Philadelphia Phillies

A great outing by Roy Oswalt, and a three-hit, two-run night for Jimmy Rollins highlighted the Phils' 3-2 win over the Padres in a wild 12-inning affair at PETCO Park.

Plain and simple, the Phillies play to the level of their competition. If they're playing a good team, they're going to pick their game up and come up with the plays they need when they need them in order to win.

We saw the best example of that right before the All-Star break in their four-game series with the Cincinnati Reds.

Joe Blanton, the pitcher most notably remember for hitting a homerun vs. then Tampa Bay Ray, now White Sox Pitcher Edwin Jackson.

Blanton has had his fair share off up and downs, but I'm here to let you know if his ups and downs, may produce an up or down for the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Phillies have had a good year this year.  They may not be first in their division or the Wild Card, but they are close to the leaders in both.In this article, I am going to talk about all of the teams that the Phillies are close to in the division and Wild Card races.  Let's start out by looking at the Phillies themselves:

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There are times when an idea, a theory, or a point needs to be made with extensive evidence, logic, and explanation. The idea/theory/point can be so subtle, so complex, so involved, that the importance of it is not immediately clear. Some ideas take a lifetime to understand.

I am not here today with such an idea.

Everyone knows what it means: your team is flush with money and run by talentless slobs, who can make up for an inability to develop high quality talent within the farm system by simply buying other team's high quality talent.  

You are the evil empire, pricing every other team in baseball out of the market for the best players in the game.  

Ryan Howard cost the Philadelphia Phillies a game they desperately needed last night in the NL East playoff chase.

The Phillies are 2.5 games behind the Atlanta Braves for first place in the division. With the Braves losing last night, the Phillies had an opportunity to make up a game on the division leaders.

Instead, Ryan Howard was ejected in the 14th inning while arguing a check swing that resulted in his fifth strikeout of the night.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to hiring a general manager for a Major League Baseball team: Either you hire a businessman or a baseball man.

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have gone the businessman route with Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein and have been successful.

(Sports Irreverence from The Other Tip of the Goldberg)

All of us Phillies fans should have been happily dusting off our Whitey Ashburn impressions and laughing at the madcap turn of events of last night’s 16-inning bizarro thriller versus the Astros at Citizens Bank Park. Only, the game did not end happily—a 4-2 loss to a mediocre team at home is not my idea of a happy ending.

With two outs in the 9th inning, the Phillies' Jimmy Rollins homered to tie Houston at 2-2.

With two outs in the 16th inning, and two men on, Ryan Howard should have been in a position to win the game 5-4.

But Howard had long hit the showers.

Why?

He was tossed from the game several innings earlier by third base umpire Scott Barry, a minor league replacement ump.

Howard's crime?