I KNOW NOTHING!

Many of us in the blogosphere (How do we know it's a sphere? Maybe it's an oblate spheroid. Or a torus. Or even a Taurus. Yeah, that's it, it's an '88 Taurus SHO, with a 3.1L V6, a compass in the dash and this thing that tells time) (Please don't write me to say that the '88 Taurus didn't have an SHO model or that it didn't offer a 3.1L V6. I don't care, and get a life) (Yes that was an "A Christmas Story" reference at the end there. Maybe I should get a life, too) (Ok enough parentheticals. What was I talking about? Oh yeah) have taken the opportunity of the All-Star break to either grade the Phillies first half or preview the second half, or both.

Here's my first half grade: Incomplete. The season's half over, and nobody cares what your record is in July. I wish they had won more games, but even with the first-half they've had, they could still win it all. They'll need to either pitch better or hit better or both to do it.

My second-half preview: I have no idea what's going to happen. None whatsoever. Actually, that's not true. Here's what will happen: based on the last 13 years, you'd have to expect the Braves to win the division. However, they could be beset by injuries, or John Smoltz could decide to start working as an architect at HOK, or Andruw Jones could become the military dictator of Curacao, or any number of things could happen, and there's always the wild card. The Angels, Marlins and Red Sox won the World Series the last three years. Hands up who saw that coming? Another thing that will happen: we'll analyze and handicap this thing until we've wrung nearly all the fun out of it, and some crazy shit will happen that nobody expected and we'll all say, "That's baseball!" It could happen to the Phillies as well as anyone else. And no matter what happens, I'll be sitting my sorry ass in front of the tube for the first televised Spring Training game in Clearwater again next March. Until then, I'll whine, complain, give Ed Wade and Dave Montgomery unsolicited suggestions that they won't even read let alone consider, delight at every win and be depressed with every loss until the Phils are either mathematically eliminated or are parading down Broad Street.

If you were looking for insightful analysis, well, you got what you paid for.

Now, let's play some ball!