Into the Head

The Phillies, having sent the Dodgers back where they belong, and being somehow treated by many observers as the underdogs in the series of games they are to play with New York, stifled all the excitement amongst the Gothamites last night and showed who really is the top team in town. Them. Heck, when the score was only 2-0 in the seventh inning the moneyed crowd we see in the expensive seats on games televised from NEW Yankee Stadium started heading out to the town cars waiting to take them home. The number of empty seats behind the dugouts when the score was 4-0 was shocking. Are they not baseball fans who should know that the Yankees have been a dangerous late inning team? Or did they attend because it was the city's "hot ticket?"

And the Phillies took their strolls to first, Jimmy Rollins stole second on a 3-0 count, and Raul Ibanez sent a grounder to right field and two Phillies scooted home. Oh and the Yankee pride was preserved by a run in the ninth to avoid a shut out. It was enough to warrant a wicked Chase Utley smirk.

The Phillies are a team that could easily fit into the AL East. They play AL East baseball and can score from home plate, run on the pitcher, throw, pitch, and stare down a pretender to their title as reigning champions. Last night they did all that and got into the heads of the Bronx boys.

Charlie Manuel sends Pedro Martinez to the mound tonight. A Yankee fan with any sense of history (not easy to find) has got to sense that not only do the Phillies not fear the Yankees and their "tradition" and in their new stadium, they don't mind slinging a little sarcasm at them too. Pedro was once the best of the yankee killers and doing it as a Red Sox made it worse. Pedro could dance in the dugout and jockey with the best in baseball. He laughed at Jose Posada, his ears, and the idea that the Yankees were invincible.

Yankee manager, Skeletor, sends the weird AJ Burnett to the mound tonight. This is it for the Yankees and AJ better perform with some relation to how he is paid. Problem is, the way the Phillies acted last night, there might be no player on the Yankees more likely to feel the pressure and, in the words of the former President, "mislocate" the strike zone and serve up a 2-0 series lead to the team they forgot had already proven they were champions of baseball.

Red Sox fans will enjoy this World Series.