February 29, 2016
No Phillies fan will ever forget how the magical 2011 season ended, with the scoreboard flashing a 1-0 St. Louis victory and Ryan Howard howling in pain a few strides up the first-base line. The best team in the franchise’s history died a horrific death that night, an unimaginable ending to an unprecedented era.
I was standing 20 rows behind the first-base dugout in Citizens Bank Park, unsure how to react. Like everyone else who was crammed into the ballpark, I was devastated. The Phils had just been eliminated from the playoffs, and Howard was inconsolable, a symbol of how quickly fortunes can change in sports.
Should I leave? Should I turn my back on a man whom I had just cheered, who had provided so many thrills for the past half-decade? All but a few thousand of the fans quietly departed the ballpark at that moment back then, including me. Deep down, we all knew the truth. The run was over, and Howard would never be the same player.
Five seasons later, Howard is a symbol again, but this time, he’s just a sad reminder of what we all once had, and what we may never have again. He will be lumbering through his final season as a Phillie, the only superstar left from the 2008 champions.
The current Ryan Howard resembles the 2011 version in name only. At 36, he cannot run at all, is a liability at first base, is helpless against left-handed pitchers and – most surprising of all – has a bad attitude. He displayed his bitterness last week, at a news conference that was equal parts defiant and irrational.
Though he is ranked 201st out of 212 big-league hitters in OPS against lefties in the past five years, he said it was “probably” unfair of manager Pete Mackanin to platoon him with Darin Ruf this season. Obviously, Howard still thinks he’s a star, even though he has not been one since that night in 2011.
I won’t bore you with any more statistics to back up that statement though there are many. Chances are, you have watched a Phillies game since the 2011 season ended so abruptly, and have accepted the sad truth about Howard. He is a detriment to their future, a drain on the development of a younger player at his position.
Ryan Howard remains a Phillie not because there is a special affection for him in the organization. He is here to collect one more $25-million paycheck, and because no other team in baseball wants him. Other than releasing him – an act of disrespect the team would like to avoid – the Phils have no choice but to endure this awkward final season.
Cole Hamels, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino and all the rest had some value to other teams. Howard doesn’t. Strip away the spring rhetoric, and it’s painfully clear that Howard and the Phillies are stuck with each other, at least for now.
There’s nothing unique about this ugly finish to Howard’s story. No one milked more seasons out of declining talent than the greatest pitcher in Phillies history, Steve Carlton. The fact that Utley, Rollins and Victorino are still hanging around proves that the love of playing supersedes any concerns over legacies.
Still, Howard is taking a risk here that fans will not just remember the helpless swings and pronounced limp in his latter years, but also the newfound scowl on his face. Howard has been one of the good people in sports, a positive presence with a childlike enthusiasm.
This final chapter of Howard’s story is not going to have a happy ending; everyone already knows that. The team is bad again this year, and he is far, far away from the 58-homer MVP of a decade ago.
Ryan Howard is making $25 million this year, and he’s got a World Series ring on his finger. Life is good. It’s time for him to count his blessings as he begins this final goodbye to Philadelphia.
***
Colin Kaepernick apparently has no desire to work with offensive genius Chip Kelly in San Francisco.
What, did Kelly blow off one of his parties, too?
It was a humbling week for the ex-Eagle coach, who was banished to the other coast because of a lack of social skills, among other problems. In the space of a few hours, Kelly assured the Niners beat reporters that Kaepernick and he were eager to work together – and then, without warning, the quarterback asked to be traded.
The only thing that happened between those two events was a meeting involving Kelly, GM Trent Baalke and the agents for Kaepernick, who went from the Pro Bowl to the bench in the past three seasons. Kaepernick seems like a perfect fit for Kelly’s offense, but not perfect enough for the quarterback, obviously.
The coach is not the biggest reason for Kaepernick to want a change of address; he has been battling the Niners medical staff for the past year over three separate minor injuries that required surgeries. Originally, Kelly’s hiring there was supposed to smooth over these hard feelings. It has not.
As a result, the quarterback picture just got a bit more complicated for the Eagles, who currently possess a quarterback, Sam Bradford, who prospered in Kelly’s system over the last half of the 2015 season. It makes sense that Bradford, soon to be a free agent, would offer an appealing Plan B if Kaepernick doesn’t change his mind.
And it also makes some sense that the Eagles would be a possible landing spot for Kaepernick, who is hardly ideal for the new West Coast offense here, but a better option than Chase Daniel or – heaven forbid – Mark Sanchez. Just the idea of Kelly’s new team trying to deal with Howie Roseman is fun to think about, isn’t it?
In the end, Kaepernick will probably stay in San Francisco and Bradford will probably find another home – no, he is not signing here – but Kelly’s stumbling start in San Francisco is already becoming one of the most interesting stories of this NFL off-season.
***
Howie Roseman must have been wondering after Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor for The Revenant last night what’s taking so long for some smart screenwriter to call him to claim the movie rights to his own amazing tale of overcoming adversity.
After all, last week at the annual NFL combine, the Eagles GM went out of his way to reference his challenging 2015 season in exile, when he endured a $200,000 raise in salary to $1.7 million and a move to the executive wing of the NovaCare complex. How did he ever survive such treacherous conditions?
If there was any doubt left about who’s running the Eagles after the Chip Kelly era, it evaporated in Houston last week, when Roseman was back in all of his nauseating glory. He offered witless greetings to some of his favorite writers (sorry, Jimmy Kempski), pontificated about the salary cap and blabbered nonsensically.
It was a typical week at the combine for the scouting-addicted GM, a lawyer who started in the NFL as a contract negotiator and spent his leisure time evaluating talent in fantasy leagues. He probably didn’t win there, either. Players like Danny Watkins and Marcus Smith are not likely to bring success anywhere.
Roseman talked in circles about Sam Bradford, even though he has never had any intention of using the franchise tag on the quarterback, or of paying anything close to the asking price for Kelly’s acquisition. He said he “likes” Bradford. Sure he does. The same way he liked the nine or so executives he has run out of the front office.
In the collaborative new Eagles hierarchy, Roseman looks more and more like the final word on what the Eagles will do in free agency and at the draft. Owner Jeffrey Lurie doesn’t know enough to pre-empt anybody, and Doug Pederson doesn’t have the track record yet to challenge Roseman the way Kelly did.
The good news for Roseman is that another inevitable year of failure – or adversity, as he calls it – will just make the movie of his struggles even more engrossing.
And finally …
• There are new rumors circulating that Sixers GM Sam Hinkie will soon be demoted to “analytics guy” in the front office, and the team will bring in an experienced executive to oversee personnel, in tandem with chairman of basketball operations Jerry Colangelo. Just one question: What took so long?
• Before Jerry Colangelo and Sixers owner Joshua Harris suffered through another abysmal loss last Friday night from their courtside seats, the head of basketball operations admitted his team had “leveled off” after winning 6 of 15. Now that’s a novel way to describe a 1-11 run, isn’t it?
• Michal Neuvirth is playing well in goal and captain Claude Giroux just got his 500th point, but is there really any story bigger to Flyers fans right now than the emergence of Shayne Gostisbehere? His rookie-defenseman points record ended at 15 last week, but there will be more to cheer soon. A lot more.
• The LeSean McCoy bar-fight story just keeps getting murkier. Last week, there were reports that he would not be charged with assault in the Feb. 7 melee. DA Seth Williams called that leak “utterly ridiculous.” Maybe so, but the slow pace of the DA’s investigation is causing all of this wild speculation. It’s time for some closure here, don’t you think?
• Dom Brown signed a minor-league contract last week with Toronto. The Blue Jays love his five-tool skill set, and they expect the ex-Phillie to begin realizing his potential any day now. (Insert laughter here.)
