The more I get to know the Phillies the less I like about them. Sure, they're a very good team, but boy to they like to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. Today it's once again Charlie Manuel's turn and the target of his words just happens to be the greatest closer of all-time.
“We can hit Rivera,” Charlie Manuel said after Game 2. “We can hit any closer.”While his second point may be true, I can't remember any manager in recent years coming out and saying "We can hit Rivera", can you?
On one level, Manuel wasn’t saying anything profound. He’d watched his defending champs throw some good swings and some good at-bats at Rivera over those two scoreless innings and, as Girardi said, “I wouldn’t expect any manager to say, ‘Well, I don’t think we can hit him and the game is over when he comes in.’ I mean, that wouldn’t be a very good message to send to your club.”
When asked about Manuel's comments here's what The Captain had to say:
“They had good at-bats and they took a lot of borderline pitches,” Jeter said, “but Mo still got the job done. At this point I don’t care how anything looks. The bottom line is to win or lose, and he came in and pitched two scoreless innings against one of the best teams in baseball. It doesn’t make any difference what kind of swings they had if he got the outs.
“He’s a once-in-a-lifetime player. There’s no one that’s done what he’s done, and there will probably be no one that will come out and do what he’s done.”
When this series started besides wanting to beat them to get #27 I really had no bad feelings towards the Phillies, after all they've made Mets fans miserable for years which is always fine in my book. But now, after a week of their nonsense I'm growing to hate them. Hopefully, so are the Yankees.
