a win's a win

Kyle Kendrick was very, very good last night, holding the Reds to one run through 6.2 innings. But the bullpen twice blew the lead, once in the 8th on a wacko play, then in the 9th. In the 12th, however, Brian Schneider hit the second walk-off homer of his career and his first as a Phillie. (His only other one, years ago, was also against the Cincinnati Reds.) This was a game filled with ugly base-running mistakes and bizarre plays, including a classic who's-on-first one in the third that gave the Phillies a 2-1 lead. In the end, they won 4-3.

Speaking again of doing yeoman work, two nights in a row Nelson Figueroa pitched two innings of scoreless ball in extra innings.

I woke early this morning to swirling rumors of an impending trade by the Yankees for Cliff Lee, which might then lead them to trade Vasquez to the Phillies for Jayson Werth. The tender Javier Vazquez has always had a no-trade clause with Philadelphia so I'm not sure that's happening, but what a double body blow those trades would be. We've all assumed that Lee would go to the highest bidder in the off-season, but couldn't the Yankees wait till then? Again, Jayson Werth has long been rumored as heading to the Yankees, but in mid-season?

In memoriam: Maje McDonald, with the Phillies in a variety of capacities for 62 years, died yesterday at his Philadelphia home, just weeks shy of his 90th birthday. He had a rich life in baseball and beyond. He got the name Maje from another nickname: Little Major Leaguer.

madson activated, zagurski sent down

Ryan Madson was activated from the DL today and Mike Zagurski was sent back to Lehigh Valley. Let's hope that Madson, sporting a 7.00 ERA, will help get the bullpen lined up and again ready to go. Remember the good old days, when Ryan set up for Lidge, and Lidge closed it out? Let's make it happen again. Or something like it. I hope that Zagurski's brief return to the majors will only make him work all the more on making it back there full-time.

Brian Schneider is in the line-up tonight. Dane Sardinha, who has done yeoman work, is definitely due for a sit-down after toiling so many days in brutal heat.

no wonder the edge is gone

For sure the Phillies have lost their edge. I think it's the cumulative effect of so many pieces gone missing for so long. Once one comes back, another one, two, or three go down. The utility guys have by and large surpassed expectations but they cannot be expected to provide the swagger that has long defined this team.

From what I see of the Braves and Mets so far, there's an element of smoke and mirrors to both. What I do know is that Joey Votto and the Reds will be on a mission for the four games that conclude the 'first half' in Philadelphia.

more saints seen and popsicles

Popsicles are perfect for cooling down parched, overheated bodies during torrid heat spells, such as the one now we're in the middle of here. I feel as if I've been living on popsicles for days now. The many little sticks piling up from them reminded me of this little booklet by Cyrilla Mozenter, for a 2005 show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The show featured work from Mozenter's More saints seen series, which was inspired by a Gertrude Stein opera. When I talked with Mozenter a couple of years ago, she mentioned that she had for a while used popsicle sticks in her work, seeing in them a streamlined female form, suggestive of Cycladic sculpture. She described walking the streets of Manhattan, picking up discarded popsicle sticks. The image obviously stuck in my mind. Here she has used a stick for the closing for this booklet. You can see Mozenter's marvelous work at www.cyrillamozenter.com.

garcia to reading phillies

Harold Garcia, who recently set the new FSL hitting streak at 37, has been promoted to Double-A Reading. Congratulations! I saw him play a couple of times last year with the low-A Lakewood club and was impressed enough to remember him. Justin De Fratus, a closer who was also at Lakewood last year, was also promoted from Clearwater. Meanwhile, Michaal Schwimer, closer with the Reading Phillies, has been promoted to Lehigh Valley. I don't know what that means for Scott Mathieson, who could easily be trade bait.

6-3 and 43-38: same numbers, different meanings

The Phillies lost 6-3 in 11 innings last night to the Braves. Pin the loss on the depleted bullpen, though many will of course pin it on Cole Hamels, who went seven and gave up three runs. I am so tired of this Hamels-is-soft stuff from fans, I could spit, but it's too hot to contemplate wasting energy or fluids doing it. The fans in question believe that what Cole Hamels did in 2008 is nothing compared with what Cliff Lee did not do in 2009. Wake up, will you! Hamels won you lunkheads a World Series. Cliff Lee did not.

More to the point last night, the Phillies had exactly three hits, a two-run homer from Ibanez, an RBI triple from Howard (who with no outs was then stranded on third), and an aimless single late from Victorino. That's three hits in 11 innings.

The IronPigs last night won 6-3, though the bullpen, in the form of Joe Savery, tried mightily to cough it up in the 9th. Give Savery some credit for regrouping after giving up three runs and getting three outs. On another very hot night starter Brandon Duckworth was super, throwing seven shutout innings. Ryan Madson looked sharp pitching a quick, scoreless eighth in his second rehab stint with the 'Pigs.

On Monday the Phillies reached the halfway point of the season. Their record: 43-38. Those numbers match their half-season records in 2009 and 2008. Last year, though, the Phillies were atop the division at 43-38. This year they are in third place.

summertime

An elegant advert from Jurgen Lehl arrived the other day, this for his summer collection. As ever, it was all wonderful. www.jurgenlehl.jp

did you say hot?

Domonic Brown continues his torrid pace with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. In 12 games, he is batting .405 with an OPS of 1.197. He has scored eight runs on 17 hits, including seven for extra bases. He has four home runs and 11 RBI. He has also stolen a couple of bags and earned a couple of assists. Need I say he's become an instant fan favorite? Should Ruben Amaro, Jr., decide to trade this kid, fans might respond with pitchforks.

One night after setting a new hitting streak record in the Florida State League, scond baseman Harold Garcia went hitless for the first time in 38 games. The previous record of 36 stood for nearly 60 years. Here's to Garcia's record of 37!

world cup haiku

vuvuzelas--
hear them give way to
cicadas

phillies win 3-1

Great pitching, good defense, and timely hitting added up to a 3-1 win over the Braves on a very hot night in Philadelphia, the best place in the country, by the bye, to celebrate the 4th of July. it took Halladay 93 pitches to finish off the Braves. His only mistake: a solo home run to old friend Chipper Jones in the first. In case you've been dozing, Halladay is very, very good. I would love to have a seat behind home plate when he pitches. Chase Utley, looking good, held a press conference yesterday to talk about his surgery. In typical Utley fashion, he said that he is hoping to be back within six weeks. Yay, yay, yay! Really, doesn't that make you feel better already?

here come the braves

The Braves are in town and will no doubt take much joy in sending the Phillies to the beaches for the rest of the season. Tonight it's Roy Halladay v. Derek Lowe.

harold garcia sets new fsl hitting record

Yesterday Clearwater Threshers' second baseman Harold Garcia tied the Florida State League hitting streak, at 36 games. That record was set in 1951 by Joe Altobelli. Garcia extended his streak tonight, with an RBI single in the first inning of the Threshers' game with Daytona, setting a new record at 37 consecutive games. During Garcia's streak, which started on May 24, he is hitting .359. Not shabby at all. Keep it rolling, Harold!

Tonight, too, Kyle Drabek, traded to the Blue Jays last December in the Roy Halladay trade, pitched a no-hitter for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the Jays' double-A affiliate. Way to go, Kyle!

it's supposed to be hard

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard...is what makes it great." The quotation is from A League of Their Own.

Well, the Phillies have definitely made it hard---if not impossible. Today's 8-5 come-from-behind loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates put them about six games behind the Atlanta Braves. Joe Blanton blew a 5-2 lead in the seventh, and the bullpen let it blow up after that. The season is not over but really there is just too much for this team to overcome. No matter how well the call-up 'Piggies are playing, each day's starting line-up looks like a Triple-A roster. Blanton, who appeared to have worked out what was ailing him, fell right back into it in the late innings, as he has been prone to do.

At the start of the season when I saw this series on the schedule, I knew it had disaster all over it. Still, in May I thought hard about going out to Pittsburgh for one game this week, but gave it up.

Gane time temperature tomorrow in Philadelphia promises to be 98F. I'd skip it but the numbers of games left to me are finite and dwindling fast.

complete game for kendrick

Kyle Kendrick pitched the first complete game of his career, a 12-4 rout of the Pirates. The Phillies scored early and often off of Paul Maholm, a lefty who has often given them fits, but they drove him from tonight's game in the fourth with the score 8-1. Ryan Howard drove in three; Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino each had three hits. Included in Rollins' hits: the 150th homer of his career. Phillies' pitchers have now thrown nine complete games, the most by any team in the majors.

PNC Park was full. Lots of Phillies' fans are in attendance for the series but tonight also drew the fireworks' crowd. It was good to see that park packed and rocking, even if visiting fans were making most of the noise.

ransom up, bocock out

Cody Ransom has been called up to the Phillies and Brian Bocock designated for assignment. The minor league carousel is certainly going round. Ransom can hit, Bocock cannot. But Ransom also strikes out a lot and his defense often makes me cringe. Ho hum.

Speaking of cringing, tonight's line-up: Rollins, Victorino, Werth, Howard, Francisco, Valdez, Ransom, Sardinha, Kendrick. Welcome to Triple-A.

phillies interested in lee, says rosenthal

OK, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, is reporting that the Phillies are interested in reacquiring Cliff Lee from the Mariners. My first thought was to wonder if that meant Lee will be playing second on the days that he is not pitching.

I mention this report only because Ken Rosenthal seems to get things more right than wrong, and he was certainly all over the Roy Halladay trade--and how trading Lee might be what would make it work--before those two deals went down last December. But without trading Domonic Brown, how could the Phillies make this happen? And why would they now trade the untouchable Domonic Brown? Rosenthal speculates that any trade involving the M's might include Jayson Werth. Why can't I get even a little bit excited about any of this? I guess I am over Lee.

Roy Halladay just last weekend called Chase Utley the driving force behind the team. That was before the injury. Things are going to be tough without Utley. And with Polanco out for really who knows how long, they get tougher.

At the start of the season the idea was to have Rollins batting first and Polanco second. That has happened just 10 times this year. In those 10 games, the Phillies are nine and one. I guess it was a good idea. But nothing's working now.

where is the offense?

These two kids had the right idea. They spent much of tonight's IronPigs' game stuffing their faces with popcorn.

Domonic Brown broke up the perfect game that Syracuse pitcher Jason Jones had going through 7.2 innings with a sharp single up the middle. The inning ended a batter later and I split. The final score: 7-0, Syracuse.

Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh another good outing by a Phillies' starter ended in a loss. Tonight it was Jamie Moyer. Final score: 2-0, Pirates. Between Hamels last night and Moyer tonight, the starters surrendered four earned runs on 10 hits. Each got a loss for his efforts. Last night's stat was the total ineptitude of the one through five batters, who on the road trip had exactly zero RBI. Tonight it was one for 13 with RISP. I know that the Phillies do not play well at PNC Park but this is sad.

ajami

Last night was the final local showing of Ajami, the stunning film from Israel about the rough-and-tumble Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, peopled by Palestinians, Jews, and others, all locked in an uneasy truce. The movie was written and directed by Scandar Copti, a "Palestinian citizen of the Israeli state", and Israeli Yanon Shani, who take an unflinching look at a social fabric stretched thin. Politics are the background to the tensions in Ajami but the film focuses on the daily conflicts, between ethnic groups, religions, tribes, families, and classes, which form a constant of life in the neighborhood. In Ajami life is always up for grabs; it can erupt into violence over something as trivial as the bleating of a sheep.

The movie opens with the brutal drive-by shooting of an innocent teen-ager, mistaken for the intended target. That target, a sweet 19-year-old named Omar, is the nephew of a man who shot a Bedouin thug. In time Abu-Elias, a local restaurant owner, who is the de facto neighborhood headman, intervenes. In an unforgettable scene at a tribal court, where, as in the neighborhood itself, everyone talks and few listen, he gets the family of the thug to accept a monetary payment in place of blood. But somehow all the good done by the righteous Abu-Elias, in his way one of the creepiest characters in the film, has a terrible price built into it. For Omar it is the impossibility of coming up with the money he needs in order to save his mother, half-paralyzed grandfather and prescient younger brother Nasri.

Omar's desire to do anything to save his family sets his life on a tragic spiral,but he is not alone in having his dreams destroyed. There is Malek, a 16-year-old Palestinian working illegally in Israel to earn money for his mother, dying of cancer. Dando, a brutish Israeli cop, is torn by the disappearance of his younger soldier brother, most likely the victim of an Arab kidnapping. Hadir, Abu-Elias' daughter, falls in love with Omar and naively thinks that her Christian family will permit her to marry him.

The directors Shani and Copti chose mostly to use non-professional actors, who were given freedom to improvise. Copti also plays a main role, that of Binj, a Palestinian hipster with a besotted Israeli girlfriend. The acting and the cinematography, by Boaz Yehonatan Yacov, bring these disparate tales into immediate focus without sacrificing the nuances and complexities of the lives examined. I left the cinema feeling battered but profoundly touched and grateful for a film so true.

Ajami is in Arabic and Hebrew. In a wonderful touch, opening and closing credits are given in each language, side-by-side.

surgery for utley, rest for polanco

The Phillies start a four-game series tonight in Pittsburgh. A friend recently sent a cache of vintage postcards, including this one of long-gone Three Rivers Stadium. PNC Park has it beat hollow.

Word is that Chase Utley had surgery today on the torn ligament in his right thumb and will be out at least eight weeks. Everyone is screaming that Ruben Amaro, Jr. must do something. I'd be shocked if Ruben and his staff had not already started 'doing something' as soon as the news of the injury came down.

Compounding the misery, Placido Polanco will miss at least three to four weeks while dealing with chronic tendinitis in his left elbow, aggravated when he was plunked by Tim Hudson in April.

Well, that's a fine mess.

the domonic brown show

Domonic Brown gets congrats from his mates after crossing home plate, while a cameraperson records it all for the TV broadcast. Brown hit a mammoth three-run homer in the third inning last night that bounced off one of the billboards beyond the concourse in deep right center. Brown went three for four, with a single, homer, and double, and scored two runs in a 6-4 'Pigs victory that was needlessly dicey at the end.

It was Hispanic Heritage Night at Coca-Cola Park last night. These Mexican hat dancers were one of the more colorful events on the program. Somebody missed a chance otherwise for some great music to be played throughout the night. For the most part it was very Latin Lite.