Philly’s Ridiculously Eventful (Mostly Bad) Sports Day

Er, I guess. A lot of stuff went down yesterday, and none of it involved the teams who are currently awful — the Sixers, who we all know are awful, and the Flyers, who are awful until proven otherwise — so let’s do a couple of recaps.

• As you may have read yesterday, the Eagles released Jeremiah Trotter, the four-time Pro Bowler who once anchored the defense — and helped the Eagles make Super Bowl 39. (Roman numerals are stupider than the metric system.) Although Trotter is only 30, his knees are about 55. Trotter is looking to head for another team, though he had a somewhat weird, emotional goodbye to the Eagles. The defensive players were kind of upset. Trotter will probably head to the Denver Broncos, following Allen Iverson, as all of Philadelphia’s most popular players will head to higher altitude. I was so unsure of how to finish this I stole the previous joke from my mom. (All Jeremiah Trotter references for the rest of this year will be accompanied by references to my mom, most likely.)

• Omar Gaither will be the one replacing the Axeman. He got a call from Trotter Monday night: “The first thing he said was, ‘Congratulations.’ He explained everything to me. That means the world to me. That’s the first thing you should know about me. There’s no bad blood between us. The fact that he came out today and did what he did shows that he has my back, which helps me as far as my teammates are concerned. He told me he’d be praying for me, and I really appreciate it.” Dammit, now I’m going to miss Jeremiah Trotter even more, personality-wise, at least. Moves like this, though, make me appreciate the Eagles management — if Trotter were a Phillie he’d be here ’til 2015 at least.

Some Fightins stuff follows.

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Chris Wheeler Has A Cold

A night after losing game 10,001 to the Dodgers to drop back to .500, the Phillies went on an offensive explosion again, crushing LA, 15-3. Even Real Deal Durbin, who got his first major league win, had three hits in the easy victory.

The loss was absorbed by Dodgers pitcher Mark Hendrickson, who you may remember as the 76ers second-round pick in 1996. If I ever invent a time machine, I’m going back in time and placing a bet in ‘96: The 76ers second-round pick this year will one day pitch against the Phillies, with Mike LIeberthal as catcher. I could probably get pretty good odds. A billion to one, maybe?

Ryan Howard hit a pair of homers last night, and Chase Utley had 3 RBI, upping his league-leading total to 79. But the real story was Phillies announcer Chris Wheeler, who lost his voice somehow. Here’s his call of Howard’s first homer. I cannot stop laughing about the word “gone” in this clip.

After their 26-hit outburst last night, the Phillies will probably be no-hit tonight today at 3!

Update, 11:25 a.m.: Oh, yeah, and Howard hit his homers off of Mask.

Philadelphia 15, Los Angeles 3 [AP/Yahoo! Sports]