The General Manager of our baseball team, the Phillies, is named Ruben Amaro Jr. But locally he has come to be known as "Ruin Tomorrow Jr.", which is thought of by many to be the absolute best nickname in sports (and I didn't make it up). Faithful Phillies fan now clearly recognize Ruin as a complete imbecile. You scoff? The facts are those two words are now part of his name when fans make comments. "The complete imbecile GM Ruin Tomorrow Jr. ... " How bad is Ruin? Up until this week, he had not one ... not two ... but three position players on his bench who had batting averages under two hundred. I spelled it out so there would be no fear of misprint. And during most of that time, not one, but two of those three had batting averages under one hundred. UN ... DER ... ONE ... HUN ... DRED. (What ... the ... fuck?!!!) And one of the guys starting ahead of these three living punchlines is a guy Ruin brought in to play right field this year - even though he hadn't played right field since 2007 - and who is such a fine athlete that he has 4 weight clauses in his contract. Yes: four times during the season he is weighed and if he makes weight he makes $100,000. Yes, this was starting in our outfield - great professional ballplayer, no? This one was just released today, 9 ABs short of a performance bonus. Ruin is so clever. When you want to truly screw up the future of a professional baseball team, accept no substitutes: always insist on Ruin Tomorrow Jr. Phils lose, 9-2, with just 4 hits. tgd

Because of space considerations in the MiniBlog format, I did not mention that good ol' Ruin is doing this magic while spending 170 million dollars, the 2nd highest payroll in the National League. Just imagine what the Pirates GM could do with that kind of money? tgd

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The team just set the worst record after the All-Star break in the history of the franchise (a franchise more than 100 years old).

Thanks for visiting.

tgd