The Japanese flowering apricot out front is finally in heady, fragrant bloom. This is the first year it has been covered in blossoms, though it still looks like a shrub rather than a tree.Phillies, Sixers, Flyers. All got much-needed wins yesterday. First of course the Phillies. Trailing the Padres 4-0, they came back 4-2 in the 6th on a Chase Utley homer. Jimmy Rollins, pinch-hitting in the 8th, hit a solo jack to make it 4-3. Ryan Howard led off the 9th with a bloop single. Raul Ibanez followed with a 2-run walk-off homer that earned him a pie in the face from Shane Victorino. Said Ibanez later, It felt good. They could spit in it if they wanted and it would be OK.
Charlie Manuel sat Jimmy Rollins and Jayson Werth, both scuffling badly. Manuel said in his pregame show that he wanted Jimmy to spend the game in the batting cage swinging "till he was blue in the face". I don't know if that happened but when called on to pinch-hit in the 8th, J-Roll came up big. Ryan Howard made two spectacular diving defensive plays at first, a testament to the offseason work he put in with new third base coach Sam Perlozzo. Raul Ibanez, who has already won hearts with his steady play, wowed the sell-out crowd on hand for the Phanatic's birthday. Sorry, Burrell-lovers, but Ibanez may more than earn his contract through his effect on the rest of the line-up. As they say, hitting is contagious. Watching how Ibanez goes about his baseball business should be a lesson to all.
Cheers for Andre Iguodala and the Sixers, who went down on the road by 19 points in the third quarter to the far-better Magic, then clawed their way back to within three. They finally tied it on a Donyelle Marshall three-pointer, then went ahead 100-98 on a pull-up jumper by Iggy with 2.2 seconds to go. That after Iguodala had missed two crucial free-point throws. Surprise, surprise! The Sixers have taken homecourt advantage from Orlando. Let's go, Sixers!
Last, the Flyers, down two in the series, beat up on the Penguins. Nothing like a sweeping kind of day.
