Effin' Gabe Kapler and Philly's Return to Normalcy

Though this site technically covers the NL West, many hilarious things also happen in the rest of baseball. We assigned my friend and Philadelphia sports chauvinist Johnny Goodtimes to describe the absurd goings-on in Phillies-land so far this season. It's even funnier because before the season, Johnny told me that the Phillies were going to "kick everyone in the dick this season." Enjoy him being so so wrong.--Neal Pollack


by Johnny Goodtimes

It has been a strange time in Philadelphia since the Eagles won the Super Bowl. Fans were completely overjoyed and overcome with emotion for the first few weeks, but then reality set in: what does this mean about US? We had taken pride in being a town of unlovable losers, and now we had won the Super Bowl. Would we lose our edge? Would we laugh off future losses as “just a couple of tough breaks going against the boys” instead of indisputable proof that God hated us and wanted us to be miserable? Would we ever rediscover that anger and misery that were such hallmarks of our identity?

Fortunately for us, the baseball gods and the Phillies front office gave us Gabe Kapler to answer those questions. A wonky weirdo from Southern California, he recently spoke at a writers banquet and said, "We are a forest. Our players are the plants, and the flowers, and the vibrant greenery breathing life into our ecosystem. We as coaches, we’re the soil." Now in SoCal that shit may fly, but in Philly it makes you sound like you're an Amoroso roll short of a hoagie.   

The city was in enough of a Super Bowl afterglow, though, that despite his eccentricity had the season started quietly he would have gotten a pass. But it didn't start quietly. It started with sheer insanity. He took a pitcher out who was cruising and handed the game over to a bullpen that proceeded to blow it. He took our best player out of the Opening Day lineup. He made a call to the bullpen for a player who wasn’t there. He had our backup shortstop pitch. He has a monk over his shoulder humming Enigma songs between innings, and a complex algorithm that takes into account where the moon is in relation to Jupiter before he makes a pitching change.

But it goes even deeper than that. I mean, just look at this fuckin’ guy. Could he possibly look more hateable? He looks like your cousin’s boy Toby who talks about how much he’s getting laid and then does that thing where he says “You got something on your shirt” and when you look down he flicks your nose and then chuckles and you can’t possibly retaliate because you have a “dad bod” while he’s sculpted like a prime Rick Rude (though sadly without that bitchin’ mustache). Worst of all, in a town like Philly, Kapler is not only handsomer than us, but he talks like some sort of New Age California guru who also does corporate seminars. Here’s a line from a recent interview: “I spent the off-day putting together bullpen-usage guidelines, talking to our front office, talking to our field staff, talking to our players and putting together action steps in how to manage our bullpen as effectively as possible.”

Philly doesn’t want you taking “action steps.” We want you punching sides of beef in a warehouse. We want you to have a dad bod and eat cheesesteaks and bitch about the soda tax. Fuck an action step. 

The baseball season is interminably long, and this is an impatient football town, so three games is enough for these fans to determine things have completely gone off the tracks, that Gabe Kapler is a complete nutcase who is going to destroy this franchise, that the entire front office should be imprisoned and that the season is over on April 3rd. In other words, after a tumultuous couple of months of identity-searching following a Super Bowl win, Philadelphia sports fans are back in their happy place: extremely furious and supremely miserable.