  Yes yes I know, I haven’t posted here in almost two weeks. I am not being lazy, I swear. Life, however, has been particularly busy lately with my brother’s wedding, etc. So I have not been around that much. Also, I have not been playing poker at all, and I don’t feel like I had anything interesting to add, so I just didn’t post. I have been thinking, however, about expanding the list of topics I post about here, much urlLink like urlLink other urlLink people have been doing, and whose blogs I sincerely enjoy.
I have several non-poker topics that are floating around in my head, I just need an excuse to sit down and actually get them on paper. Maybe I’ll start doing that and throwing in other poker stuff as it comes up. (Incidentally, I hope it will be coming up soon…my exile from the poker world I think will be coming to an end in the near future.
Stay tuned). Anyway, on to today’s topic posting: The venerable drunk poker blogger Al Can’t Hang has posited the following on me: 2. Sean - How are the Phillies going to end up come the fall? Now I am not normally a baseball fan (it’s #3 on my list of enjoyable sports to watch, #472 on my list of things I can do with relative competence) as football is more my area of interest, but I’ll take a stab at this.
The most important thing to remember here is what town we’re talking about: Philadelphia. The Most Cursed Sports Town in History (all of you screaming about Boston and Chicago may go look at the Patriots and Bulls, respectively, and stfu). Okay, a little more seriously, all of the “curse” nonsense aside, the Phillies have undergone massive destruction to their starting pitching for the first half of the year and are still in contention for both the division and the wild card. The new ballpark plays smaller than Coors field, even though there’s not much difference in the dimensions between Citizen’s Bank and the Old Concrete Toilet.
Thome is a monster. Burrell started off hot, has cooled a little, but is still playing OK. Abreu is underrated and really a decent power hitter. Rollins is starting to come around and not be such a moron in the leadoff spot. Byrd is a bit of a bust (or maybe just having a sophomore slump), but the real problem is the pitching. Padilla and Wolf need to get healthy and in a hurry if they want to have any shot at the playoffs. And the staff “ace” (I use that term loosely) Millwood needs to seriously step up. Milton has won 10 games, but his ERA is close to 5.00. Their hitting has been enough to keep them in the running while their pitching looks more JV than the Dallas Offense ( urlLink had to get that shot in ), but in order for them to have any shot, the pitching needs to come around. I think that the Phillies will win the division, probably by no more than 2 games over Florida, and will probably face Houston in the NLDS and lose there.
Unless they make a move before the deadline (which I doubt. Ed Wade has shown in the past that he sticks with the team he has). Close, but no cigar this year for the Phils. Watch out Hank. I’m a-comin’. I just found out from my work that, due to retirement in our company, I may be sent to our Anaheim plant for a week to 10 days to help them and give “technical support” – basically dealing with customers all day long and maybe doing some design. So, stuck out on the West Coast for 10 days and nothing to do but work? Hmmmm…I’m sure there’s a thing or two I can find to do, right urlLink Hank ? 
