Ryan Howard

This Sunday afternoon, the Phillies and the Eagles are both playing at about the same time (Eagles at 1pm and Phillies at 1:35pm). So if you have to choose one game to watch, which team would you watch?

I think it should be the Phillies. I am hoping this weekend the city of Philadelphia finally makes the right choice. We should be a baseball town, not a football town. We want to paint the town red, not green.

Why should you watch the Phillies rather than the Eagles?

It makes me chuckle.  Really, it does.  I sit back and listen to people, both fans and broadcasters whine and moan about instant replay in baseball. 

The Philadelphia Phillies obstacle course of a season currently finds them one game up in the National League Eastern Division. The club's 2010 campaign has been akin to a season of The Amazing Race in terms of duration, complexity, and challenge. 

The Philadelphia Phillies have shown resilience, heart, and very solid pitching in somehow amassing the best record in the National League during a strange season that could have derailed a lesser group.

At Citi Field—a mausoleum of a stadium that has not been kind to the Fightins in 2010—they rode three hits by Carlos Ruiz and solo shots by Ryan Howard and Chase Utley to defeat the hapless New York Mets, 8-4.

It's been 66 years since the National League has seen a three time National League champion.

The year was 1944 when the mighty St. Louis Cardinals won their third straight pennant after finishing first in the NL with a 105 win season.

One of the reasons, if not the reason, I got into baseball writing was to challenge conventional wisdom. Challenging conventional wisdom is what we learned from Bill James and from Billy Beane, and it is the reason we tend to speak unfavorably of Joe Morgan.

The Philadelphia Eagles have been the talk of the town for so many years. From Randall Cunningham, to the endless plethora of quarterbacks in between, to Donovan McNabb, they have pulled a big part of this city's sports weight, if you will, behind them.

The Flyers, Sixers, and Phillies have always played second, third and fourth fiddle to the mighty Eagles.

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.

(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?