Welcome, friends, once again, to our Thanksgiving table here at The Good Phight. You know, each year around this time we think about what we’re thankful for, and then a few weeks from now as we gather again, stricken with holiday burn-out for one last guzzle of champagne before the New Year, we will make plans for our glorious futures. In between these two holidays—the giving of thanks and the fresh start of the new year—it makes sense that we descend into debauchery and madness, slobbering over leftovers and baked goods, frantically ladling nog into our wet mouths, and sleeping violently on a pile of our unconscious relatives.
Truly, we sit on the eve of the calendar’s wasteland—a time period blurred by visits and pie consumption. We spend the first few weeks of the next calendar attempting to neutralize it through a poorly executed physical regiment. Then, next thing we know, the Phillies are back, spring is on the horizon, and that magical time of year when we try and fail and are severely beaten for attempting to stowaway in the Phillies’ equipment truck as it barrels down to Clearwater is here.
On our final day of peace, please join us on this page. Have a seat. Warm yourself by the fire. Smell the scent of sizzling meat wafting in from the kitchen. The Phanatic has stalked and killed some wild game on his yearly hunt, and as he washes the blood off from around his mouth-tube, let us consider the events of the past year and reflect on their impact.
We are in an odd place, at the moment. The Phillies are not actively discouraging, and at least two of the other three Sports Complex residents are behaving in a similar fashion. There will always be garbled bitchings crackling through the airwaves until our radio signal finally gives out, but the sane sports fan in Philadelphia does not currently hate him or herself enough to step into traffic. The bitterness is there, as always, in the form of relatives and commenters who don’t know how to react to sports in any other way, but, unarguably, morale is on the upswing.
Which is incredible, given the overall state of sports on this planet; in baseball, teams are losing prospects for greasy dealings over international signing rules and bonuses, people were working very hard to screw Shohei Otani over; over at the NFL, there’s a barrel of snakes into which to stick your head regarding just about every issue on and off the field. So, we retreat into our fandom, not to avoid these things, but because, thankfully, there are occasionally one or two things about sports that don’t make us want to walk silently into the ocean, and when somebody asks the inevitable, “What are you thankful for??” we can mutter, “Rhys Hoskins’ puppy,” and then when they say, “What?” you can say, much louder, your kids or something.
Let this page serve as inspiration for your Thanksgiving needs when you are asked this question. I’ll get the ball rolling.
- Rhys Hoskins’ home run barrage
- Nick Williams’ last day inside-the-parker
- Aaron Nola’s change-up
- Discounted meat cylinders moving at 40 m.p.h.
- The undenied idea of the Phillies’ rebuild going pretty okay
- The future signing of “the big one;” the free agent acquisition that, because of the Phillies’ cash reserves and the talent available, we’ve been discussing for three years without any indication of who it actually will be
- That for what was, in the grand scheme of the universe, a fleeting second, we were alive at a time when Roy Halladay was not only pitching, but pitching for the Phillies, and doing so with exactly the skill, precision, and intensity we were promised
- The pathway of Cesar Hernandez’s career
- Prospects people actually want to see play baseball
- Being “in on” just about every player of interest, just for the hell of it
- Felske Files Black Friday t-shirt sale!!
But I digress. The honking noises coming from the wash room indicate the Phanatic is just about finished cleaning and ready to begin his horrible feast while we chew our food in silence. Let me open up the floor, to you, our visitors, before the walls are splattered with the viscera of his kill.
Thank you for joining us on this holiday, and enjoy your chance to give thanks, air grievances, reveal the depth of your self-loathing, or even inform your narrator how splendid you find his prose. No matter the case, happy Thanksgiving to one and all.
[Sounds of a 3,000-lbs. tropical beast violently swallowing bird meat]