“*PhillyBurbs.com: What is your first Phillies memory? *
Mine is losing the 1983 World Series. Neat! What’s yours?”

Going to the Braves/Phillies game in Atlanta on July 4, 1988. I was 5 years old, and ended up at the Fulton County Stadium infirmary after being injured by fireworks (it was raining, and some rocket fuel wound up in my eye). One of the medics asked who my favorite player was, and went to the dugout and got me a baseball signed by Dale Murphy (my loyalties hadn’t solidifed at that point)

Wasn’t a game at all. We were driving to my grandmother’s house in NE Philly when it came on the radio that Mike Schmidt was retiring. If I try really hard I might be able to remember actually seeing him play, but it’s the first really solid memory I had.

The first game was shortly afterward for my 4th birthday. Had the Phunsters come over with confetti and everything.

He now has made four starts in this postseason — the first four postseason starts of his career. In every one of them, he has gone at least seven innings and given up one earned run or none.

In the history of baseball, only one other starting pitcher ever started his postseason career with four starts like that — a Hall of Famer named Christy Mathewson, who did it as recently as a century ago (in 1905-11).

I couldn’t help but think how painful it must have been for an Indians fan to watch last night’s game. And at one point, Fox flashes a graphic of both pitchers with the heading “At Least You’ve Still Got Lebron.” I thought that was totally classless. But hey, it is Fox after all.

but am I the only one who secretly wishes that Charlie would have given the ball to Cole for game 2?

I know he said he didn’t want to pitch lefties back to back, but that didn’t stop him from doing it against the Rockies. And I’m not really buying the whole Pedro is better suited mentally for the challenge of Yankee stadium. What, and Cole isn’t experienced on the big stage? Are his home vs away stats that markedly different? If you accept the premise that Cole is the second best pitcher on this staff (and I do), then he should be starting tonight IMHO.

I don’t know about my first memory, but I know my best one… as a child going to game 2 of the ‘80 world series. Yes, I’m pretty old.

I’m thrilled the Phillies made it back to the WS this year. For me, it’s a bit of a mulligan. Last year I was moving into a new house the day after the WS started. I missed the first 2 games almost completely due to the actual act of moving. I knew I would, but I wanted to make sure I could catch the rest of the series. I called Time Warner and ordered a cable hookup for Saturday. Problem was, I never paid attention to which Saturday I scheduled it for. I scheduled it for the Saturday after the WS was to wrap up.

I spent the next 3 games going to Buffalo Wild Wings, listening on the radio then for Game 5 I watched at a chain restaurant (forget which, there’s like 10 of them across the street from me and they all blur together). When the game got called for rain with the remaining innings being payed Wednesday night (if I remember correctly), I decided to go to a sports bar I found down the street.

Now, I live just outside Raleigh, NC. No one here really cares about the Phillies, but its a sports bar and baseball’s a sportso I figured it would be on. It wasn’t, I asked twice for them to put it on the big screen and they finally did. The game started and then so did Karaoke night. I had to watch the rest of the game with idiots singing (mostly) crappy country songs. I hate country music with the passion of a thousand suns, but I had to listen to it. The one advantage: drunks are frankly just as good at singing country as the pros.

When the Phillies finally recorded the last out, some poor bastard, who was taking his karaoke as seriously as a doctor performing brain surgery, was singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ while my wife and I jumped up and down screaming at the top of our lungs facing the opposite direction at the Phillies win. Sucked for him, but a great moment for me.

This year, I have cable.

Dan Rosenheck writes in the NYT that starting Pedro tonight is a mistake.

Frankly, his argument makes very little sense. Even if you were to stipulate that all of his facts are right, both Hamels and Martinez are still guaranteed to pitch one game, right? So who cares if they’re out of order?

I suppose that the odds that Hamels will make a second start will be smaller than the odds that Martinez will make a second start. But again, so what? If we’re not facing elimination, then either Pedro’s game will clinch the Series or Hamels will get to pitch a second game too. And if we are facing elimination, then both guys would have to pitch and win anyway.

This is just a case of a writer who’s so intent on showing off his statistical insights that he loses sight of the fact that his argument has to be logical too.