The Phillies Don’t Deserve Your Cheers

Missanelli: A subpar product, going nowhere fast.

I’m sitting here watching a Phillies game on a Wednesday night. They are getting pounded, 6-0, by the Milwaukee Brewers, another reflection of the brutality this team has inflected upon its fan base.  Suddenly a couple of Phils get on base, they score on a couple of subsequent hits, the gap is closed and people cheer.

I guess I’m most confused by the cheers.

All right, it’s a fireworks night at Citizens Bank Park, always a good incentive – if only a transparently cheap trick – to get people to the ballpark.  And once in the park, folks do get carried away with the spirit of an age-old summertime activity. A baseball game. A hot dog. A beer.

But after all this team, all this organization has done to their fan base this year, I can’t imagine that anyone could have the energy to actually cheer anything. A perfunctory golf clap? Ok. A cheer? That should be embarrassing. To you.

Within four years, I have seen this Phillies organization wilt from a perennial contender to the worst franchise in the league. That comes from a ton of carelessness, a lack of maintenance by people who are paid to manage this business of professional baseball. It’s not just the general manager of this team who has failed, it’s everybody. It’s Ruben Amaro’s assistants, it’s the tens of scouts who troll the globe for talent, it’s the ownership that sat in the background and allowed front people to run this team into the ground.

I see a team that can’t pitch and can’t score runs. A group of players who’s attention span is more skittish than a group of salamanders. I watch Ben Revere overslide a base AFTER he has it stolen. Not once, but several times. Which means he apparently can’t learn from, or adapt and compensate for his faux pas. I watch Domonic Brown, who this year complained that he was tolling in triple-A ball instead of the big leagues, get caught between third base and home with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning! If he’s out, the game is over. He was tagged out. I see the Phils trot out a backup outfielder to throw more than 60 pitches in a blowout game, and the second baseman make a scene on the mound about it. I see a bullpen phone mistakenly off the hook. I see the manager quit in the middle of the season because he can’t take it anymore – even though he probably has to share some of the blame for this mess. I see a freaking circus! And this is supposed to be major league baseball.

And where are the Phillies now? Digging out of the rubble of a horror show, a reclamation project that could take all of five years. Five years of asking people to purchase their subpar project until they have a chance to get good again.

Am I supposed to be mollified that the Phillies hired a new president this week? His name is Andy MacPhail. His family has a baseball pedigree, and he has had some success as an executive with the Minnesota Twins, a small market team that had to compete by being pristine with their farm system. If MacPhail can build the Phillies farm system, then he will be a good hire. But until then, I have no idea what the guy is going to do. I watched him at the introductory press conference. Seems like an affable fellow. Seems determined to fix this thing. Next to him was the mystery owner John Middleton, who can pound his fist on the table as long as he wants, but can’t do much more than that because he only owns 48% of the team.

I don’t know where the Phillies are headed. But I know this: I’m not cheering or clapping until it actually means something.

So have fun folks, with the hot dog and the beer and the Phillie Phanatic giving the opposing pitcher the hex from the dugout and watching Cody Asche play leftfield.

I got a golf clap for you to learn.

Follow Mike Missanelli on Twitter.