It's here.
It seems like forever ago that the Phillies lost game 6 of the NLCS to the soon to become World Series champion San Francisco Giants.
Even Dec. 15, the day Cliff Lee came back seems ages ago.
This has been the LONGEST off season EVER!!!
(okay - not really, but it sure has seemed like it)
But that all ended today, when Pitchers and Catchers reported to Clearwater, Florida to start working out in an effort to bring a third World Series title back to Philadelphia.
Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, Cole Hamels, and Joe Blanton together for the first time. Some of them even ate breakfast together:
I mean, how cool is that?
Thank god we are in a slow period at work, because it was a tad hard to concentrate will all of the baseball going on today. I was able to watch the entire press conference with the starting 5 which caused me to pound my fist on my desk only a few times (seriously, HOW many times and in HOW many ways can Clifton be asked about why and how he chose to come to Philly - HE DID IT!! HE'S HERE!! HE'S WEARING OUR UNIFORM! WE WIN!!! HE CHOSE US!! HE LOVES US, HE REALLY LOVES US!!). It was really just awesome to see all 5 of those guys in Phillies red, smiling (well for the most part - Roy O looked really out of it for a bit), and knowing that baseball had indeed started again.
Courtesty of Jayson Stark's Twitter
Yep - Baseball's back, and in just 4 short days, I'll be down in Clearwater to hear the crack of the bat and thud of balls hitting the back of leather mitts with my own two ears!!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News posted a great piece today that included a great Charlie Manuel monologue from day 1 of workouts, excerpted here:
Winning is team. It's we. It's us. It's playing together. But mostly, in our case, it's playing just like we always have.
Check out the rest of what Chuck had to say here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In unrelated baseball news, here's something out of the totally wacky world of competitive......grocery bagging.
I first became aware of this last year when a friend of ours, who is a higher up in a regional grocery store chain based out of Maine (Hannaford), went to Las Vegas to accompany one of the cashiers from his region at the National bagging competition.
Well, he was able to go again this year with one of his cashiers, and was even featured on the local news:
THIS JUST IN - the competition in Vegas was earlier this evening and Krystal WON!! We just got email updates from our friend Andy. They are celebrating and in talks to be in NYC tomorrow to be on Letterman...seriously.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll leave you with one shot from last year's spring training:
Recent Comments