Shallow | Center

Swag the Dog

From Elizabeth Wellington's story in today's Inquirer:

Organizers of the [Live 8] concert, designed to raise awareness of crushing poverty in Africa, will show their gratitude to dozens of celebrities with a Hugo Boss duffel bag chock-full of high-fashion trinkets and designer drinks, valued at roughly $3,000.

In addition, the performers giving 15 minutes of stage time will be able to personalize their bags with big-ticket items including: Hugo Boss suits, valued between $800 and $1,000 each; XM satellite radios and subscriptions, $500; Seven jeans, $180 for men, $150 for women; Gibson guitars, $2,000; Borgata terry-cloth robes, $100; Boyd's ties, $125; 76ers garment bags and T-shirts, $330; Mitchell & Ness sweat suits, $330; and Bertolucci watches, valued between $1,500 and $6,000.

Okay, I've been around the block a bit. I know that the companies "donating" such big-ticket swag do so only because of the possibility of massive buzz that may result when the celebs receiving it start raving to InStyle about how much they love the stuff they didn't pay for. (Well, who doesn't?) As distasteful I find such a practice at awards shows, it's downright morally offensive at an event such as Live 8. The entire spirit of the day is cruelly mocked -- spat upon, really -- when enormously wealthy men and women wax charitable about giving their time to the cause, then walk out the back flap of the tent loaded with stuff they could easily buy without batting an eyelash. I'd love to see just one of the performers have the stones to publicly call on the companies to keep their products and donate money to the cause instead. Dave? Sarah? P.? Peas? Alicia? Anyone? Bueller?

These Little-Town Blues

In case you're counting -- and this is baseball, so everything is counted, baby -- today's feeble, 5-3 loss to the Mets marks the fifth straight series the Phillies have lost since their quickly fading 12-1 homestand. More disturbingly, perhaps, is that the Phils have dropped a pair of series to woeful New York within a week. The usual suspects have been rounded up: a befuddled offense, a schizophrenic rotation, wobbly relief. Did I mention that the team's No. 1 starter told reporters, "Right now, I suck" earlier today? These factors have now dumped the Phils 7-1/2 games back in the East, which for ordinary teams would be surmountable, given that there's slightly more than half the season left. As we've see, though, the Phillies are no ordinary team. It might be time for the roster to start Googling "fishing holes in October."

No Ifs, Ands, or Guts

Todd Zolecki and Marcus Hayes sure have easy jobs these days. Oh, I know they're required to work lousy hours almost every night for seven or eight months, but look at how little effort they have to expend these days. Much as obituary writers prewrite stories and then fill in the details when a death finally occurs, the Phillies' beat reporters need only recycle last year's pieces and drop in the pertinent statistics. Zolecki's lede in today's Inquirer, for example, sounds awfully familiar:

NEW YORK -- The Phillies' fall has been fast.

It has been ugly.

And it continued last night with an 8-3 loss to the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.

The Phillies opened a series in Seattle on June 14 just one game behind first-place Washington in the National League East. But just 15 days later, they find themselves 61/2 games back and one loss from sole possession of last place. The Phillies have lost a season-high five straight, and 10 out of their last 13. They are just one game above .500.

As long as Zolecki and Hayes have last year's stories stored away on their laptops, they can spend games surfing the Web and chowing dogs in the press box, at least until the official box score is distributed. No, today's heavy lifting is done by the Daily News's Paul Hagen, who takes a stab at why the Phillies have fallen apart at the very first sign of trouble, immediately after a roaring, 12-1 homestand that marked their most sustained success in three seasons:

With nearly half the schedule spent, a series of vague impressions are forming about this group of players. That they allow themselves to be too easily distracted by the fans, the media and the unforgiving dimensions of Citizens Bank Park. That there is a general reluctance to accept responsibility. That they play tight because they're overly concerned with making mistakes, a safety-first style that stifles their ability.

In other words, they got no stones. Charlie Manuel's call earlier this week for his team to show more determination and focus and drive -- his words -- should have gotten more attention than they did. When a rabidly player's manager calls out his guys this way, it should carry a hell of a lot more weight than the daily ravings of perpetually mouth-frothing Larry Bowa. Many, many observers, me included, believed that Manuel's hiring would kick-start the dugout, allowing everyone to relax and enjoy playing baseball. Instead, the Phillies have regressed to the cowed puppies who coughed it up in 2003, 2004, and April 2005.

Well, hey, at least the beat guys get a break.

System of a Down and Out

Conlin phoned it in today with a lazy piece on free-spending teams with mediocre records. This includes the local Phavorites, of course. But, as OneChair correctly noted, some of the high rollers have managed to translate their big bucks into winning records:

Maybe the real bottom line here is that some baseball franchises are funded, administered and managed with skill, imagination and ingenuity. Others wind up with too many first basemen and not enough centerfielders, a plethora of middle relievers, a paucity of frontline starters and a farm system that couldn't grow corn in Iowa.

And this was before the skidding Phillies sagged to just a game over .500 with tonight's 8-3 loss to the Mets in Flushing. As the wheels come off a little bit more with each loss, the Phils reveal themselves to be not simply a collection of underachieving players, but an entire organization which is, top to bottom, staffed with mediocrity and marked by an acceptance of failure. Systemic changes are needed, and until that happens, any fleeting success (see 1993) will be nothing more than a happy accident.

Boston Scream Pie

I'm guessing Terry Francona's diary will have a lot of little smiley faces drawn in its pages tonight. The team that cashiered him continues to stagger like a punch-drunk fighter, even after cashiering his replacement, while Tito himself is, of course, known as the manager at the helm when the Curse was exorcised. Putting the cherry on the sundae, his Red Sox came to Philadelphia this weekend and delivered a complete and utter ass-whipping to his old team.

Francona's Phils were fiscal pipsqueaks, which meant they were unwilling or unable to buy a pennant winner; worse, they couldn't spell Moneyball if you spotted them the "Money," so they were unable and unwilling to research a pennant winner. Tito, in other words, was toast even before he pulled on his first Phillies spring training jersey. The Sox, though, not only have deep pockets, but they also have the smarts to spend wisely. The newly wealthy Phront Office has thrown money around for the last three years, following Francona's sacking, with nothing to show for it. Still disdainful of anything sabermetric (see Balls, Sticks, & Stuff's description of Larry Bowa's recent radio meltdown concerning Michael Lewis's masterwork), they stumble around blindly, spending money haphazardly and congratulating themselves when an otherwise perceptive columnist does them a favor and blames their ballpark instead of their inability to recruit more appropriate players or to better coach the players they have.

You know what it adds up to?

Lots and lots of smiley faces.

Pop-Ups

The daily minutiae of the baseball season has kept me from writing long reflections on recent movies, books, and television I've taken in, so below you'll find some quick thoughts.

Layer Cake

Daniel Craig's nameless protagonist is a midlevel drug dealer who is much more businessman than thug. His sole desire is one last big score before leaving the game for good, but of course these things never work out quite so easily. Craig's charismatic, unforced performance anchor the movie, a charming and competently made entry in the recent spate of lighthearted British gangster films. (***1/2)

Mr. 3000

"When a recently discovered scorer's error reveals he's three hits shy of 3,000, Stan Ross returns to the Milwaukee Brewers after nine years of retirement to collect his hits and ensure his spot in the Hall of Fame." No, it's not an amiable Disney vehicle for Bruce Willis. Ross, you see, is a Grade A prick, a hugely self-centered and unlikable player who discovers that the game found it far easier to forget him and move on than he ever would have thought. Bernie Mac plays Stan with just the right amount of fading bravado, and the movie, though trifling, earns points for offering us such a flawed lead, for trying to add depth to the kind of character that's usually paper-thin, and for its outstanding, realistic baseball scenes. (***)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Charlie Kaufman arsenal is well stocked here: maladjusted male lead, free-spirited female lead, fantastical delvings into the characters' thought processes, pitch-perfect supporting players. But whereas Being John Malkovich and Adaptation played things for laughs, Eternal Sunshine has a far more wistful and evocative quality, as if Kaufman has finally grown up. Jim Carrey delivers another deft dramatic performance as a guy so burned by his last relationship that he undergoes a procedure to eradicate all memory of it. Kate Winslet, sparkling as usual, is the ex he's trying to forget, and there are great supplementing turns by Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, and Elijah Wood. (****)

The Tipping Point

Among the many fascinating tangents Malcolm Gladwell gleefully wanders off on in his immensely intriguing and thought-provoking book is a defense of the Band-Aid. Gladwell's thesis is that sweeping, important changes can be effected by seemingly insignificant causes. The Band-Aid, derided as a cheap and temporary solution, is a model worth emulating, he argues: inexpensive, easy to use, and very effective. Gladwell relies too much on seemingly intuitive opinions instead of peer-reviewed research, but his persuasive concluding chapter make a strong case for his views. (****)

Lost

ABC advertised the season finale of its freshman hit as the episode that would finally answer everyone's questions, but about the only substantive thing revealed was what Claire named her baby (Aaron, if you're interested). The various cliffhangers and unanswered questions are completely understandable, of course -- a rescue wouldn't leave much to say in Season 2, after all. As the castaways' various backgrounds -- told adroitly in entertaining flashbacks -- become clearer, we're left wondering just why these people lives have converged in such a perilous way, and just what the hell is up with this very strange, creepy, and dangerous island. Sophomore year should be fun. (Season finale: ***; season: ****)

The Season Keeps Getting Shorter

Mine was the only Phils cap in sight at SBC Park yesterday. Go figure, but it would seem that Phillies City-State doesn't show up for Diamondbacks-Giants games the way it does for Philadelphia-Oakland. So the progress of my hometown nine was a natural curiosity piece for the San Francisco season-ticket-holder sitting beside me.

It's a long-standing and time-honored practice, one of those delightfully civilized moments that separate baseball from the other, inferior sports. How, asked my neighbor, are the Phillies doing this season? Second place, I answered, three or four back of the Nats. Well, he reassured me, there's still a lot of the season left.

In the interest of being a polite out-of-towner, I refrained from performing a spit-take with my beer and laughing in his face. I refrained from telling him that this is the third straight season that has seen the Phront Office attempt to sell us the "There's a lot of season left" line. I refrained from pointing out that the Phillies followed up their best stretch of baseball in several seasons by dropping three straight series to below-average teams. I refrained from repeating Shallow Center commenter gr's perceptive insight that "the solo hr-having, no late rally getting, left-on-base-leaving Phils have come back home to roost." Were I still there, I'd refrain from telling him that putative staff ace Jon Lieber, after an extraordinarily promising start, has developed Millwooditis, the most recent symptom being tonight's pounding at the hands of the Red Sox.

"It gets late early out there," Yogi Berra once said. For the Phillies, the season gets late earlier each year.

Phade to Black

When I left Philadelphia, the Phillies were among baseball's hottest teams, but since my departure, they've lost three straight series. The Nationals lead the East by 3-1/2 now, and the Phils have sagged to just five games over .500. From a distance -- that is, reading brief wire stories in the San Francisco Chronicle -- it's impossible to tell what's gone wrong, and I haven't had the time or Web access to explore the blogosphere to get a handle on things. I'll be back this weekend to pick up the pieces, but until then, dear readers, I have to ask: Regarding the Phillies lately, WTF?

Giants Steps

Holy smokes.

I mean, holy freakin' smokes.

SBC Park, man.

Ten years ago, on my first trip to the West Coast, I caught the Giants and the Marlins at the Stick. The place was a charming, hulking wreck, a windswept relic that sparkled on sunny San Francisco days. On that day a decade past, brightness filled the park, and I exulted that my seats, a dozen rows or so behind the first-based dugout, were a shade better than those of Danny Glover, who watched the game a row behind us and a bit over.

The Giants left Candlestick to the 49ers five years ago and moved north to jaw-dropping SBC Park, which I was able to visit earlier today, as part of the same business trip that saw me in Oakland to see the Phillies play the A's. San Francisco hosted Arizona at 4, and while the game, a 7-2 Diamondbacks victory, was a nondescript affair, the ballpark experience was anything but. SBC is, in a word, breathtaking. As with all of the new yuppie palaces, it has all the amenities, including localized food and drink to complement the usual dogs and Bud products, but the difference here is the placement. From my seat in the second tier, just behind first base, I had a dazzling view of the Bay, and of the various freighters and sailboats that plied its waters. As I sipped a very refreshing Northern California microbrew, I marveled at the natural scenery and relaxed among the confines of the comforting dark green seats and stately brick structure.

Words really don't do it justice. In lieu of getting yourself to the Bay Area to check the place out, though, try these three on for size:

Holy. Freakin'. Smokes.

 

A's for Effort

From the shaggy, countercultural Athletics teams of the 1970s to the rampaging McGwire-Canseco Bash Brothers squads of the '90s to the chronically wrong-side-of-the-tracks Raiders of, well, forever, the Oakland Coliseum has always seemed a dank, foreboding place. Yet when a happy coincidence put me in the Bay Area yesterday, the same night the Phillies were opening a three-game set with the A's, I found a much different place than the dreaded "Mausoleum" I'd heard so much about over the years.

Yes, it's a concrete bowl, one of those multipurpose monstrosities cursed with dark, dingy concourses. Yes, the vast seas of empty outfield sections threaten to swallow up any wayward soul foolish enough to venture there. Yes, the young guys dressed in A's jerseys and throwing down Buds in the parking lot appear sinister and threatening to a preppy who obnoxiously shows up at the stadium in his Phillies cap. If you squinted, you might think you were transported to the awful Veterans Stadium seasons of the late '90s.

But ...

There's grass on the field. The park's corporate sponsor is McAfee, the anti-computer virus people – what could be more user-friendly than that? The staff is easygoing and friendly. There are only 43,000 seats, rendering an unexpected intimacy to what should be a soulless place. And scattered among the usual forlorn concession outposts hawking lukewarm dogs and watered-down Bud Light were tasty microbrew stands and counters selling a local favorite: the surprisingly tasty garlic fries.

I wasn't the only Phan among the 15,000 announced who attended the game. A fair number of red caps and pinstriped Thome jerseys could be found throughout the stadium's lower bowl, and when the Phillies rewarded Robinson Tejeda's sparkling start by busting out in the seventh, the cheering was noticeable. (Remind me of this the next time I'm at Citizens Bank Park quietly seething because some idiot Marlins fan behind me won't shut his pie hole.) A taut pitchers' duel turned into an easy Phils win over Barry Zito and the A's, and a beautiful night to watch baseball was made that much sweeter.