Back Like He Forgot Something: Cliff Lee Belongs in Philadelphia

Some things are just meant to be.

Sometimes it's determination that brings two sides together, like digging a tunnel through a mountain starting on opposite sides. Amd Sometimes it's opposite effects, like the positive and negative charges of magnets. But sometimes it's just a feeling, like how everybody who saw "Forrest Gump" for the first time just knew that Forrest and Jenny would end up together in the end, no matter how different their lives may have been.

For whatever the reason may be, Cliff Lee was born to wear Phillies red.

While the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees chased him around for the past few weeks, Lee went on hunting trips with his buddies. Lee's agent Darek Braunecker entertained the offers from those teams, while his star client was relaxing after another deep post-season run. Everybody in the sporting world thought that Lee and Braunecker were waiting for one of those two teams to buckle, and snag the best offer at some point this winter, making Lee one of the highest paid athletes on the planet.

But it turns out that Lee was looking for something a little more than money.

When news broke of a third-party "Mystery Team" entering the discussions, I think everybody in New York and Texas cringed a little, and I'm willing to bet that most sports fans in America had that 'feeling' that it was the Philadelphia Phillies getting ready to make an offer.

Lee turned down more money, more years, more publicity, and probably more playing time to rejoin the team that he helped reach the World Series in 2009. As always, the respectful Lee was classy about the situation and called Rangers GM Jon Daniels to break the news himself.

"People rag on players for following that last dollar. Cliff didn't do that. I have a lot of respect for him." Daniels said after the phone call. (1)

Chalk that one up for one of sports' good guys.

With Texas out of the way, it was clear the Philly was the only other option, because, lets face it, after the way Yankees fans treated Lee's wife during last year's ALCS, I don't think New York stood a chance. Fans spit, threw beer, and cursed at her while she sat with other family members of Rangers players.

"The fans did not do good things in my heart," Lee's wife, Kristin, told USA Today. "When people are staring at you, and saying horrible things, it's hard not to take it personal." (2)

I bet those fans are kicking themselves now, huh? If you Yankees fans are looking for somebody to blame over this, I'd say don't look to crucify Lee, look at whoever is sitting next to you the next time you visit Yankees Stadium.

The bottom line in the story is that Lee wanted to be in Philadelphia. You heard weeks of talks with the other two, and then after one day of speculation in Philly and he's signing a contract. That's not a coincidence, that's a man that knows what he wants. And that's exactly why Lee belongs in Philadelphia. He relates to the people, the die-hard fans of the team who probably would have given a year of their paychecks to have him come back to us. But Lee didn't want our money. He wanted our hearts. He wanted exactly what we gave him during that 2009 playoff run, where the entire city was behind him in a way that no other city has shown him since then. And Thanks to Ruben Amaro Jr. showing up fashionably late to the Lee sweepstakes, us fans can give him exactly that for the next 6 years of our lives.

So I say this to all of you true Phillies fans; Embrace it. By signing this contract, Lee is telling each and every one of you personally that there is nowhere else on the planet that he would rather be. He wants you to tailgate games that he's starting and wear Cliff Lee jerseys and shirts. He wants you to make signs that say "Cliff Banga!" and stand behind him for each pitch. He wants you to be loud, and wave rally towels, not gay pom-poms like San Francisco did in the NLCS and World Series. In other words, he wants you to be the way that Philadelphia fans have always been, because he's personally telling you that he feels you are the best at what you do.

I agree with him, and think there's not a chance in the world that we'll let him down.

Quotes were used in this blog from
(1) MLB.com
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20101213&content_id=16311236&vkey=news_nyy&c_id=nyy&partnerId=rss_nyy

And

(2) ESPN.com
http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/news/story?id=5729471

Remember Myspace? Me Neither...

It's kind of hard to picture it now, but Myspace.com used to be the most popular social network on the internet. I remember girls getting mad if they weren't in your top eight, and songs playing on your main page for the viewers. Facebook was just a budding idea in the brain of a genius, starting to sprout up around college campuses in the northeast, but like a proud older brother, Myspace ruled the world.


At first, they competed with each other like a sibling rivalry should. Myspace added a messenger, and Facebook added a messenger. Facebook added tagged photo's, and Myspace added tagged photo's. But eventually the tide began to turn. Myspace got movie shout outs, ("So you guys on myspace orr??") but Facebook got movies (The Social Network, obv). Users were jumping ship. The Last Log-in timers that used to read 5 minutes ago now all read September 2009. It's almost as if Myspace just up and admitted that it's younger brother had become cooler and gave up.


Now I'm not saying that Myspace is terrible, I think it was ahead of its time and I respect it. But if there was a family Christmas party for websites, I think Facebook would show up in a limo with a hot date named Twitter, while Myspace would show up 2 hours late, hammered drunk, with it's nagging girlfriend Photobucket. It's not hard to imagine who Google and Yahoo! would be following around all night trying to talk to.


In all honesty, I think Myspace did it to itself. Facebook put a name to it's genius in  Mark Zuckerberg. All we knew about the creator of Myspace was that he was some weird guy named Tom with a white t-shirt.

We never even learned Toms last name. He was just that guy who added every single person as a friend as soon as they made an account. And even as with being on everybody's friends list, he was never able to attain celebrity status on his own site. The most famous person that came away from Myspace was Tila Tequila.

Yet the most famous person from Facebok was Zuckerberg himself. Like the little brother that it was, it looked at the things that it's older sibling did that worked, and then added original ideas by itself to improve. Facebook built it's name by one-upping big brother to death. And just as it goes in life, It didn't take long for Graig Weidinger to become cooler than Beav, the younger brother succeeded.



Myspace still serves a purpose these days (I think?). It's the place where new bands and struggling comedians make pages and try to start a fan-base. But Facebook hosts "like" pages for already established bands and actors where fans can interact with the click of a button. NewsCorp, the company that bought Myspace in 2005 for $580 million dollars says they are open to selling, but they are waiting for the site to become profitable again.

Profitable???? We talkin about Playoffs???? Myspace blew that money so fast and you can catch him now sleeping on Atlantic City benches and begging tourists on Tennessee Ave for spare change to buy a 40 oz. of Old English. Facebook rules the world now and I don't foresee anything changing that in the near future. It's continuing to grow, (I heard some ridiculous stat that one of every three people in the world has an account, insane, I know) and it's making AOL and Hotmail two very, very proud parents.

Somewhere, Myspace just crawled into a ditch and stayed there.

Facebook didn't even organize a funeral.