Shallow | Center

He's Really Looking Forward to Calling Bench-Clearing Brawls

THE PHILLIES' off-season cashiering of Scott Palmer Graham opened up a broadcasting slot, and they've tapped Flyers play-by-play guy Jim Jackson to fill it. Scott Franzke moves from pre- and post-game duties to exclusive game calling, replacing Palmer, and Jackson will assume Franzke's old responsibilities. Jackson is a capable broadcaster, a professional to be sure, but I wonder why his hiring was even necessary. The Phils load up heavily on announcers, and have done so for the past several years, and I can't figure out why. Is it because Harry Kalas's advancing age requires him to take it easy, thus necessitating more personnel to supplement his contributions? Or, more likely, because Phillies baseball is often so tough to watch that forcing a smaller group of broadcasters to watch all nine innings of all 162 games, without a break, is tantamount to torture?

Wiki, Wild Stuff

SOMETIMES THE random Wikipedia article teaches you a lot, and sometimes it doesn't. This week's click takes us to a one-sentence piece on the artist Rik Wouters:

Rik Wouters (August 21, 1882, Mechelen-July 11, 1916, Amsterdam) was a Belgian fauvist painter and sculptor.

Hmmm. Since I had never heard of fauvism, I clicked that link and found an article describing that short-lived but interesting movement, whose most famous artist was Matisse. Check out his "The Dessert: Harmony in Red" for a good representation of fauvism.

It's Gonna Be a Great Year for Brad, Rat, and Damone

WATCHING THE Academy Awards telecast is a fool's errand for the parents of young children, one of them an infant. We simply don't get out to the movies much anymore, and, frankly, we're too tired to watch anything that spans longer than an hour, which is why we eighty-sixed our Netflix subscription. And so, while I may (and do) quite enjoy seeing nubile young actresses slither across the stage while poured into very, very snug dresses (hello, Emily Blunt!), from an arts perspective there's not much I can contribute. Which is why the best observation I can make about Sunday's ceremony is that Forest Whitaker's win for The Last King of Scotland officially makes Fast Times at Ridgemont High a harbinger for future awards. Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage have already won Oscars; Anthony Edwards was nominated for several Emmys for his work on ER; and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Eric Stoltz spent years as indie faves and nominees waiting to happen. Look for comebacks from Judge Reinhold, Brian Backer, and Robert Romanus in the years to come.

No Hard Feeleys

THE EAGLES' resigning of A.J. Feeley spells the end of Jeff Garcia's brief but productive career as Donovan's McNabb's backup, and I'm completely okay with that. Garcia's tenure in Philadelphia was a complete win-win: He signed a one-year contract, got his chance, and played great, proving that he still has some gas in the tank; the team rode his performance to a win in the playoffs. Garcia should get a nice contract from some other team, but it almost certainly will be larger than a QB his age should get. As for Feeley, he, like Garcia, is a decent enough player who, plugged into the right system and with the right cast around him, can find success simply by not making mistakes. And he's a lot younger. The Eagles may take some PR hits on this, but I think they did the right thing; and best of luck to Garcia, who came into a tough situation and was a consummate professional.

Ducat Soup

EVEN HAD my income not taken a hit with my hanging out a shingle as a full-time freelancer, I was disinclined to renew my 17-game Phillies season-ticket plan. My brother and I initially bought plans for the team's last season at the Vet in part because we figured it was necessary in order to see games on a regular basis when the Phils moved to Citizens Bank Park. And in the heady days of the acquisition of Jim Thome and Kevin Millwood, we also figured that season tickets would allow us to buy playoff seats. We all know how everything turned out, season after season, since then. There simply have been too many near-misses for my taste. Throw in the disastrous reaction to Brett Myers's roughing up of his wife and you have an enough-is-enough moment.

The Phillies are still my team, and I desperately want them to win. I'll still go to games. But if they want regular revenue from my MasterCard, they're going to have to earn it back.

The Rowand Dilemma

HOW VERY Philadelphian of me: The possibility that the Phillies will deal Aaron Rowand for a setup guy bums me out more than a little. I know the Phils need bullpen help, and I know that Rowand's offensive production is very replaceable. But he has only one speed, overdrive, and on a team that has spent too many years brushing the lint off its jerseys while it sleepwalked to another loss, his spirit has been very welcome. Witness:

It was Rowand who spurred last season's clubhouse karma that led to a late-season playoff push. He hosts team barbecues at his home in Boothwyn; in fact, with increased team unity in mind, he had his basement finished.

"There's going to be a lot more of that this year," he promised.

Rowand makes sure rookie and veterans alike are included in team functions, including the occasional mandatory team dinner on the road.

Again, I appreciate that it appears weird to welcome last year's Bobby Abreu trade while lamenting a possible Rowand deal. It's very Philadelphia to adore the lesser player who bleeds for you while scoffing at the better player who can't seem to be bothered. It's overly sentimental thinking, the kind that led Bill Giles to enrich Darren Daulton and Lenny Dykstra instead of spending the money on younger guys with more upside. Hell, it's the kind that called for A.J. Feeley to start over Jeff Garcia when Donovan McNabb went down. It's thinking that places emotion over facts, intensity over talent, grit over winning.

Ordinarily I decry such thinking. But in Rowand's case, I just want the guy to succeed so that his on-paper production to match his locker-room contributions so that the rumors go away and he sticks around for a World Series or three. What's a Phan to do?

Wiki, Wild Stuff

YOU DIDN'T think I'd forget, did you? Our random surf through the pages of Wikipedia brings us today to Sean Crosby, an artist, decorator, and instructor whose work includes reproductions of Italian Renaissance frescoes and murals "for exclusive private clientele in the Northeastern United States." To me, that means that Trump, whose closest brush with Italian culture is when he tries to pronounce "prosciutto," pays him considerable scratch to make his Long Island estate look like a Tuscan villa. Expect Crosby to host a reality competition among fresco painters on Bravo any day now.

Bean There, Done That

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS and scenes from a long weekend in the metro Boston area:

• The breathless coverage of Tom Brady's testimony in the Charlie Weis medical-malpractice trial seemed hard to top. Until it came out that Brady's former girlfriend, the actress Bridget Moynahan, is expecting his love child. Brady is a god in Boston, and his upcoming paternity cranked the celebrity/media engine into overdrive immediately -- not just on television but in the usually more measured print media, where the story was plastered on the Globe's front page, above the fold.
• How is it that I could drive 300 miles away from Philadelphia, turn on the radio, find a hockey game, and still hear the Flyers give up a goal?

Forsberg Flies Away

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the Flyers' unfortunate but necessary trade of Peter Forsberg is that it represents the team's tacit acknowledgment that the abyss in which it finds itself this season is too deep to climb out of anytime soon. If 2006-07 were merely an aberration, Forsberg likely would have made a commitment to Ed Snider to stick around. In keeping his options open, he indicated that he didn't expect to content in Philadelphia in the near future -- and the deal the Flyers struck with Nashville is exactly like those that sad-sack baseball teams make at the trading deadline when they have a stud in his walk year and are going nowhere fast.

It's a shame that Forsberg's tenure here was marked by injury and underachievement. He really is a breathtaking player, but, as so often seems to happen, wearing the orange and black was like a curse.

Of course, you realize that somewhere Bob Clarke is muttering under his breath that all of this is the Lindros family's fault.

Here We Go Again

EVERY AUTUMN, I have to walk away. The overwhelming wear and tear of more than six months of daily immersion, capped by inevitable disappointment, sometimes crushing, sometimes easier to accept, necessitates a break. And then February rolls around and those magical words reappear: Pitchers and catchers report today.

And so here we are. The Clearwater datelines have already begun to pop up in the papers, but today is the day when it starts for real.

More than the eternal (and usually unwarranted) optimism that today represents from a baseball perspective, I take heart that spring and summer's simple, uncomplicated pleasures are now visible on the horizon. Cold beer on a warm night at the ballpark ... hanging out with my daughters on a sparkling Sunday at the playground ... grilling a steak over the coals on my deck ... the cool morning breeze blowing through my car's open windows.

Pitchers and catchers report today. It's one of the sweetest phrases in the language, regardless of how one's team finishes the season nearly eight months hence.