Conversation overheard on 17th Street

Girl #1: "You know when your ears get cold, and they get hot because they're so cold?"
Girl #2: "Yeah."

I'm not sure what else to add.

Happy Holidays, friends.

The 2005 Card

Please, please, PLEASE make it stop

Congratulations, J. Whyatt Mondesire. They said it couldn't be done, but you have somehow managed to make this awful, depressing, joyless, infuriating disaster of a season into even more of a shrieking, hate-filled nightmare. As a result, you may join Owens, Rosenhaus, and thousands of blathering national media cronies in the pantheon of People Who Should Shut Up, Go Away, And Never Come Back.

This season blows. I don't want to see or think about the Eagles again until, like, August. Let's all concentrate on the first place Sixers, shall we? Can we all agree on that? Or would you like to read yet another article outlining the horrors that have befallen the Birds daily since mid-February? Of course you don't. Unless you do, in which case I hate you.

In fact, let's agree to this: the 2005 season never happened. Do you hear me? It was all a terrible dream. Right?

A Direct Quote from Billy Wagner

(stolen from philly.com)

"I'm sure I'll be treated the same way everyone else is," Wagner said. "I'll be heckled. The fans there are passionate. They're going to think I ran to the money - which I guess they would have passed up - but I get heckled in every park. It's part of the game."

I love how he puts words in my mouth, and then makes fun of me for it.

Nobody's begrudging you the money, dude. Nobody's claiming they wouldn't take it themselves. Any intelligent Phillies fan realizes exactly what happened here. Here's another pertinent exchange:

Wagner was not surprised that the Phillies weren't more aggressive.
"Not considering I gave them three for 24 [three years and $24 million] at the trade deadline and they laughed at me," he said.
Phillies assistant general manager Ruben Amaro took umbrage with that comment.
"That's untrue," he said by telephone from Philadelphia. "No one laughed. The reason we were taken aback was that his original asking price was two years and $16 million. When we offered that, the asking price changed to three years at $24 million."

I believe Amaro on this one, because that sounds exactly like Billy Wagner. Wags is smart/savvy/self-serving enough to play the Mets and Phils against each other to get more money. And that's okay - he has every right to do that, and his gigantic new contract proves that he does it well. I just don't get why he would take parting shots at the Phils. You won, dude, congratulations. Now go away.

Elsewhere in the article, it says that Wagner met with Pat Gillick and came away all excited about their plans. Now that he's a Met, he's trashing the Phils. What's the point? We know you're just playing the game to get more cash. It's cool, really. We don't mind. Just keep your insults to yourself. Frankly - even though it makes the Mets dangerous and scary - I agree with the Phillies' decision not to spend $43 million on a guy that pitches maybe four innings a week.

And it seems very cold and mean and unprofessional to take a shot at the fans like that. Wagner was beloved here. We were distraught when he got hurt in '04 and totally amped whenever he came into a game. We marveled at his astonishing fastball. We all wanted him back. All Phillies fans - even ones like me who agree with the decision not to outbid the Mets - agree that the 2006 Phils are worse off without him. If he wasn't going to a hated division rival, we might even be wishing him good luck. But it's not my money; if I had a spare $43 million lying around, I might think about giving it to Billy Wagner. But I don't, so he's gone. It's not really my fault. So step off!

This whole thing - and the T.O. debacle, and any number of other incidents - reminds us, once again, that we should just tune athletes out whenever they open their mouths, because most of them are angry, miserable jerks and most of what they say is largely ridiculous. It's better just to think of them as what they really are: bulked-up genetic freaks who ram into each other for our amusement. That sounds really callous but it's basically true, and it's all that I expect from them. I'm paying $340 for my Phillies season ticket next year; that fee shouldn't include Billy Wagner's opinion.