BATTER UP: PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES

Counting down the seconds till Opening Day when life begins anew involves providing a "starting nine" for all 29 major-league teams, and if there's time, the Devil Rays. Presenting: The Philadelphia Phillies.

1. Win something soon, dammit: No one would ever suggest Philly is desperate for a champion. It was only two years ago the Philadelphia Phantoms made their Calder Cup conquest. Sure, that's minor-league hockey and Philly is an Eagles town (the football team, not the mid-level '70s band), but you gotta take what you can get.
   
   The Phillies have finished a combined 11 games out of a playoff spot in the past three years for absolutely no good reason, save for letting David Bell play so much. The time is nigh. They have loaded up by trading for power pitcher Freddy Garcia, and they can score a ton of runs.
2. How long does Ryan Howard (top photo) have? No one is a true Philly superstar until he's been booed. Howard is already fearing it -- mired in an 0-for-17 slide down in Florida, he gave a writer the brush-off yesterday.
   
   It's nothing personal. Philly fans have booed everyone right up to the greatest living ballplayer, Michael Jack Schmidt. They boo since they love. Prediction: Howard will hear it when the Phillies make the playoffs and teams start pitching around him to get to Pat Burrell.
3. Cole Hamels' tears cure cancer. Unfortunately, he has never cried: You have probably seen the website dedicated to the Phillies left-hander which parodies all those ones about Chuck Norris. Hamels averaged better than a strikeout per inning as a rookie last year and his wife Heidi Strobel (pictured, right) has posed for Playboy. Does it set off any red flags, however, that the most similar player to Hamels is Floyd Bannister? If you remember Floyd Bannister, seriously, get help.
4. Pat Burrell needs a new town: Pat the Bat, apparently an accomplished cocksman, could use a city rich enough in gorgeous women and celebrity sheen that the local nine's left-fielder being "drunk off his ass" and "doing his Usher impression" at a bar wouldn't become gossip column fodder. Whatever the reason, Philadelphia doesn't qualify on either count -- its only element of celebrity is that damn Rocky statue -- but there's always L.A., or even Toronto.
5. The bullpen is kind of young: The Yankees' Mariano Rivera enters games to the strains of Enter Sandman. Philly's bullpen gets visits from the sandman. With Joe Bisenius, age 24, Zack Segovia, 23, and Fabio Castro, 21, still looking for jobs with the big clubs, the Phillies won't need a seventh-inning stretch -- they'll need to have nap time. At the other end of the spectrum, closer Tom Gordon is 39 and sometimes needs a nap, or else he gets cranky. Seriously though, Gordon had a terrible second half, so Gillick will have to deal for relief help.
6. Bourn to run away from Ottawa: The word out of Clearwater is that speedmeister Michael Bourn may open the season with the big club, instead of tearing up the basepaths at Lynx Stadium (Via Phuture Phillies). On the plus side one of those young pitchers will probably be here in good time.
7. Retro Cool Phil: The late, great Tug McGraw (relief pitcher, 1975-84) was part of a special subspecies of ballplayer -- the loopy left-handed pitcher. Tim McGraw's dad was Out of Left Field's kind of dude, whether he was creating a comic strip, warming up right-handed before games just to screw with the fans, or telling reporters about his plans for his then-princely $75,000 salary: "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10% I'll probably waste."
   
   That alone made him memorable before he struck out Willie Wilson for the final out of the 1980 World Series, clinching the Phillies' only championship.
8. David Bell, what was the deal with that? The former Phillies third baseman recently admitted to receiving supplements -- he says it was for a medical problem. This begs the question: Bell was juicing when he slugged .396 over a 12-year career?
   
   Bell's out of baseball, so hopefully it's not piling on to point out that signing him to a long-term contract a few years back was pretty damn dumb. Since Bell had to play and Placido Polanco was then at second, superstar Chase Utley stayed in the minors longer than needed. In '05, instead of being moved to third to create a spot for Utley, Polando was traded to the Tigers -- where he hit .338 for the rest of the season. Meantime, without him and still stuck with Bell, the Phillies missed the playoffs by one game.
9. Need-to-know: The Phillies' disciplined hitters will wear out a lot of pitchers, especially in the hot summer weather. Wes Helms is an upgrade at third base. There's too much quality starting pitching not to make a run. Besides, it will be really fun to watch Mets fans go all apoplectic when their team slips into second place -- only to watch Phillies fans lose it when their team blows in the post-season.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.