Shallow | Center

They Can't Handle the Truth!

With yesterday's parade in Boston, baseball fans have closed the books on the 2004 season. Yes, there will be plenty of talk over the next few months about free agent signings and trades and managerial changes, but all of that is about next year. We're done with this season.

A final note about the World Series champs and their many supporters: As much as I wish I could believe Bill Simmons's frequent, fervent assertions that all Red Sox Nation wants is to be treated like all other baseball fans, Boston's ability to channel its own supposed victimhood in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary makes me skeptical. The Sox hadn't won a Series since 1918, but they were a hell of a lot more competitive in the intervening seasons than a lot of other teams -- including, say, our own hometown nine -- and meanwhile the Patriots were winning two Super Bowls in three years while the Celtics are the NBA's most storied franchise. Yet all you ever heard about was the woe that had befallen Fenway Park and the surrounding area since Babe Ruth was peddled to the Yankees.

My suspicion is that Red Sox Nation is going to need some expert therapy to deal with the sudden disconnect between perception and reality. Boston doesn't want admit it, but I think its fans find some sort of perverse comfort in the heartache they believe they've had to endure. As Col. Nathan Jessup barks in A Few Good Men:

You don't want the truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall -- you need me on that wall.

Dogs and Cats Living Together

In the space of less than a week, the Boston Red Sox managed to do something no team had done, ever, in well over a century of Major League Baseball, then won the World Series for the first time in 86 years.

Now that the impossible apparently has become routine, I will be:

• Submitting Shallow Center for a Pulitzer Prize


• Awaiting Mia Hamm's impending divorce from Nomar Garciaparra so that I can ask her out, with my wife's okay


• Entering the Mr. Universe competition


• Barging into David Montgomery's office and demanding to replace Ed Wade


• Subsisting entirely on a diet of sausage pizza and Stoudt's American Pale Ale, and not gaining an ounce or seeing my cholesterol levels rise


• Acquiring the powers of X-ray vision, clairvoyance, and flight

and expecting it all to come true.

As gripping as the two League Championship Series were, the World Series had an air of inevitability about it. The Red Sox jumped out to the lead in every game, and while the Cardinals occasionally were able to draw close, this was clearly Boston's show.

And so the Sox have exorcised the most infamous of baseball demons, sent Babe Ruth's ghost careening west on the Mass Pike toward Albany. Theirs has been a truly remarkable performance -- a blistering close to the regular season, an easy divisional series win over the Angels, the historic vanquishing of the Yankees, and the ultimate triumph over St. Louis. They are due every congratulations which comes their way. Including mine.

Managed Care

While the baseball world zeroes in the Red Sox' impending World Series victory -- man, is that a weird phrase to type -- intriguing things happened in Phillies City-State yesterday. Jim Fregosi was in South Philadelphia yesterday to interview for the Phils' vacant managerial post, and Ed Wade confirmed that Jim Leyland would be a candidate as well.

As Wade prepares for the most important decision of his career -- at some point doesn't his job have to be on the line for a nearly $100 million failure? -- he'd do well to heed these words from Phil Sheridan in today's Inquirer:

Watching the Sox buzz through the Cardinals is a breathtaking example of design in action. [Sox GM Theo] Epstein wanted a lineup of smart, aggressive hitters. He wanted players with asbestos-covered psyches who could endure the heat of playing in Boston. He wanted depth (the money really helps there). And he wanted a manager with the right temperament to keep it all together.

Also Sam Donnellon in the Daily News:

A year after watching Aaron Boone's home run send his hard work home early, Epstein is one game away from emancipating Red Sox Nation from an 86-year-old curse because he outworked and outthought George Steinbrenner's baseball people in the offseason and inseason, and because he spent more wisely than they.

While the Yankees added two big bats to a lineup already full of them in the offseason, Epstein added another ace in [Curt] Schilling and a reliable, two-inning closer in [Keith] Foulke. While the Yankees assembled a team of aloof professionals who came and went separate from each other, Epstein has, over the past two seasons, constructed a team lauded for its cohesiveness and chemistry.

It's ridiculously easy to point to a winning team and say, "Just do that." But it doesn't hurt to draw some parallels. The high-priced Phillies have spent the last two seasons punching in, playing a lifeless nine innings, and then punching out. Wade's disastrous hiring of Larry Bowa was both a poor baseball decision and a poor "people" decision -- as you watch the Red Sox romp joyfully through the postseason, sucking it up even when things are going badly, you realize that Bowa's Phillies would have imploded immediately when faced with even a fraction of the adversity with which Boston has had to contend. Then there's the Sox' amazing ability to work pitchers through every spot in the lineup (a hallmark of the Fregosi Era, by the way), something the hacking Philadelphians are brutally incapable of.

Yeah, a $125 million roster helps. But $93 should be enough to buy you a team that does better than a 10-GB second-place finish.

Ashlee to Ashes

As much as I enjoy Ashlee Simpson's pleasant little pop tune "Pieces of Me" -- oh, c'mon, like you don't have any guilty pleasures -- I can't help but cringe at her glaringly inept attempts to control the damage of her disastrous appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend.

Most PR pros would advise owning up to bad news and speaking with one voice, especially when a national television broadcast reveals incontrovertible evidence of the screw-up. Yet patriarch-slash-freak Joe Simpson, removed from the journalistic security blanket that is MTV News, couldn't decide which lie to trot out and so decided to flood the market with as many as he could manufacture. First Team Simpson attempted to deny Ashlee's blatant lip-synching, blaming the band for playing the wrong song and then pointing to a computer glitch. A day later, the Simpsons relented and admitted the obvious, but still managed to trip over themselves in the process. First there was some nonsense about needing to lip-synch because of acid reflux, then a statement on Ashlee's Web site saying her overworked voice needed a break.

Understandably absent, perhaps, was the truth -- that Ashlee's voice when unassisted by a crack studio production team is too poor to be heard live in a small venue.

The news that a young pop singer lip-synchs is hardly earth-shattering. Simpson's problem is her vehement denouncing of the process in a recent magazine interview. Lying about it after being caught red-handed -- much as another Simpson, Bart, says "I didn't do it" despite being nabbed with a can of spray-paint in his mitt -- isn't helping any, either.

Or maybe the Simpsons are smarter than we all think. Perhaps Joe is angling for a reality series of his own. After all, playing dumb while counting her millions has worked for his other daughter, right?

Wan Helsing

Talk about typecasting. As the dreary and too-long Van Helsing labors toward its conclusion, Hugh Jackman, whom you may recall played Wolverine in two X-Men movies, gets all hirsute and turns into, well, a werewolf.

At one point, Van Helsing actually howls at the moon. I think that was probably in the script, though Jackman may have been expressing his regret at agreeing to appear in this piece of crap. Few things are more frustrating than a big-budget, FX-laden thriller that plods dully along for two-plus hours; by the time VH ended, I was calculating what I could have done with the 132 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. Writer/director Stephen Sommers throws elements of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, religion, and camp into his blender, but instead of a smooth and delicious puree, the result is a chunky mess of badly contrasting flavors. Worse, it's wicked boring.

As the title character, Jackman gives it a game performance, but the uneven script allows his considerable charm to sneak through only occasionally. Sommers, who helmed The Mummy so ably, offers a confusing mishmash of a film here, and without someone as offbeat as Brendan Fraser to set the pace, the actors stumble their way along. Jackman and David Wehnam, his little sidekick, wink their way through the film, but Kate Beckinsale mistakenly plays it straight away, only with a weird Eastern European accent. As Dracula, Richard Roxburgh channels his inner cheese and delivers an out-of-place performance lifted straight from Adam West-era Batman.

And what on earth is the lovely and talented Beckinsale doing in this piece of crap? She went from promising Indie It Girl (Cold Comfort Farm, The Last Days of Disco) to Just Another Blockbuster Babe (Pearl Harbor, Serendipity) in about 30 seconds flat. In Van Helsing she doesn't even look like herself -- buried underneath layer after layer of makeup, she is completely and sadly generic.

Which is, perhaps, an apt description of the entire movie. A lot of folks cashed some very impressive checks in making it, a disquieting thought to anyone who ponied up nine bucks to watch Jackman go to the dogs.

A Nation Divided

Why do the Red Sox get a "nation" rooting for them? Go to any big American city outside New England and you'll see at least as many New York caps than Boston ones -- so why no "Yankees Nation"? Surely there's a substantial Chicago diaspora spreading out across this great land, yet you never hear of "Cubs Nation." And God forbid such nonentities as the Royals' and Rockies' fan bases be granted nation status.

Indeed, there's something uncomfortably elitist, and a little un-American, about Boston's die-hards referring to themselves as Red Sox Nation. It's yet another way of setting themselves apart from the rest of us mere baseball fans, like the annoying and indefensible bemoaning of sporting woe simply because the Red Sox haven't won a World Series since, what, 1918, right? (You'd think I'd remember the year more clearly, what with Joe Buck having it scrawled in Sharpie across his forehead and all.)

Yes, I've fallen for the Sox, especially after that kidney punch to the Yankees last night, but the way their fans -- with an enormous assist from such writers as Bill Simmons and Peter Gammons -- set their suffering apart as something special and unique is annoying.

Philadelphians, of course, wouldn't know elitism if it walked up behind us and clobbered us with a Louisville Slugger; we're far too insecure to refer to ourselves in such noble and self-obsessed terms. And, well, we don't tend to go anywhere. No, we're notoriously parochial, and much more likely to remain close to home base.

"Phillies Nation"? I don't think so. More like the Phillies City-State.

Yankees Go Home

They've been playing baseball for a long time -- well over a century -- so for a team to do something that's never been done in the history of the game is a supreme accomplishment.

It would be incredible enough for the Red Sox to have overcome a 3-0 series deficit. But to do it against the Yankees, with the final two games at the Stadium?

You gotta be kidding me.

Satan must have been dropping some serious coin throughout New England. I sure hope he kept receipts for all of those souls he bought. He'll need them if the Red Sox falter in the World Series.

But that's for later. For now, Boston and all of its fans rightly should revel in what's happened over the last week. Good luck to the Sox in the Series.

Is there anything happening in the National League?

A Leg Up

He's got a mouth the size of Boston Harbor, and an ego to match, but, boy, Curt Schilling sure can back it up, can't he? Pitching on one leg and in obvious discomfort, he called upon all of his skills to shut down the Yankees for seven innings last night, and then the overworked Red Sox bullpen reached into its bag of magic tricks to conjure up two innings of relief that sealed the deal. Schilling's performance was a masterpiece forged of guts and sheer will; can you even imagine Kevin Millwood in a similar situation having the stones to make it through the first inning, let alone seven? Me, either.

Simply by forcing Game 7, the Sox have made baseball history. An even more historical achievement would be attained with a win tonight -- Terry Francona managing in the World Series. Think about that while the Phillies plow through managerial candidates.

My in-laws, residents of the Boston metro area, report living on adrenaline and little sleep. How I envy them.

Every Time I Try to Get Out ...

How did this happen? How, after a second straight season of bitter disappointment by the hometown nine, am I again transfixed by playoff baseball? Two weeks after writing, "I actually am looking forward to the break," I find myself completely immersed in the league championship series. So much for time off until spring training.

Indeed, I couldn't tear myself away from the Red Sox-Yankees ordeal last night, and damn them, the Sox have me rooting for them yet again. And it's an honest cheering -- not my usual "Please, God, let Boston win for once so that all of the tiresome self-pity that enshrouds New England every autumn stops." And there's a hell of a series going on in the National League, too, and damn if I'm not pulling for the scrappy Astros and their Jesuit-educated GM to overcome "baseball genius" Tony La Russa and the Cardinals, whose coronation has been, thankfully, put on hold. As Paul Hagen notes, Gerry Hunsicker and Houston can thank our guys for that.

And then there's -- sigh -- the Phillies. If I think of them at all right now, it's with a wistful longing. The anger of this last lost season has been replaced by sadness at what might have been. When I see Fenway packed with yearning, pleading fans, bundled up in their scarves and gloves and faded Red Sox hats, I imagine, briefly, what it must be like. I was at the 15-14 game of the '93 World Series -- 11 years, a lifetime, ago. The memories are starting to recede. I want them back. Check that -- I want new memories.

Will Nearly Everybody Still Read?

Considering the ubiquity -- and ratings -- of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, conservatives have some nerve whining about the "liberal" media. Even locally, right-leaning Michael Smerconish has becoming something of a civic presence thanks to gigs on a local talk radio station and as a Daily News columnist, and the Inquirer has made a point to run regular op-eds by conservative columnists. But there's no Philadelphia equivalent to the Washington Times, so former Main Line Times editor Kevin Williamson is stepping in to fill the void.

Williamson -- not to be confused with his more famous namesake -- appeared on Smerconish's show Wednesday, reported the Inky and the DN, and announced that he would begin publishing a new paper, the Evening Bulletin, Mondays through Fridays beginning next month. As for the paper's political bent? The Daily News's Dan Gross wrote:

On Smerconish's show, Williamson likened the paper to the Fox News Channel, which he called an alternative to mainstream media.

Williamson, 32, is a motorcycle-riding former Texan described by a former colleague as "scary"-looking, and also "Catholic, very conservative, very bright, very hard-hitting, with a shaved head, and leather pants."

On Smerconish's show, Williamson said Narberth-based investment banker Tom Rice would be the publisher and financier.

Rice is also said to be conservative. He could not be reached yesterday for comment.

In an era when many more newspapers close up shop than crack open a new printing press, the Bulletin's launch is welcome. (Love the name, too -- nice nod to Philly tradition.) Chances are there are a lot of its politics with which I'll disagree, but that's okay -- contrasting voices are a healthy and necessary component of democracy. Best of luck to Mr. Williamson and his partners.