Nutter Tosses Out First Pitch, Is Nerd

Here’s Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter throwing out the first pitch of today’s Phillies game. As you may have noticed, he has his shirt tucked in. Joe Moore (you don’t know him) told me in fifth grade you don’t tuck in a sports jersey, and I learned my lesson. Nutter could rap “Straight Outta Compton” and he’d still be the biggest nerd in all of Philadelphia, just because of that shirt.

Liveblogging: Opening Day!

The Phillies shirt is on and OMG ONLY AN HOUR ‘TIL OPENING DAY! If you’re looking for a baseball fix, Walkoff Walk is doing a nice job posting all the opening day starting lineups and pretending there weren’t a few games in Japan and Washington already.

Speaking of opening-day lineups, here are your 2008 Philadelphia Phillies!

SS Jimmy Rollins

CF Shane Victorino
2B Chase Utley
1B Ryan Howard
LF Pat Burrell
3B Pedro Feliz
RF Jayson Werth
C Carlos Ruiz
P Brett Myers

Whoo! Can you feel the excitement of Pedro Feliz and his .288 career on-base percentage batting 6th? I know I can. Join me when the game starts (at 3:05 p.m., technically) for liveblogging after the jump.

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Another Season Of Disappointment Begins Today

After watching the Flyers and 76ers sputter to about 8 wins combined in the 2007 season and the Eagles fall just short of, uh, the NFC Championship Game, baseball is finally here.

The Phillies take on the Braves today on CBS 3 at 1 p.m. in the season and home opener for the local nine. There are high expectations for the Phillies this year — playoffs, at the very least — which makes sense, since the team returns MVP Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, etc.

Heck, people are so excited about the Phillies this year the Inquirer unfroze Bill Lyon yesterday to write about the team. (He, like me, thinks they’re going to break your heart again. But isn’t that part of the fun — finding how just how the Phillies will break your heart this time?)

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Play Ball! Maybe! If The Rain Holds Off!

The above is the most exciting thing about the 2006 Philadelphia Phillies baseball season: They’ve moved the left-field wall back and made it higher.

This will, allegedly, cut down on home runs (and, really, I see no reason it wouldn’t). The fans, apparently, were clamoring for fewer homers, less trotting and long flyouts to the wall. Because the thing that makes baseball so damned exciting is long flyouts to the wall. Then again, the previous wall dimensions were a little short, since David Bell once popped up a bunt over the 125-foot wall in left. (It was his only hit of the year.)

Okay, I kid, I kid. The most exciting thing about the 2006 Phillies season is where that photo of Citizens Bank Park came from, The Baron’s Corner, a blog by Phillies PR man Larry Shenk! And there’s another blog, Phillies Fun & Games with John Brazer, written by, uh, John Brazer about, uhm, fun and games, which currently has one post Welcome to the fun and games. Hot dog!

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