Baseball Been Very Very Good To Me

Sorry, couldn't resist the nasty title.

My first post in my long considered Phillies/baseball blog is just about, well, what the Phillies and baseball have meant to me over my 50+ years...

You know, it really irks me when I hear people whine about their team and how frustrated they are with them. Now don't get me wrong, if they're a Cubs fan, or a BoSox fan (prior to 2000), they've got a legitimate reason to gripe. But growing up a Phillies fan was, well, let me put it this way. When I was a kid my wildest fantasy (I was a kid!) was for the Phils to finish at .500. I couldn't even imagine that until the horrible year of '64 (when I was 9) and for a few years thereafter, but then it was back to the horrors of Billy Champion and Bobby Pfeil!

There've been many many long stretches of futility, as recently as the beginning of this century. Of course the Phils are the losingest team of any major sport on the world! Yippee!

In future posts I'll reveal my anger with management over the years, not only regarding utter stupidity with player personnel, and frugality, but also how they have generally treated the fanbase. Yes, the Phils' history is horrible and it's been earned the old-fashioned way, those 10,000+ wins....

For now though, I will end this inaugural post on a positive note acknowledging that my team starts the '09 spring training as the defending world champs, and this is only the second time in over 130 years that we can say that, so enjoy Phils fans! Especially the young ones among us.