wayne Gomes would go on a diet, have wanted to kill Mitch Williams... you get the point.

The real difference between this year's team and the team that was bounced in Colorado was the bullpen. I remember listening to WIP two years ago, when Eskin was hosting a contest to nickname the bullpen, as a way to perhaps breathe some life into Mesa, Alfonseca et al. While I didn't partake in this cathartic exercise, not wishing for Eskin to rip my idea ("The Murdered Row") to pieces, it did highlight the Phillies major weakness that year. The Phillies consistently built a lead, then tried to weather the storm for nine outs or so, trying to outrun the inevitab meltdown on the road to Myers' uncertain relief. Even if they'd swung the bats against Colorado, this was not a team built for success in the playoffs.

Romero, even then, was the only reliever you felt confident with that whole year, and he was even better last year. Since he's been in the bullpen, the Phillies have had a soothing constant, a guy they could rely on. While the Phillies have addressed the bullpen, while he is no longer the lynchpin, he was absolutely crucial to the dominance of the bullpen in the playoffs last year, second only to Lidge. He was Pepto Bismol.

There are, as I said, things it is normal to worry about with bullpens, things that just come with the territory. But this? This 50-game suspension, handed down inflexibly by Selig and his goons, stands as an absurd example of corporate thinking run amok. The story, if you haven't heard, goes as follows: some time last year, Romero bought an over the counter supplement called 6-OXO Extreme from the GNC in Cherry Hill, looked on the label, found no ingredient that was banned by baseball, and took the supplement. Sometime later, Romero was tested for steroids, and it was discovered that his urine contained trace amounts of androstenedione, a banned steroid. Since this test occurred before the World Series, and the powers that be MLB did not want a player with a positive drug test in the Series, a deal was offered, which Romero declined, to reduce the suspension to 25 games, provided they included the postseason.

There are reasons for the hard line taken by the MLB. Romero DID piss andro. Andro IS a steroid. The MLB does have a blanket policy for positive steroid tests, a policy basically foisted on Selig by Congress at the height of the era of Bushian hubris, when Congress put its nose in all manner of places where it did not belong. They do not care how the andro got there, the fact is that it is there, and must be paid for.

This is really sad. It helps no one and nothing to avoid any distinction between Bonds, Clemens, players who knowingly stuffed massive amounts of steroids into their bodies, people who will need some luck to avoid ending up like Ken Caminiti and Rod Beck, people who cheated both the game and themselves, and people like Romero who unwittingly took a supplement with an amount of andro so small it didn't even rate an entry under active ingredients. This is madness. An Inquirer source indicated that the amount of andro, which was again not even listed on the bottle, "was well below any level that would enhance an athlete's performance." Romero made a reasonable assumption that something as hazardous as ando would have been mentioned. It was not. And he is being punished for it.

This suspension is a HUGE, HUGE problem for the Phillies. They will need to find a way to fill the void until Romero is back, which looms as the biggest potential headache moving forward. It's notoriously hard to predict things with bullpens, but this thing could easily snowball. There seem to be some hexes hanging over the Phillies already, and this is certainly one of them. 

A Kiss to Build a Dream On

Give me a kiss to build a dream on

And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss.

Sweetheart, I ask no more than this

A kiss to build a dream on.

Give me a kiss before you leave me

And my imagination will feed my hungry heart

Leave me one thing before we part

A kiss to build a dream on.

So says Louis Armstrong to the one he loves, and who are we to disagree? After the Eagles beat the Viking horde, I had some trouble deciding what it meant. Watching McNabb dance on the sidelines, rejoicing in this, his most redemptive performance of his entire career, I felt like I needed to go back to my little personal drawing board, redraw my criteria, reconsider the wheels and pulleys that now define my feelings towards the birdmen, and come to terms with this win.

My feeling, I have determined, may best be diagnosed as a crisis of commitment. Naturally, in sports as in love, one protects oneself. We've been burned by this team so many times before. Every season they come knocking, telling us that they've changed, a new flirtation ensues, they get us TO (as opposed to flowers), then Curtis, and ask us to come back. And we do. We come back. But we have doubts lurking within us, bad memories, questions holding us back, and we protect ourselves. A friend of mine is reading a book called Better Single than Sorry. I totally divested my heart from the Eagles after the 'Skins game. And now this. What do we do with it? It's a good sign, certainly, but do we go all in, now, and risk our hearts anew?

There is, as I said, a part of myself that delighted in watching McNabb jumping around after the game, Andy Reid looking relieved, and the local scribes falling all over themselves to say they told us so, that this was a wonderful moment for the franchise. There is also a part of myself that feels that this is deja vu all over again, with echoes of the Superdome in January of 2007. Remember that? Jeff Garcia pulling rabbits out of his ass to get us on his back and carry the team to the playoffs after 5 went down (again) and coming so close to knocking off the Saints? It was, while it lasted, one hell of a ride. Garcia was fabulous down that stretch. He was the first really talented quarterback whose approach to the position matched Reid's approach to moving the football. Garcia made the West Coast sing.

As much as we liked Garcia, we knew that he was not without flaws. He ran the offense like a swiss watch, but he lacked the sheer athleticism to change the game, to get the ball downfield. In the playoffs, he was maxed out. Sheldon hit Bush, Reid mismanaged the clock, we lost, we felt burned but not surprised, angry maybe, and went home. I remember ending the night throwing up PBR into a trash bag outside my girlfriend's room, cussing about how we needed to make a frankenquarterback out of McNabb's arm, athleticism and physique, and Garcia's poise and resourcefulness. It was a bad night. 

For all of his devotion to becoming a pocket passer, McNabb, who is a far better player than Garcia can even dream of being, remains an athletic gunner in the Brett Favre mold, trapped and shackled within an overcautious offense that too seldom makes use of his rocket arm, which remains his greatest strength. I have always assumed that the central problem of the ReidNabb era lay somewhere therein. We had enough of a quarterback to thrill us, but not enough of a quarterback to overcome a relatively weak supporting cast. As of the end of the Vikings' game, I still felt that I hadn't seen enough to feel like we were outside the GarciaNabb trap. McNabb remained the nearly-great QB as ever, surrounded by Westbrook, a great defense, and wide receivers that Reid met at a Mormon Church group, if such things exist. But then, a funny thing happened.

  Looking around at the rest of the league, I had the sudden realization that, on any given Sunday, the Eagles have a more than fair shot of taking down any of the other seven teams that are still alive. Right now, of course, come the Giants. This game is huge. Absolutely apocalyptic. But, having split the regular season with the Giants, watched them fall from an unstoppable force into a controversy-riddled team that limped into the postseason, we know we can beat them. We need to play well, better than we did against the Vikings, but there is no reason to think that we don't have a very good shot at this team. Aside from this matchup, the Eagles are looking at two teams they have already beaten soundly, (Arizona and Pittsburgh) a paper tiger that just lost to Kansas City, (Tennessee) a team no one seems sold on that will struggle to move the ball against the Eagles (Sand Diego) and a pair of teams that are scary, but could be beaten in Baltimore and Carolina. The '07 Pats ain't walking through that door.

Arizona was our Thanksgiving turkey, and is not a threat at all, even if they get past Carolina. Carolina is the scary team from the NFC, but if we can stop the run and Steve Smith, they are completely beatable. As well as the defense is playing, with the secondary that is just suffocating and the front seven that almost completely collared Adrian Peterson, that doesn't sound so far out. Don't look now, but if things break the Eagles' way, they could be headed to the Super Bowl.

Should they get that far, they will probably face Baltimore, Tennessee or Pittsburgh. I don't believe that the Chargers, without a healthy LDT, will get through the Steelers. The Baltimore-Tennessee game will be great, but I like Tennessee with the Ravens starting a rookie QB on the road. The Eagles have beaten Pittsburgh already, and the Titans remain a team that peaked in week 10 or thereabouts. Should the Eagles play the Ravens, can't you picture McNabb salivating at the chance for a rematch? Wouldn't that be an awesome game?

Let me be clear. I am not at all predicting a championship. This year's team is probably not as strong as the 2004 team, as they lack a big-time receiver, the linebacking corps is not as strong, and Dawkins' recent discovery of the fountain of youth should not obscure the fact that he is close to the end. Having said that, I am saying that this postseason represents a tremendous opportunity. This year is a window of sorts.

The Eagles might not need to surpass greatness to win it all this year. There is not a world-beater among the teams left standing. The Giants proved last year that if you peak at the right time, anything is possible. The 2006 World Series Champions were the 83-win Cardinals, who were not nearly the squad they had been as recently as 2004, when they ran into the white-hot Red Sox and were swept in the World Series. I remember Mike Kryzewski explaining how Duke had been knocked out of March Madness short of the Sweet 16, saying that, of the 64 teams, 30 or so could, on any given night, beat any team in the field, but that only five or so teams could do so five times in a row. The margin of error for even very good teams was so small. The NFL, in the present era of parity, is that way right now. No one is untouchble. The Eagles have what amounts to a good shot here, a rare and precious moment in the history of this franchise where they will not be confronted by a clearly superior team on the path to a Championship. Like the Phillies ad on the SEPTA buses say, Dreams Do Come True. Could this be the moment?

The truth is that we just don't know yet. But we have our kiss, we have plenty to build a dream on. I always wondered about that song, though: is the kiss really enough to heal Louis' hungry heart? As any Eagles fan can tell you, you take what you can get.

Skinned Alive

Did you see this coming? I confess that I did not. I looked past this game. I really did. I looked at the redskins and saw a pushover, a team that had self-destructed and quit on their coach, a team full of guys who were admittedly overpaid and underperforming, players who look at the world crumbling around them and demand the ball more, all of them led by a man who, with nothing else left, threw his arms up and proclaimed, a touch overdramatically, that he was the worst coach in the world. I saw a team ripe for the picking. I saw a little speed bump on the way to the big, titanic clash of D-Day. I could smell it, I could feel it coming, I could nearly taste it. I was, of course, wrong.

There were signs that this was coming. There always are. The Eagles, for as soundly as they beat the Browns last week, never hit the jugular, in fact looked like second-rate hit men stabbing the body in all of the wrong places, getting blood everywhere, never dispatching the victim, just making the whole thing ugly. After seeing Tom Hanks' "Road to Perdition," I remember sitting, gazing up at the screen, watching the credits roll by, then seeing a casting credit for "The Living Corpse." This is as fitting a description of the Browns as I can offer. Playing such opponents, the Eagles did not look good at all. There was the debacle at the end of the first half, the poorly-run 2-minute drill leading to the pick 6. There was the sluggishness of the second half. The Eagles were not crisp. But I discounted these signs, reasoning that the Eagles had sunk to the level of their opponent. I thought they would rise to the occasion when they needed to. But I was wrong. I should have known. I should have known.

The sloppy play of yesterweek plagued the Eagles once more. They were not awful. The defense played very well, in fact. But there was a key ingredient that is common to contending teams that the Eagles just didn't have. This inability to capture big moments, to play with crisply efficient urgency and to make decisive plays in decisive moments, has forever been the bane of this team. The problems of this period in the Eagles' history are many. The Eagles have trouble on third and short, trouble in the Red Zone, trouble with the 2-minute drill, problems with defending short passes or hard runs on third and short, suffer from a general lack of imaginative solutions to problems, play with a certain fussy coyness when presented with those intractable obstacles that cannot be passed or screened around, and they suffer from an unwillingness to go balls out to pound through the other team; these problems are all related to the overriding frustration that the Eagles have always had trouble playing with balls rather than brains.

Football is not, at heart, a cerebral game. Sure, the NFL is rife with sophisticated defensive schemes, camouflaged coverages, offensive smoke screens and the occasional trick play, but the grit of the game involves muscle, hard work, an intense desire to beat one's opponent, and the determination to do so. The sport is gladiatorial, not balletic. Andy Reid's origins as a lineman belie his overly-cerebral approach to the game. When given third-and-short, or fourth-and-goal, Reid usually dumps the ball off, or takes the field goal, rather than let his offensive line attack the line of scrimmage, allow Westbrook or (remember him?) Dorsey Levens, both of whom are excellent at this, find a hole and get the yard.

If I know anything about football, I know this: if your offensive line cannot get a push to run the ball, even when the other team, all the fans, the pigeons flying overhead, and even Joe Buck know what's coming, if you cannot get that yard running the ball when you absolutely need it, you do not deserve to win the game. This should be a rule of the game. There is no purer test in football than short-yardage situations. Can you think of a Super Bowl-winning team that could not get that yard? Let me know if you can, but I doubt it.

Watching the perfectly-thrown lob from McNabb sail through DeShaun Jackson's fingertips, I has the familiar sinking, enraged feeling that I have had on innumerable occasions in the past. When the Eagles played their last football game at the Vet, in the 2002 NFC Championship game, they opened up with a 20-yard TD run by Duce Staley, then frittered away the rest of the game unable to move the chains, and unwilling to pund away with Staley, even as Simeon Rice ran rings around the tackles. A year later, McNabb was picked off 3 times by Ricky Manning Jr. when all they needed to do to go to the Super bowl was to beat the freaking Panthers. It was snowing like cats and dogs that day, the wind was swirling, but again Reid would not run the ball. They were so close. They were close in the Super Bowl, but could not mount a winning drive. They were close in New Orleans, but they couldn't quite do it, and Reid chickened out on fourth and 15. After Sheldon Brown's HUGE hit on Reggie Bush in the opening minutes, there were few inspiring things that happened for the Eagles in that game, after such a wonderful late-season surge to get there. We should be conditioned to this, now, in Pavlovian fashion, that when the Eagles manage to excite you, THAT is when they lose.

Look, I know that the short-yardage situation is not really number one on the long list of things that are wrong with this team. I just think that it is the most revealing. Andy Reid is a control freak. He wants to control the passing game, he wants to control the running game, and the ratio betwixt them. He (presumably) wants to control his weight, and his sons. But look around. He is not in control of any of these things. He's bowed to popular pressure about running the ball. The wide receivers are, essentially, people he met at a pickup game. Westbrook is seldom allowed to be the disruptive, quicksilver player he might be. His sons are headed to jail.

While a football team is not a democracy, there is no longer any case to be made that all things the Eagles do must be done under Reid's aegis. The playcalling duties have long since devolved to Marty Morninwheg. Things have improved, but not that much. The Eagles need to find a way to get better. That the ball went through Jackson's hands is, in and of itself, an unfortunate missed opportunity. That this opportunity followed an even worse drop, that the drops came in an absolutely crucial game, makes it inexcusable. That the Eagles had no better option, that they had played poorly yet were still within reach of the game in no way mitigates these facts. The team was not ready to play, and the fault for that lies squarely at Reid's door. I don't know what else to say. The might still make the playoffs, but this seems unlikely. My thoughts are now mostly for next year. Merry Christmas.

Patting the Bat Goodbye

I remember the first time I knew the Phillies were going to win the World Series. I have this memory of sitting around in middle school with my friends, in the winter of 1999-2000, talking about sports. There was a lot to talk about just then. If you will recall, it seemed like all of our teams were starting to click, beginning to become really exciting all at the same time. John and Justin were basketball fans; Iverson had been in town for three years, and he was just beginning to play winning basketball, as opposed to exciting basketball. Andy Reid was in the midst of a surprising barnstorming of Philadelphia, and my friend Louis loved his stud quarterback, who oozed with athleticism and joie de vivre, and the Flyers were busy getting the last they could out of Lindros and his Legion of Doom, on the way to blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Devils in the playoffs. But nearest and dearest to me was the situation of my beloved Phillies. I felt, in that way only awkward teenagers can, that my feelings were not given adequate pride of place. That winter, there was an unfamiliar smell in the air, a smell of promise and anticipation, of eagerness, that had not been there in quite a while. Things were happening. So, I threw it out there: "Guys," I said, "I guarantee you that the Phillies will win the World Series in the next ten years. I guarantee it." This missive went largely ignored, I immediately felt foolish, and generally wished I hadn't said anything. But I had my reasons.

 Ever since the '93 season, which had filled me with an abundance of joy, of unbridled admiration and became one of the most important formative experiences of my life, my eight year-old soul lifted only to be dropped and trampled underfoot by a bunch of Canadians who would rather have been watching hockey anyway, I had longed for a reason to hope for my Phillies. It was a truly bleak time to be a Phillies' fan. You went to the ballpark, saw little of value, just Curt Schilling, backed up by the likes of Benito Santiago and Mark Lewis, saw your team get beat by someone better, then did it all over again. You did it out of a sense of dutiful obligation rather than hope. You wished it would get better, you remembered how it was, and you sat there longing, though not believing. But this year, I believed, things would all be different. Now, the Phillies had a ballclub. I plead my case thusly:

"Look at their roster," I cried in newly full and hopeful tone, as my buddy ate my tater tots, and I tried to catch a glimpse of one of several girls I longed for just as forlornly as the World Series. "We got Andy Ashby. We gave up Adam Eaton to get him, and Eaton's gonna be pretty good, (oops) but Ashby was an All-Star last year, and he won 17 games the year before that. Schilling and Paul Byrd both won 15 games last year. Scott Rolen's only gonna be better. Abreu's a stud, and" my narrative assumes hushed tones here of the sort reserved for Babe Ruth, my mother, Jesus and no one else, "Burrell's gonna be coming up."

This last was the clincher. Burrell's coming. Burrell was like the Cavalry, like a monsoon, a transformative force of nature who could carry the whole team. He was The One. What I thought, what we all thought, or a least hoped, was that Pat the Bat would take us over the top. With Pat Burrell, we believed, the team that finished eight games below .500 the year before and had added: 

1) a 32 year-old pitcher with some miles on his odometer, 

2) a healthy Desi Relaford, 

3) Mckey Morandini's carcass, 

4) a more experienced Marlon Anderson,

5) Chad Ogea, and

5) the aged and doddering Jeff Brantley, 

could do amazing things. I believed that Ron Gant and Doug Glanville would round out the outfield quite well. I believed. I believed in that year's Phillies. I believed that the organization had finally proved it would shell out some cash. Not a lot, but some. So I said my piece. "Ten years," I said. "Ten years." Then, Noah stole my tater tot.

Nine years have passed now, and the Phillies just snuck in under the wire. I didn't mind the wait, really. It just made the Championship that much sweeter. I kept the faith, I held out, through Bowa Millwood, Mesa and all the rest. But there is little resemblance between those Phillies (who crashed, burned and traded a Hall of Famer entering his prime for Travis Lee's Kotex and Vicente Padilla's Ritalin) and the Phillies who won. Only Burrell.

The writing, as we all know, is on the wall for Pat as well. This is, as Bill Conlin smirkingly and Phil Sheridan sweetly observe, as bittersweet as bittersweet can be. More than that though, Pat Burrell, in addition to being the longest-tenured Phillie, has for years been an achingly symbolic paean to the sufferings of our fair city and its Phillies. I remember watching his debut with my father. They were playing the Astros in Houston. He came up, big, lumbering guy, great pedigree, great nickname, great big fly-swatting swing. He seemed a chisled masterpiece, our red wheelbarrow upon which so much has depended.

Time wore on, and you saw chinks in his armor. His absolute lack of speed, his agonizing inability to get the bat on the ball squarely in big spots. He seemed exposed at times, a victim of his own expectations, of our lofty demands. Still, he put together a decent rookie year, a better sophomore campaign, and then swatted 37 dingers, with 116 RBIs his third year. The club looked better around him, too, Bowa strutting around like a bantam cock, his baseball machine in tow. Not a contender, yet, but contending for contention, moving purposefully. I remember seeing a game with my dad that year at the Vet. Burrell connected with a hanger and sent a screaming liner off of the plexiglass bullpen wall in left, the ball bouncing back to the infield on just a few hops, making a noise like a gunshot.

Though there were chinks with him, and with the team, Burrell was a force. Looking back on the contract he signed after that season, Burrell looked, as so many excellent power hitters before him, like a great talent on the verge of making adjustments. He was compared favorably to Michael Jack Schmidt, (a mortal sin, a Madden Curse, a folly) he was lauded as a man strapped to a veritable rocket of potential. We saw his virtue, and when Eddie Wade snapped him up to a six-year deal, we must all remember this, not a soul could be kept from rejoicing.

And then there came The Slump. Something wasn't right. He had flown too close to the Gods, his swing was off, he wasn't seeing the ball, he couldn't see his hand in front of his face, he was head over heels in unhappy love, his foot was attached to the rest of his body with safety pins and electric tape, whatever it was, he was just not the same. Burrell's occasional difficulties with slow stuff away became the groping, drunken staggering of a beaten fighter punching. He waved at the gas heat inside with all of the conviction and grace of Andy Reid on third and short. It was excruciating. Hard to watch, certainly, but it must have been a new circle of hell to live through.

Unlike so many athletes, Burrell seemed to get it, that he was being offered the opportunity to make franchise money, to carry his organization, that he was our Atlas. Rolen was always somewhat flaky through this period, would turn in fantastic performances followed up by rounds of sniping with Bowa and/or Dallas Green, an injury, and endless posturing and falderal concerning his image and his self-referential odes to being old-school, talking about it all the way to the bank.

Burrell didn't do it that way. By all accounts, he wanted to be, as the Splendid Splinter had it, the best goddamned ballplayer in the world. Burrell showed up early, stayed late, occasionally mumbled something about the team, worked his butt off, and sank even deeper into the quicksand quagmire that his 2003 campaign became. He hit .209. He made a bad face quite frequently. He bore the marks of agonized frustration more visibly than anyone I can remember in this town, other than Mitch Williams.

The boos, when they inevitably came, reflected this, I think. We were not out for Pat's blood, or his bat, or his pride. We just... could no longer hold the frustration in, needed an outlet for the feeling that, if anything, we wished would somehow propel him toward his rightful destiny as our savior. This is something that the Joe/Tim Bucking McCarvers of the world miss. In some towns, a boo is a boo is a boo is just an ugly boo. Boos register disappointment, displeasure, a sort of delicate, contrived peevishness to register one's dissatisfaction with the product that has been turned out. Philadelphia is not like that. Philadelphia is not just any other town. In Philadelphia, we boo you with character. We boo from the soul. We boo you for love.

To his credit, I think that Burrell understood this subtlety. It must have helped that his struggles came after the very public campaign to sever Jose Mesa's balls and manhood, then throw the whole mess in a burgundy '86 Impala headed off the Jersey end of the Tacony Palmyra, never to be seen again. We wanted Mesa gone. We wanted him to leave painfully, and we wanted to tell Ed Wade to never, ever make that sort of crass mistake again. Failed closers can get you riled. Burrell was in a different class.

Burrell, I think, knew that our lungs were engaged in a cathartic plea, a prayer for revivification and a return of his powers. He wanted them back too. It took a large set of gonads to show up every day, work his way through his struggles, find a way to make himself into a useful player when he could so easily have folded and burned his way through mountains of coke and felt sorry for himself. Say what you will, the man has integrity. When he doubled off the wall to put the World Series-winning run in scoring position, one might have understood some feelings of vindication on his part, thrown a bit of an impromptu bow and wave, some vainglorious gesture. But there he was, lifted for Bruntlett, quietly appreciating the moment, classy.

During the course of his Odyssey, Burrell was a better player than what he looked like, too. Though he rarely moved runners over and struck out much too much, he got on base a lot, took advantage of his RBI opportunities, protected Howard and Utley in the lineup and the part of every fan that is devoted to agonizing over the development of a young player, and was a well-liked teammate. It would have been nice to see him back, but that was probably never going to happen. There was a lot of water under that bridge, and an organization that has just spent $50 million for mediocrity is an organization that feels burned. Truth be told, Burrell is going out on top, and it's probably for the best.

So, we have Raul Ibanez. The mechanisms of welcome are out and about, as they should be. Ibanez has said all the right things, is a fresh start of sorts for everyone involved, has a reputation as a solid human being, and could well be a better player with what will probably end up being a more favorable contract than Burrell's. Forgive me, though, my feeling of sad regret, when I read of Burrell speaking of the things he loved about Philly, like walking his dogs in in Rittenhouse Square, where I saw him once or twice. He was, as they say, a jolly good fellow.

No More Mo, Buttcheeks, and the Seventy-Sixth Emitted Fart

You might have noticed that I've been taking my very sweet time in approaching the Sixers' current ummmmm, (is there a noun that communicates a sense of depressingly inevitable doom that follows a few months of feeling a sense of joyous renewal, now crushed under the feet of a reality that is here for the forseeable future? Anyone? Bueller?) season of folly and futility. It's quite a mouthful. I have opted not to touch said disappointing season until now out of a sense of unwillingness to pass negative judgment on a thing that is more sad than anything else. The Sixers, now, are in a bad spot, and I see few ways to get out of it anytime soon. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, you heard it here for the umpteenth time.

I am aware that the above observations are in no way revelatory. A blind man could see how badly-off the Sixers are, but he might be the only one who could, since no one who can see their hands in front of their faces and has the sense they were born with could stand to look at the Sixers for prolonged periods at the moment. It's just gotten that bad.

It isn't even like there's some mysterious ailment beguiling the team. After their surprising and much-ballyhooed run last year, we all knew that the Sixers were an athletic young team that ran the floor admirably, with vigor and flair, that played tenacious D, that at times got out-muscled on the boards and in the paint, whose biggest wakness was the lack of a truly dynamic playmaker in the half-court offense. It was a promising young team with some big holes, but with money to burn, too. An upgrade at the 2 and 4 positions should be able to solve those problems, one might think.

The new GM, Ed Stefanski, knew this and, by signing Elton Brand and sliding Igoudala to the 2-guard position, allowing the promising Thaddeus Young to start at the 3, seemed to address both positions, giving rise to much in the way of rejoicing expectation throughout the Delaware Valley. If only life and basketball were so simple. More so than any sport I can think of, basketball demands a tremendously high degree of chemistry and compatibility from successful teams.

Like anything else in life, basketball is a game that is played best by teams whose players are given defined roles that complement one another, and which allow each player to perform at a position, and in a role, that is suited to their talents and abilities. When this system is set up correctly, the parts should be able to play hard, each individual doing what they do best to the best of their abilities, without falling all over each other's feet in the process. Alas, this idea has failed to manifest itself in this current set of Sixers, though well do I remember the time a man of mercury, a man who was the answer took a posse of guys who couldn't carry his jock but who knew, accepted and excelled in their roles nearly all the way. You could almost touch it, it was this close. The Answer, indeed.

The soul of this team has been its athleticism and its ability to use its youth and young manhood to crate havoc and overwhelm the discipline of their opponents, a sort of purposeful entropy that damn near sent the Pistons out on their ass last spring. Alas, the great Detroit Bailout involved more Tayshaun Prince and Rip Hamilton than Arlen Specter and Bob Casey. But it was close. You had to think that it was a style of play, perhaps even a philosophy of play, to pursue. It was exciting. It was also unpredictable and erratic, true, but gosh it was exciting. Now, having signed Brand and his lead feet, what was a sprint now looks like a ragged and inglorious, flopping jog while holding one's pants up all the way down the floor.

In hindsight, might it have made sense to deal Andre Miller, Thaddeus Young and picks for a more athletic and speedier power forward, then use the cap money on Baron Davis? Could the Sixers have been made in the same mold as the late-90s Kings and the more-recent Suns and Warriors? I don't really know. It's a moot point now, of course. The team is committed to Igoudala and Brand as the centerpieces for a number of years. They must build around them or dump them for garbage.

The thing is, Brand and Igoudala are not bad players. They are very good players who excel in relatively narrow basketball roles. Brand is a banger, and Igloo Dolla' is an athletic swingman, pure and simple. They are simply struggling with the awkwardness of a team/scheme that is using them badly. Elton is slow, and Igoudala struggles with his jumper. These are very important things to keep in mind as the team moves forward. NOTE: the team could move backwards, or sideways, just so long as it moves from this intolerable and distastefully ill-considered traveshamockery (could someone get that Ferrell bit on youtube ASAP? Thanks.) of an NBA team. Whatever happens, Brand and Igoudala are the chips we have to play with.

I am aware that Brand and Igoudala are the most overtly struggling Sixers, but this fact, along with their contracts, are what makes them indispensable. Right now, no one is going to want them for an expiring contract, draft picks or a lawn chair set. Straight up, we cannot move them constructively, so we must reconstruct around them. We have some salable assets. While Igoudala has been playing shooting guard, he is clearly exposed for not having a good handle or a decent jumpshot, which happen to be the two most important skills that a 2-guard must possess. When he is moved back to his once and future position, Thaddeus Young is squeezed out. Young is a fine young player, which is just the reason he must go. There is no room for Young and Igoudala, and Young will have several suitors. He must go, for a draft pick, or a point guard, or a shooting guard, whatever. He's not a playmaker, and we need a playmaker. Write this down.

The Sixers, yesterday, made the first step to acknowledge that there is indeed a problem. That much is good. But the firing of Mo Cheeks was really a shame. Cheeks can no more go out to mid-court, hold Igoudala's hand and show him how to nail jumpers than you or I can. Sure, I think he's been overly stubborn about putting Igoudala at shooting guard, he hasn't been able to control his players' frustration, and his team has underachieved, but the core problem of the team, the incompatibility of the roster, is on Ed Stefanski. I'm sure Mo Cheeks at the very least signed off on the Brand signing, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the man who built the roster. It's Stefanski's job to go out and get the tools, but I doubt that John Wooten could get much from this toolbox. At the very least, this is a shabby way to treat a class act, and a member of the last championship team that this franchise has ever had.

Firing Cheeks is the easy thing. In the world of professional sports today, it was the predictable thing. It is an acknowledgment that change is needed, but a denial of the responsibility to supply that change. A shame, through and through. This team will limp, noticeably, for a while, aimlessly, like a leper, parts falling off, not replaced, years in the wilderness with no end in sight. It will get truly ugly. I wish I could write something different, but the truth will set you free. Wait 'till next year. Then, keep waiting.