Phillies: Homegrown Heroes



You'd think, after a while, I'd stop posting New York Times articles in favor of the Inquirer or the Daily News. But no, here's another great piece from NYT on how the Phillies build their farm system for long-term payoff ...

Read: Phillies Looked Within for a Long-Sought Pennant

An excerpt:

[Phillies' scout Mike Arbuckle's] scouting philosophy is entrenched within the organization, and it is the foundation of the team's success. Arbuckle is content to let other teams seek polished college products with impressive statistics.

The Phillies, like the Braves years ago, take a different approach.

The ideal Phillies draft choice is a high school senior with raw skills -- foot speed, arm speed, home run power -- that cannot be easily taught. The player then joins the organization at a younger age, where his skills can be honed by Phillies coaches.

Read the article

'Manny and Charlie Being Manny and Charlie'



Good article in the NY Times today about Manny Ramirez 'reuniting' with Charlie Manuel in the NLCS.

Small snippet:

It would have been captivating television, if only someone had used a video camera to follow around the folksy West Virginia-born hitting coach and his flaky Dominican pupil through minor league outposts and on to Cleveland, their profiles soaring together. They could have called the video "Manny and Charlie Being Manny and Charlie."

But even without such footage, the real-life narrative that links the unlikely pair of Manny Ramirez and Charlie Manuel continues to be a fascinating one. For all their differences, each man knows how it feels to be underestimated.

... Perhaps some of the misunderstandings about Ramirez and Manuel helped create a bond between them; they remain friends more than 15 years after their paths first crossed. With the Dodgers and the Phillies set to meet in the National League Championship Series, in a reprise of playoff matchups from 1977, '78 and '83, there may be no subplot as intriguing or as strategically important as the one involving Manuel and Ramirez.