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It Might Be Time to Sit John Kincade and Kevin Cooney Down for a Philadelphia Phillies Beer Summit
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The Phillies lost 4-3 to the Giants Tuesday night on a walk-off, inside-the-park home run. It was a diabolical ending after a good outing from Taijuan Walker and four relief pitchers not named Jordan Romano. Naturally, there was consternation after the game with Rob Thomson’s decision to go to Romano in the ninth inning.
It’s a 3-4 record for the Phils over their last seven games, who are tied with the Mets for first place in the NL East.
As you know, every Phillies loss results in either an existential crisis, or a gross underreaction, depending on which portion of the fan spectrum you occupy. That has been exemplified, perhaps, by the consistent back and forth between 97.5 the Fanatic hosts John Kincade and Kevin Cooney, who were at it again Wednesday morning:
Not exactly an incendiary exchange, but a continuation of these two being somewhat snippy with each other on the timeline. A better recent example goes back to the Nick Castellanos benching and the overwhelming reaction to it:
In all seriousness, I think the Fanatic should set up a Kincade vs. Cooney debate on the morning show. Andrew “Choonis” Salciunas can moderate, so it’ll be like President Obama’s beer summit, but instead of racial profiling we’re having a nice and respectful discussion about the Philadelphia Phillies and their manager. It would be a good segment because the Posidelphia vs. Negadelphia split on the Phillies has quite easily been the biggest topic of the summer.
In the grand scheme of things, the Phils are 53-39 and in position to win their second division title in a row if they play good baseball down the stretch. But winning the division isn’t the goal, and we’re not operating in a vacuum, we’re operating inside of a half-decade window in which a team with a top-5 payroll has gone backwards since reaching the World Series. The feel-good, honeymoon period of Dancing on my Own and Garrett Stubbs locker room DJing is over, and so you have a fanbase that feels like this is a put up or shut up season, dangerously Sixers-esque in disillusionment with the fact that lofty expectations have not been met. They do not feel like Dave Dombrowski did enough in the offseason and they are not convinced he will do enough at the deadline. So the vibes were already trending downward, and that’s a big reason for the amplification of the typical knee-jerk Philadelphia reaction to every loss.
Pragmatism is a harder sell when we’ve watched this team exit the playoffs one stage earlier in each of the last two seasons. The Crossing Broad staff generally would sway more in this direction, but it’s totally understandable that people feel the way they do about the Phils.
But back to the original topic –
Let’s get these two in the steel cage. Hell in a Cell! I would tune in for this. If they promoted Kincade vs. Cooney on a fair and balanced morning show debate, I would make time for it.
Good god almighty! Good god almighty! They killed him! As god as my witness, he is broken in half!
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com