Sarge In Postseason Form

Apparently, NBC 10’s Dawn Timmeney got hit by a ball thrown by Phillies ambassador of fun Scott Palmer during a live shot at the ballpark yesterday. It was supposed to hit Sarge Matthews; even though it missed his reaction shot makes the prank completely worth it.

Update: This is the best graf in the article:

Matthews was voted most valuable player of the 1983 National League Championship Series and helped lead the Phillies past the Dodgers to the World Series. History could repeat itself when the Dodgers show up for the first game of this year’s NLCS in Philadelphia on Thursday.

Reader Joe writes: “If Sarge is named MVP and helps guide the Phillies to the World Series I’ll be quite impressed.”

Ball Hits Timmeney During Phillies Live Shot [NBC 10]

Sarge Was Really Excited About Alyssa Milano

Sorry for the delay on this one. Via The 700 Level, we have this clip of Alyssa Milano — who was at the ballpark Thursday to promote her clothing line or the DVD release of Double Dragon: The Movie or something — and Phillies announcer Gary Matthews chatting during the 4th inning. Matthews asks Milano about her tattoos, and then it gets awkward.

As you can tell from the above screengrab, Matthews, Milano and Tom McCarthy decided to settle things with a rare three-handed game of rock paper scissors. Unfortunately for Milano, she threw an illegal vertical paper, costing her a win over McCarthy’s rock at the very least.

Full Redlasso clip after the jump; The 700 Level has an even longer version, too.

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Phillies Still Out In Front

The Fightins (the blog, not the team) have a slideshow of Phillies announcer Gary Matthews’ different hats. (Yes, it’s still too hot for anyone to make any real news.) The Phillies lost to the Marlins last night, 5-4, but are still three up in the division. It would be nice to take the next 2 games, though.

Meanwhile, the Sports Complex has the most serious article ever written and it’s about Phillies’ announcers Gary Matthews and Tom McCarthy, who do innings 4 and 5: “I’m going to argue that the negative feelings that seemingly all of Philly has towards the two is 1. wrong and 2. shortsighted…. while most of the comments there did seem to trend towards ambivalence, still I’ve yet to find anyone outside of my immediate social circle who speaks of those two with high praise.”

Phillies play the Marlins again tonight at 7 with Cole Hamels pitching. A win and they’re 40-27 and four games up in the NL East. Exciting!

Gary Matthews Gains Fans By Annoying Chris Wheeler

Last weekend, the Marlins gave our maracas to fans in attendance at one of the games. It made the game nearly unwatchable, as fans shook maracas non-stop and oh my God I just wanted them to stop forever and ever and I was listening with the sound down and even I could still hear it and I can still hear it now and aiiyeeeeee.

Erhm, sorry. Anyway, color man Gary Matthews eventually got a pair of the maracas to annoy Chris Wheeler with, as he was complaining about the maracas more than anyone. (It was the first time we ever agreed, I think.) And somebody had a little fun with it on YouTube.

Perhaps inspired by the maracas, the Phillies dropped three straight.

Update: Ha! Apparently this video was mentioned by Matthews during the game the Phillies are attempting to blow this afternoon.

Chris Wheeler: Dancing Queen [YouTube]

Phillies To Reward Fans With Nine Innings Of Wheels

As you may have gathered from the photo of the Phillie Phanatic attacking President Bush in the header, it’s the start of baseball season today. Naturally, everyone’s excited, because we all know the Phils are going to start 4-14 and nobody will care anymore.

And with fan interest at the highest it’s been since, uh, since I can remember, the Phillies have decided to reward fans by giving them what they want: More cowbell Wheeler.

The trio will broadcast the first three and last three innings on television. Wheeler will handle play-by-play in the middle three innings, with [ex-Phillie Gary] Matthews as the analyst.

[Harry] Kalas will continue to call the fourth inning on radio. Scott Franzke and Larry Andersen will work exclusively on radio.

Yep, you read that correct: Nine innings of Chris Wheeler on television. Guess I’ll have to brush up on my Chris Wheeler vocabulary.

Chris Wheeler Glossary
Will three be a crowd for Kalas and company? [Inquirer]
[Image via A Tribute To The 1980 Phillies]

Leftovers: Plan A: Go Get Plan B

• If you’re planning on having some sweaty, condom-free sex on Tuesday night, then do the five branches Bucks County Planned Parenthood have a deal for you! The ‘Hood will be giving out free Plan B on Wednesday morning, so you can look just as serene as the official model for the drug. [Bucks County Courier Times]

• With Scott Graham gone in the Phillies’ booth next year — who will do Graham Slam commercials? — the Phils have added a new analyst: None other than Gary Matthews! Welcome back, Sarge! (Apparently I’m the only one who will miss Scott Graham, though. I thought he had really improved over the past few seasons.) Wheels is still around, so the Chris Wheeler Glossary will certainly be expanding. [Beerleaguer]

• Jerry Mondesire, head of the NAACP in Philly, says Jonathan Saidel dropped out of the mayor’s race due to Bob Brady. Then again, he also said that Donovan McNabb was a race traitor or something for not running the ball more, so we all know how accurate he is. [KYW 1060]

• Why are men bigger than women? Why, Faye Flam reports, men are violent assholes, that’s why. However, men, be glad you’re not a deep-sea angler fish, where the woman is 500k times heavier than the man. I bet both genders of that fish have issues. [Inquirer]

• A pair of employees — how surprising — have been arrested in a heist of nearly $300,000 from a Wal-Mart yesterday. If Wal-Mart workers aren’t smart enough to pull off a robbery undetected, then who is? [6 ABC]

• Ex-Phillies pitcher Don Carman found a bunch of old fan mail and recently answered it. Yeah, I can’t think of any joke but “Don Carman got fan mail?!” either. [Slate]

• Pat Croce has been named Wing Bowl Commissioner. He’ll be in charge of making sure all the models (”models”) 610 WIP hires are C-cup or better. [Inquirer]