Morning Wood: Horses, Birds and Heroes

Photoshop via S Kirb

If Cliff Lee is our beloved, big-hooved pony of pissed excellence, then Roy Halladay is our horse’s ass.

His words, not mine.

After another terrible performance last night, Doc needed some counseling. He found it in the form of the assembled media and escribators, who, just hours earlier, entered the clubhouse with pitchforks and thumbs.

Speaking for over 17 minutes (which would have to be a record for this current group of Phillies starters), Halladay rattled off a series of odd quotes about life, pitching, his son, and baseball mind-fucker Harvey Dorfman– the recently deceased author of The Mental ABCs of Pitching, the book whose philosophies are subscribed to by Halladay and so many other pitchers.

Borrowing a page from Jobu, Halladay spoke of birds… [Phillies.com]

“One of my biggest mentors, [sports psychiatrist] Harvey Dorfman, used to always tell me, ‘When you’re trying to catch a bird, if you’re flailing at it, trying to grab for it, you’re never going to catch it. You have to hold your hands out and let it land in your hands.’ And it’s the same way with pitching,” Halladay said. “Especially when you want something so bad you’d do anything to get it. But sometimes the best course of action is to prepare yourself and let it come to you.”

… horses’ asses… [Philly.com]

“I would say 95 percent is mental,” Halladay said. “It’s simplifying, it’s getting to the basics. It’s letting things happen and to trying to force things. It’s a game of failure and I’ve had my fair share. Some days you’re a horse and some days you’re a horse’s ass and I’ve been a horse’s ass for a little while. It’s something that I’ve dealt a lot with in the past and I feel like I can overcome. The more you want it, the harder it is. You almost have to really back that off and put some perspective in the whole thing.”

… and the text message he received from his oldest son (12- or 13-years-old, according to the interwebs): [NY Times]

“I got a text from my son saying that I am his hero,” Halladay said. “That means a lot.”

That’s touching. But while Halladay might be the hero his son deserves, he’s not the one Philly needs right now.

Doc’s struggles are hard to watch. He doesn’t look right out there. He turns purple when it’s over 70 degrees. He grimaces, not only when he gives up hits, but also when he throws balls and takes buntable pitches for a strikes. That’s not natural. He’s always been wound tight. But look at his face during the seventh inning of his playoff no-hitter (one of the most stressful situations a pitcher could ever expect to face) compared to last night… in the third inning:

He wears his struggles on his face. Never has a pitcher looked like he was having less fun out there (save for that chunky fuck Chad Qualls). Doc’s stuff wasn’t terrible last night – fastball at 91 – but he can’t find the strike zone. And he’s not going to until he relaxes, which, it sounds like, he is trying to do.

UPDATE: 97.5 The Fanatic has an audio mashup of Doc’s quotes.

Let’s Wood. Reluctantly.

Seemingly timed to prod Philly fans, the (verified) Twitter account of Roy Oswalt’s website (@royoswalt44net), which hadn’t tweeted anything in 248 days, fired the following into the ether:

That, of course, led to myriad responses from Phillies fans. Here’s just a sample:

No. No. No no no no no. The last thing the Phillies need is another aging pitcher.

Oswalt sensed an opportunity:

Now, it’s highly suspect that that was Roy Oswalt. The account is verified, but for the longest time, it was seemingly run by a publicist who just tweeted links to positive articles about Oswalt. The website listed on the account, RoyOswalt44.net, no longer exists, so it’s really hard to tell what’s going on here. There’s no reason to think that Oswalt wouldn’t try tweeting – perhaps to get his name back out there… which is working – but these seem too strange to take at face value. I’ll follow up if anything comes of it.

Attendance: 35,393, the lowest since April, 2009. A photo from (@spencerbard):

Inquirer beat reporter Matt Gelb, who, just hours before the game tweeted this…

had his heart and mind won over by Roy (or an overzealous Phillies PR person…), and was suddenly all melodramatic about Doc at the end of the dance:

Rick Pitino ducking when cannons went off is one of my new favorite things.

Tickets for the game tonight start at $18.