A Boston Brave?

You can’t really call the Phillies 3-2 win over the Nats last night “lucky”. Both the starting and relief pitching were of high quality- keeping the stymied club in position to win on a mistake or two from a not-so-good Washington team. But it did have a shade of the fortuitous about it. A homerun from a just released bench player? Poor Washington. You simply can’t lose games like that at home- facing the opposition's fifth starter, winning late- if you really want to make a serious run at finishing 15 games under.

Phil Rizzuto’s death is all over the news here in New York. Not to speak ill of the dead- and he was a great human being who did tremendous work for the blind- but his induction into the Hall of Fame cements his reputation as one of the most overrated baseball players of all time- a .260 hitter? 1500 or so lifetime hits?- who was along for the ride as a charismatic elf-like character in one of baseball’s great dynasties. He wouldn’t be in the Hall if he were a Boston Brave. Period.

But you couldn’t fight the New York media circa 1980s on these sorts of issues. And his election, along with Pee Wee Reese, was a large part of corralling the more flagrant abuses- and there really were some abuses- of the New York media in awarding post-season and post-career honorifics.