Who's up first?

As far as controversies go, this one won’t be screaming from the back pages any time soon. Actually, it’s could hardly be called a controversy at all. It’s just a matter of writing one ballplayer’s name higher on a list and moving another one a little further down.

You know, it’s not really that big of a deal in the scheme of things.

But around here we have a way of making things a bigger deal than they really are or need to be. That’s just what we do. It’s especially the case when the brewing controversy in question has been something writers, radio-types and fans have all been talking about for the past few years and it seems as if it has finally come to a point where a decision will be made.

Will Bobby Abreu become the Phillies’ leadoff hitter? Better yet, should anyone other than Jimmy Rollins be the team’s first hitter in the batting order?

Yeah, not exactly a deep, philosophical head-scratcher when one thinks about it.

But, you know, lets just talk about it one more time right here.

As everyone who follows the Phillies closely knows, Rollins has been the club’s primary leadoff hitter since he broke into the Major Leagues in late 2000. Diminutive and as quick as fox in a hen house, Rollins grew up in Oakland, Calif. idolizing Rickey Henderson. It just so happens that Henderson was the greatest leadoff man the game as even known, who would do anything he could in order to get on base. In fact, toward the end of his career when he could no longer get the bat around on a fastball, Henderson still rated amongst the league leaders in walks, and on-base percentage.

Long before on-base percentage was the trendy statistic, Henderson knew that if he could get on base his team had a better chance to win.

But unlike Henderson, Rollins does not possess the attributes that a top-notch, top-of-the-order man needs. Rollins likes to swing the bat and put the ball in play and as a result, the amount of times he gets on base depends on whether or not he gets a hit – that’s something only the most elite players do once every three times at-bat. So because of Rollins’ penchant for swinging the bat and not drawing walks, he and his .317 on-base percentage isn’t very good. Actually, when the first guy in the batting order fails to get on base close to 70 percent of the time, the team suffers.

But manager Charlie Manuel is stubborn. Even though there is an alternative, Manuel remains loyal to writing Rollins’ name at the top of his lineup card. Why not Abreu?

"Sometimes you have to show confidence in a guy, show him you believe in him," Manuel told reporters last weekend, noting that Rollins is the team’s only legitimate base-stealing threat.

Loyalty is an admirable trait. Often, showing loyalty to another person is the best characteristic there is. Yet at the same time, loyalty can also be a detriment. It can provide one with a false sense of security and maybe even apathy when tenacity and the fear of reprisal would be more apt. This isn’t to say that Rollins has become soft or apathetic in his role as the leadoff hitter, it’s just that maybe Manuel needs an intervention to help him cutoff his devotedness.

Perhaps the manager could grow to show that same steadfastness to Abreu?

With his .455 on-base percentage – which rates right up there with the game’s elite – as well as his uncanny patience at the plate, Abreu appears to be the ideal candidate to leadoff for the Phillies.

"The reason I like Bobby third is he is hitting with runners in scoring position and puts up some big numbers," Manuel explained to reporters last weekend. "What does a leadoff hitter have to do? He has to have a good on-base percentage. He has to get on base a lot. But what does the No. 3 hitter do? He's supposed to get on base, too. He's definitely one of our best hitters in the lineup. If my best hitter hits with guys in scoring position and he's a doubles and home run hitter, am I strong enough to put him in the leadoff spot? That's it more than anything."

Manuel’s theory just might be right on. After all, a quick glance at the league leaders in on-base percentage shows that only handful of the top 40 leadoff for their teams. The top guys – Barry Bonds, Abreu, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera and Jason Bay – all bat in the middle of the order.

Besides, Tuesday night’s game-winning rally was sparked by Rollins – again at the top of the order after a three-game hiatus – getting things started with a single and Abreu bashing a three-run homer.

If the Phillies keep doing that there will be no controversy at all… at least not about the batting order.

Barbaro's career ends like Ruffian's

This was supposed to be a column about victory. It was supposed to be about joy and triumph and promise and all of the things that make sports great.

After all, isn’t that why we watch? Every day life is sometimes filled with hardship and losing battles. Sports gives us a chance to feel invincible.

This was also supposed to be a column about a little corner of the world tucked into the rolling hills and farms just an idyllic country drive away from Center City. There, in bucolic and rustic Chester County, amidst the Amish farms, Mennonite Meeting Houses, and roadside stands selling pies and jams like some sort of anachronism in our world of ozone-zapping SUVs equipped with GPS guides, DVD players and satellite radio, live some of the best race horses in the world.

Imagine that. In a sport filled with sultans, sheiks and blue bloods, it’s puritan Chester County, in the Garden Spot of Pennsylvania, where the top thoroughbreds of the 21st Century are raised.

Who would have guessed?

But surely no one would have guessed that Saturday’s 131st annual Preakness Stakes would have turned out the way it did, either. To say nothing went right would be an understatement of biblical proportions.

Which usually isn’t the way things go for star athletes like Barbaro, the three-year-old colt from West Grove, Pa. who already won the Kentucky Derby so easily that it was akin to a Harlem Globetrotters’ game against the Washington Generals. Barbaro toyed with his competitors in Kentucky. Embarrassed them by 6½ lengths, which is kind of like winning a baseball game 10-0 with the starting pitcher throwing a three-hitter.

So dominant was Barbaro in Kentucky that only eight other horses bothered to show up at Baltimore’s venerable old Pimlico Race Course for last Saturday’s Preakness, making the latest Chester County super horse a 1-3 odds-on favorite and conjuring images of Smarty Jones. The talk was that only five horses were going to bother to show up at the Belmont Stakes on June 10 in New York to attempt to thwart Barbaro’s bid to be racing’s first Triple Crown winner since a young Stevie Cauthen rode Affirmed past Alydar in 1978 in three of the most dramatic horse races ever.

Instead, Barbaro is currently resting down the road from Smarty Jones’s old farm on Route 10 at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center for Large Animals, his prognosis to live to see four still very much touch and go.

No, things didn’t go well in Baltimore. First, in an inconceivable scene in a major stakes race, Barbaro burst through the starting gate in attempt to run away from the pack while the last horses were still being loaded in.

A false start in horse racing? Who ever heard of such a thing?

Then, just seconds into the chaos of the race, something was amiss. Barbaro was nowhere to be found as the TV cameras swept from the head-on shot from the backstretch to the sweeping aerial view of the entire field thundered through the first turn and along the straightaway with the view of the barns and the surrounding clapboard houses in the distance.

But dramatically, a quick shot caught jockey Edgar Prado aside his mount, holding it upward to prevent it from putting any more weight on its rear right leg. And then there was the heartbreaking shot of Barbaro, lifting his shattered leg delicately into the air and not knowing what to do next.

Yes, the race continued, but did it really matter anymore? Especially when the crass oxymoron “humanely destroyed” was bandied about.

So 31 years later, images of Ruffian, the star-crossed filly that so tragically yet romantically “died in the lead,” is conjured as the area’s likely final shot at horse racing glory attempts to recover from an intricate five-hour operation. To save Barbaro, 23 screws were used to repair a broken cannon bone above the ankle, a broken sesamoid bone behind the ankle, and a broken long pastern bone below the ankle.

Dr. Dean Richardson, the veterinarian who performed the surgery, said the pastern bone was shattered in “20-plus pieces” and now they must stave off the possibility of infection from the surgery and laminitis, a potentially fatal disease sometimes brought on by uneven weight balance.

“Realistically, it's going to be months before we know if he's going to make it,” Richardson told CBS’ “The Early Show.” “We're salvaging him as a breeding animal.”

Ruffian, undefeated like Barbaro was, never made it that far. After her 12-hour operation to repair the shattered sesamoids in her right foreleg, a star was laid to rest in the infield near the finish line at Belmont Park.

Don't Ask Rowand 'For Who? For What?'

”For who? For what?”
-- Ricky Watters, following a 21-6 loss to the Buccaneers on Sept. 3, 1995

In the moment, it seemed like an eternity. A gung ho ballplayer smashes face-first into an outfield wall, crumbles to the ground like… well, a guy who just ran face first into a wall. There was the moment where the centerfielder, almost in slow-motion, gamely held the ball aloft to show that he had, indeed, caught the ball after running full speed into the inanimate, pitiless barrier.

Within minutes, Aaron Rowand rolled over to all fours, bled all over the rubberized track lining the field, and was helped from the field by some paramedics to an ambulance waiting to rush him to Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Center City. In that short time, Rowand went from just the very capable centerfielder that arrived in town as part of the Jim Thome deal to a cult hero.

And all it took was a face plant into an exposed metal bar, a broken nose that required surgery, stitches for his mouth and nose, a plastic splint to protect his still-tender nose, dark violet bruises ringing his eyes and cheeks, and two weeks on the disabled list.

Certainly within the throes of the situation, Rowand thought his daredevil act was precisely what needed to be done. With two outs and the bases loaded in the first inning of last Thursday’s game against the first-place New York Mets, Rowand chased down a sure game-breaking blast from Xavier Nady. But at the last minute, Rowand reached out as far as he could with his gloved hand, pulled the ball in, took a half step and crashed – nose first – into the exposed bar beneath the green padding near the 398-foot sign.

“I knew I was going to run into (the fence),” Rowand said during a meeting with the press on Monday afternoon in the basement conference room at Citizens Bank Park. “I saw it coming. It was a situation where the bases loaded with two outs and [pitcher] Gavin (Floyd) had been prone to giving up big innings so I knew I had to catch it.

“It's one of those things that happens. I needed to catch that ball in that situation. I've run into a lot of walls in my day, never with this consequence. But I knew I was going to run into it. That's just how I play the game.”

Obviously, the ever contrarian press wondered if such a valuable player like Rowand – who smacked three home runs, 10 RBIs and .333 batting average during a stretch in which the Phillies went 9-1 – should have thought twice before running into the wall. Wasn’t he more valuable to the team on the field than rolled up in a heap on the warning track with blood leaking from his face like water dripping from a faucet?

Shouldn’t a guy who once knocked himself out running into a cinderblock wall in college and separated his shoulder colliding with a wall in Chicago consider some… ahem, restraint?

Well, Aaron?

“That’s why [the critics] are sitting behind a desk or a microphone,” he said tersely with his purple-ringed eyes narrowing. “I enjoy doing what I’m doing and my teammates enjoy it, too. I want to win. That’s how I play. People can call me stupid. I don’t care. I’m sure the fans got a kick out of it and I know my teammates did. Think what you want – I’m here to play and play hard.”

That blood-and-guts style more than wins over the fans in town that often saves its affection for players that display grit than graceful skill. But Rowand is more than a battering ram. According to the number crunchers at Baseball Prospectus, Rowand’s catch certainly did save the game against the Mets. In fact, writes Clay Davenport, “The Catch,” as it’s now known, was equal to Rowand hitting two home runs.

Had Nady gotten a double or triple on that play, the Phillies would have had just a 30.8 percent chance to win the game based on Davenport’s situational data. But making the catch gave the Phillies nearly a 60 percent chance to win, Davenport writes.

In other words, for a team that missed the playoffs by one game a season ago and has not seen post-season baseball since 1993, The Catch could have some long-term effects.

“I think it can be contagious,” Rowand said of his all-out style. “I said it before about last year (when he was with the World Champion White Sox): When you have everybody playing together and pulling on the same end of the rope, it’s easy to win. You create your own bad hops.”

More importantly, Rowand answered a burning question that has plagued the sporting public in Philadelphia since it was first asked more than a decade ago.

“For who? My teammates. For what? To win,” Rowand said without hesitation or wavering. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Was this Bonds' farewell to Philly?

Road weary and worn out as the clock closed in on midnight and the prospect of yet another all-night, cross-country flight loomed, the 41-year-old ballplayer sat in a room full of people he didn’t really want to talk to following another losing ballgame.

He didn’t want to, but his life has become a bunch of have to things these days. Obligatory kinds of things that normal people have to deal with everyday, only his are a little more high profile, to say the least. Have to fly across the country after midnight; have to pander to the sycophants producing your “reality” show; have to put in the work just to make it through the grind of a season; have to listen to total strangers scream unpleasantries at you ever time you show your face in public; have to answer questions from a grand jury investigation; have to go to work and chase some guy named Babe.

Have to.

“It's draining,” he said. “It is. It's a little bit draining. But I have to stay focused for my teammates.”

So there he was, fulfilling another have to. Tersely answering the inane questions from a few while almost lighting up and becoming engaging at a few queries that seemed interesting. Like the one about which ballplayer has the chance to be chasing the Babe or Hank some day?

“Alex Rodriguez. I don’t know about Albert (Pujols),” he said. “Albert’s going to have to deal with a lot of walks. He’s going to get walked a lot, unfortunately. He’s that good. Unfortunately, he plays in the National League, and when you’ve got pitchers coming up, and in a different league, it’s a little bit different. If he was in the American League, we might be saying something different, but in the National League, if he keeps going the way he’s going, he’s going to be walked a ton.”

That was his longest answer in the 19-minute-and-51-second give-and-take with the press that was beamed worldwide on live television from the tiny conference room in the basement of Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. But there was more, too. Like the part about the chat he and his mother Pat had before Sunday night’s nationally televised game. For a little while, at least, the conversation rejuvenated him. Made him feel good and forget about have to, and the shouting, accusations, big signs with asterisks and others calling him a fraud and worse. The books and the grand juries and the investigations all went away for a little bit.

“It helped me get my head twisted back on,” he said about talking to his mom, adding that he was missing his dad, Bobby, a lot these days.

“I wish he was here,” he said.

Hearing that and watching his world seem to implode all around him and bear down, like an anvil, onto his coat-rack shoulders and softening eyes and face makes it easy to feel sympathy for him. Human emotion is a difficult thing to ignore when it is truly genuine. It’s hard to judge someone so harshly when they glowingly talk about their mom and want to be able to talk to their dad, who is no longer on this earth.

But then reality steps in and delivers a cold, hard haymaker to the solar plexus. You remember who it is – who it is that has seen his world turned into something he can no longer control the way he once did an at-bat in a baseball game or turned a crowd of people into slack-jawed wonderment.

Sometimes people have to reap what they sow.

Right?

So after a weekend filled with yelling and screaming, where signs made of old bed sheets were waved for all to see and the anticipation for a milestone in which the regular folks hoped to one day say “I was there,” the old, tired ballplayer answered one more question, posed for one more picture, forced a smile, and walked as fast as his creaky knees would carry him to a bus that would take him to a chartered flight waiting at the airport.

Barry Bonds was on the way out, and it doesn’t look like he’s ever coming back.

Bonds bringing circus (and reality show) to Philly

The next week is shaping up to be one of the more memorable weekends in Philadelphia sports in quite some time. At least from a national perspective, that is.

Aside from the potential Game 7 for the Flyers in the opening round playoff series against the Buffalo Sabres, as well as the afterglow of a strong draft for the beloved Eagles, the Phillies’ games and Citizens Bank Park could be in the national spotlight.

Huh? A 10-14 team struggling with its relief pitching and nearly every other aspect of the game – how are they going to find anything more than the ire of a handful of folks that call into sports radio shows?

It’s not them, it’s someone else. Like Bonds.

Barry Bonds.

With the dramatic, ninth-inning homer he slugged off former Phillie Billy Wagner last week, Barry Bonds, baseball’s Public Enemy No. 1, stands at 711 home runs in his now checkered big league career. Whether or not Bonds slugged the majority of those homers with the aid of illegal substances remains an issue for former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, commissioner Bud Selig and their steroids investigation. This weekend, Bonds has a chance to tie or surpass Babe Ruth’s mark of 714 career home runs.

Babe Ruth, of course, is one of the most storied and beloved ballplayers to ever live. In the wake of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, it was Ruth and all of his home runs that not only saved the game of baseball, but also became the stuff of legend.

Bonds, not to rehash all of the building controversy, has always been the antithesis of Ruth. According to published reports as well as first-hand accounts from folks who have dealt with Bonds throughout the years, he has been rude, curt, mean and selfish. And that’s to the people who are close to him.

Ruth, according to legend, was always the life of the party. Where Bonds is surly, Ruth was gregarious.

Regardless, Bonds and Ruth could share the spotlight this weekend in Philadelphia.

The Giants have three more games until they arrive in Philadelphia, with only one at home against before the team hits the road, so obviously Bonds will not pass the Babe at the relatively friendly confines of San Francisco’s ballpark (whatever company it’s named for now). Still, after two games in Milwaukee and then the three in Philly, the Giants return home for a week. Therefore, it would not be too surprising if Bonds has some sort of injury when his team comes to Philadelphia even though Sunday’s game is scheduled to be telecast nationally on ESPN.

Bonds, of course, is taping a reality show for ESPN.

Anyway, Major League Baseball has already issued a statement that it will not formally acknowledge Bonds’ 715th home run, which is the correct move since Henry Aaron, not Babe Ruth, holds the record for the most home runs. However, that doesn’t mean the fans in the stands at the Bank won’t acknowledge the deed if it occurs here.

Certainly, the national media will have a field day figuring out how the fans in Philly will react if Bonds passes Ruth, so to take the tired, old Philly fan clichés out of the mix for a change, here’s my suggestion for how the fans should react to Bonds:

Don’t react at all. Don’t boo, don’t cheer, don’t guffaw. Just stand there and be quiet. Turn your back if you feel that’s necessary, but truly respond with no emotion whatsoever.

How cool would it be to see Bonds circle the bases after a milestone homer in total silence?

It’s also worth noting that Babe Ruth's last game was played at the Baker Bowl, the Phillies old stadium that was located in North Philadelphia at Broad and Lehigh Ave. on May 30, 1935. As a player for the Boston Braves, the 40-year-old Ruth struck out in the first inning and then hurt his knee playing first base in the bottom half of the inning.

He walked off the field and never played again.