Month: April 2010

Get Ready for the 2010 Phillies

As my two favorite Phillies blogs, Beer­lea­guer and the Fight­ins,  vie for the title of best Phillies blog over at the Phield, I look for­ward to Mon­day’s Open­ing Day game against the Nation­als, with tick­ets cour­tesy of for­mer Nation­als right field­er Eli­jah Dukes. (Thanks, dude! I hope you find a team soon!)

This is our third year as sea­son tick­et hold­ers and the first that I’m gen­uine­ly ner­vous about how the sea­son will end. Maybe it’s the feel­ing any­one has when their team gets that close to win­ning back-to-back cham­pi­onships and los­es. Fear creeps in. Doubt, too. Some­how, despite the fact the Phillies trad­ed for a pitch­er who’s arguably the best in base­ball last Decem­ber, I can’t help but won­der how Roy Hal­la­day will be able to fix the Phillies when he can only take the field every fifth day.

With our thin pitch­ing staff already being test­ed by injuries, I can’t help but won­der if this is the year our fan­tas­tic Phils final­ly fall apart. Part of that is a life­time of Phillies pes­simism talk­ing, but it’s also the real­iza­tion that it’s very dif­fi­cult to field a team as con­sis­tent­ly great as the Phillies have these past two years with­out set­backs like this. On the oth­er hand, it’s April, and the Phillies tend to start slow­ly and gain momen­tum as the sea­son pro­gress­es. After all, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. There’s plen­ty of time to beat up on the NL East to secure a play­off berth.

I also feel like this is the first year that the end is in sight. Werth a Yan­kee? Per­ish the thought, but it might hap­pen. Trade Howard? After years of threat­en­ing, this could become a real­i­ty if the Phils aren’t will­ing to pick up his con­tract. The end of Jim­my Rollins’ reign as Phillies short­stop looms. Will the lega­cy of the ’08 Phillies be like that of the ’80 Phils, with Chase Utley as the new Mike Schmidt, the last man stand­ing from the team’s glo­ry days, a Hall of Famer sur­round­ed by also-rans and unproven rookies?

It’s famil­iar to me as some­one who was only 3 when the Phils won in ’80. I spent the bulk of my child­hood hat­ing the loath­some Phillies, even going so far as to resent their rag­tag run in ’93. The Phillies were so bad I chose to fol­low a team that was even worse: the Cleve­land Indi­ans! By ’95, I’d giv­en up on the Tribe and found myself root­ing for a Phillies team led by guys like Kevins Sef­cik and Stock­er. I vivid­ly remem­ber pars­ing the Schilling trade, hop­ing that some­how a guy like Omar Daal might be the answer to the Phils pitch­ing woes. (He was­n’t.) Must my infant son endure the hard­ship of being a Phillies fan just as I had before him? Seems likely.

My wish for the 2010 Phillies is that they win the World Series and enter the pan­theon of great teams. They’re prob­a­bly already there, but to win a third con­sec­u­tive Nation­al League pen­nant would be a thing of beau­ty. To be men­tioned in the same breath as the Big Red Machine is already dizzy­ing, but to sur­pass them would be magical.

So while I’m over­come with nos­tal­gia for the past two won­der­ful sea­sons, my hope is that the Phils enjoy con­tin­ued suc­cess and stay com­pet­i­tive. We won’t always be there in Octo­ber. It could be worse, much worse. We could be Mets fans!

Let’s go Phillies!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

My Take on MLB 2K10

It rules.

MLB 2K10 is a vast improve­ment over the last ver­sion of the game I pur­chased two years ago. The rea­sons are sim­ple. It’s tak­en the same approach that Mad­den took in sharp­en­ing his name­sake video game: made it hard­er and more realistic.  The approach at the plate no longer requires the hack and slash tac­tics in ’08; you can actu­al­ly look at pitch­es and maybe even draw a walk. I’ve drawn exact­ly one walk to date, with Ben Fran­cis­co as DH no less! The dis­ci­pline required to have good at-bats is a dra­mat­ic change from ‘08’s com­i­cal home run der­by, where hav­ing con­sec­u­tive mul­ti­ple home run games with Pedro Feliz or Geoff Jenk­ins was­n’t out of the question.

The pitch­ing con­trols? Meh. I don’t see the big diff. This is part of the prob­lem with mar­ket­ing sports games today. At this point, every­one knows that the real dif­fer­ences from year to year are few. How do you gen­er­ate excite­ment about a game whose main improve­ment is that the ros­ters are updat­ed? Even the ven­er­a­ble Mad­den fran­chise has suf­fered a decline in sales!

Oth­er points:

  • I love the MLB Today fea­ture, but wish it would replace the fran­chise mode alto­geth­er. Why not merge the two experiences?
  • I hate unlock­ing things. Why not emu­late those clas­sic Mad­den games and just include the clas­sic teams (or sim­u­lacra there­of) and sta­di­ums in the game? If you’re a fan of sports games, these sorts of loy­al­ty gim­micks don’t real­ly work out. I want to play as the Phillies (or hell, the A’s) in all of the parks they ever played in, in my choice of uni­forms. Can I get an amen from the guys at Uni Watch?
  • The art of steal­ing bases became more dif­fi­cult in the new game. It’s a lot to try to man­age an at-bat while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pulling the trig­ger (lit­er­al­ly) to steal sec­ond. It’d be dif­fer­ent if you were play­ing as the first or third base coach, but you’re not.

Apart from those details, I love every minute of the game. Last night I pulled off a thrilling 10 inning come­back win over the low­ly Pirates. The game end­ed on a walkoff homer by Ryan Howard, the team gath­er­ing around home as he plat­ed the win­ning run. It was amaz­ing. MLB 2K10 is a huge improve­ment over pre­vi­ous efforts and I look for­ward to play­ing the 2010 cam­paign with the Fight­in’ Phils.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0