The Hokey Pokey

Games 103 through 107 - Phillies

Mets 3, Phillies 1

Braves 8, Phillies2*

Phillies 10, Braves 9

Philllies 12, Braves 10

Phillies 2, Nats 1

Phillies 8, Nats 5*

Record: 58 wins, 49 losses. First place 1/2 game ahead of NYM

Nick is in.

Rob is out.

TJ is in.

Whitney is out.

Let us shake ourselves, turn around and discover what it is truly, all about.

Rob, may I offer you a completely different perspective on the trade deadline? One from the place where nothing ever happens? You see, July 31st means nothing to Philadelphia. We may end up picking up a middle inning left handed specialist. We might pick up a pinch hitter. What we will not do is make the little scrolling news bar on ESPN. In case you wondering, I am feeling a little irrelevant. I bet if I tuned in right now, in addition to the subject headings 'NL' and 'AL' and of course 'Favre", there is one for 'Manny.' How cool would it be to read that we took on Manny for So Taguchi and Geoff Jenkins while having to pay only 25% of the last two month's salary?!

That's not what I want to talk about anyway. So if you all don't mind, I plan on whistling the day away until 4:00PM EST without checking the wire.

What I wanted to discuss is the really great races the four of us find our clubs in. For Rob and TJ, it's business as usual but for the Whit-ster and me, this is starting to look like a real rivalry. We have noted here before that despite being in the same division since divisional play was created some 39 years ago, the two clubs have rarely competed for the NL East crown at the same time. In fact, it's happened only once - last year, much to Whit's regret. They have finished 1-2 a few other times but each time the teams were separated by 10+ games so they were hardly "races" in any reasonable sense.

This bobbing ahead and falling back is quite fun if at times annoying. The blog picked a great year to expand and, apparently invited the right people! Now if we can just find some goofy Marlins nut job and some deranged Rays head case to join in the fray.

* I was in attendance at CBP and Nationals Park respectively.