Ain't The Beer Cold!!

If I were a Cincinnati Reds fan at the end of yesterday's heart breaker du jour, I would have immediately removed all sharp objects from my house.

Whew! That was the most exciting four game series the Phils have played since, well, since...forever??!!

They pitched. They didn't pitch. They hit. They didn't hit. They ran the bases. They got picked off. The blew saves. They saved games. They came back from the dead. Their bats looked dead. Most important, they stopped playing such boring baseball. Man, did they stop playing boring baseball.

In the process of sweeping the Reds they may have saved their season...for now. Going into the
All Star game they are only 4.5 games behind division-leading Atlanta. It's been a few years since we said that about a team from Georgia. The Phils are still fourth in the Wild Card race and the teams in front of them figure to stay in the hunt for the remainder of the season so it behooves the locals to take the NL East outright to insure themselves a fourth straight post-season appearance.

The Phils still have plenty of problems. Joe Blanton is getting rocked each time out. Jamie Moyer is still pitching on borrowed time. Chase Utley is still disabled. Brad Lidge is still unreliable. And so on and so on. Yet despite all these problems, the Phils swept four games, at least three of which they had no right taking, and they are still in the chase.

It was a helluva lot of fun to watch.