Many of you may have given up last night when the Phillies and the Rays decided to make it an after-hours party, not settling the score until close to 2AM. We at Fantoo did not. Wine in hand, we made it till the final single which drove in the winning run. Maybe it was only half a single (a whopping 20 feet or so), but it did the trick.

So while you watch the clock tick off the final minutes till the first pitch in tonight’s pivotal (Aren’t they all?) Game 4, we had some thoughts to share. Tid bits. Nuggets, if you will. Enjoy.

Tim McGraw, Tug McGraw’s son, brought the ball out to the mound to start last night’s game. But that wasn’t all he brought. He deftly seasoned the mound with some of Tug’s ashes. As you may know, Tug recorded the final out in the 1980 World Series for the Phillies. Tug and Charlie Manuel’s mom have great seats for this series.

Jamie Moyer should be a role model for everyone who thinks they don’t have all the ingredients needed to succeed. The only thing you need is creativity. Take what you have and use it in ways that others don’t expect. Like the ability to control the trajectory of a ball with your tongue. Who’d have known he has mastered even that skill?

Thanks to Yong Kim and the Philadelphia Inquirer for this gem of a shot.

Joe Maddon is the Fantoo Girls’ reigning Renaissance Man for many reasons, but this is atop the pile right now: He used “ameliorate” in a sentence during the post game dialogue with reporters, many of whom probably thought he mispronounced Amelia Earhart.

As an added bonus, we will define it for you: ‘to make or become better, more bearable, or more satisfactory; improve; meliorate.’ And it’s a verb. Just in case you didn’t pick up on that.

Wow. All that and a mohawk. Not to mention he’s the brightest star at the management ranks in the game. He will be a force to reckon with for many years, and players will fight over who gets to sit next to him on the plane. Well, we would anyway. We love Joe.

But we love Charlie Manuel more. The players have been selling us on him since he first walked out as the manager. Which makes this quote regarding some players being disappointed about the lack of individual introductions on television before Game 1 all the more interesting:

“I understand that, very much so. In some ways, if they feel like it’s important for them to get introduced, I feel like we should do it. But we’re in the World Series. Our guys became a star when they made the major leagues. They’ve been a star. I don’t necessarily like when my players think that this is a big ticket for them. To me, their ticket is swinging the bat and pitching and running.”

How perfectly Psych 301 of him. He speaks of his feelings, he doesn’t slam the players, but he gets that digger in there just the same.

The Phanatic must shake his furry little head in disapproval (or pity) when he sees Raymond. Seriously, what is it? A sting ray? A dog? A leftover Sesame Street costume?

And did you know that the Rays have a patch on their uniform to honor Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, who died in 2006? We get that he died from a confrontation with a sting ray, but we just think someone in the Rays front office is going a wee bit overboard with all the “ray” references. Look, we stopped saying devil, okay? You don’t have to bombard us with 72 different ways to be associated with the sting ray sect.

Also of note is that the team considered calling themselves the Tampa Bay Flounders or the Tampa Bay Sea Bass. Go forth and laugh amongst yourselves.

Oh, we hate cowbells.

Lastly, small ball is back in a big way. Someone tell Jose Canseco he can take those meds back to Mexico. The size of his jewels are in now.

We must retreat to the game. And prepare our float for the march down Broad Street. A freshy post tomorrow.

GO PHILS!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Fantoo Blog Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.