It’s Obviously The Entire City Of Philadelphia’s Fault That The Phillies Are Tattletales

Mandatory Credit: Jaime Valdez-USA TODAY Sports

Thursday, Baseball America reported that suspended Oregon State Senior pitcher Ben Wetzler, was suspended because the Phillies elected to run and complain to the NCAA, after the fifth-round draft pick chose to go back to college when “his representation” couldn’t reach a deal with the team.

The problem with that whole situation, is that apparently having “his representation” try to hammer out a deal with the Phillies, strips him of his amateur status. So going back to college, wasn’t an actual option. Baseball America says that players having representatives act as agents isn’t a new thing, it’s just that the Phillies decided to inform the NCAA of violations that normally go unreported.

"Several sources have confirmed to Baseball America that the Phillies, who drafted Wetzler in the fifth round last June but did not sign him, told the NCAA in November that Wetzler violated the NCAA’s “no agent” rule. That rule is widely disregarded by baseball prospects, whose advisers routinely negotiate with teams on players’ behalf, against NCAA rules—because that is the industry norm. As an American League scouting director told Baseball America in 2008, “Every single player that we deal with—I don’t care what round you’re talking about—has representation, has an agent.”"

While it would be convenient for me to somehow blame this on Ruben Amaro, I’m not sure that I can find a way to do that. Instead, I’ll leave it at, someone(s) in the Phillies organization has poor values, that will likely keep Wetlzer from getting to play out his senior year at Oklahoma State, and the NCAA allowing this, over such a technicality, makes them look even more corrupt than the United States government.

Anyway, you didn’t need me to tell you that the Phillies are snitches (hell Deadspin described it the same way) or that the NCAA is a joke, so I didn’t write this article to do that. Instead, I’m going to fight another useless battle—the national fight to keep Philadelphia fans out of the negative spotlight.

Thursday, Deadpsin did a story on the happenings, and I like Deadspin on Facebook, so I saw the story being shared. Before I actually clicked on the story, I read some of the comments on the Facebook post, which reminded me that we aren’t viewed as “classy”, around the country.

"Everything in philly sucks..Typical Philly.Typical Philly rat bastardsThe only good people from Philly are on always sunny. Everyone else can pound sand.Just another reason to despise that legends-in-their-own-mind team.As if we needed more reason to hate the Phillies.Keeping it classy as always, Phillies.Its the phillies… not surprising. Always a classy bunch!"

I’m not sure who says “pound sand” anymore or still watches Always Sunny, but whatever. The real people I want to address first, are the ones who everytime one person in a city does something bad, immediately go to a line from a comedy movie (Anchorman), and drop their line about staying classy. If you say “stay classy” in 2014, your are an uncreative loser. Deadspin did an article about this very topic earlier this year, and I couldn’t agree with it more. “Stay classy” is dead, period.

Secondly, I’m going to avoid legal issues with defamation suits over a Facebook post (which is why I only posted the comments and not the names with them), but I did some research on some of our commenters. I learned that some are from cities like Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Portland, but think that they have the right to tell Philadelphia how we act cocky even though we have won nothing. I also learned that some of the commenters who decided to type in “stay classy”, or something along those lines, not only live in their mother’s basement, but also root for teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, and Red Sox, who have also had incidents where certain members of the fanbase, make the whole city look bad.

Maybe it’s time that someone nationally pulled their head out of their a** and did some research, to the point where they realized that the Santa Claus incident happened nearly fifty years ago. And just maybe one guy getting drunk at a ballgame and throwing up on someone has happened in another stadium (or just about all) before.  The throwing batteries stuff took place in the Vet, which closed in early 2004 (thanks, Ronde Barber). And even in the 2000’s, I don’t remember the battery stories surfacing. That was an early-90’s thing, which was 20 years ago now if you are counting at home.

Perhaps my favorite comment on the entire post was this one.

"And truth be told, throwing batteries was started by one of the more classy fan bases in all of baseball when The St Louis Cardinals fans threw them at Chili Davis in the late 80’s. The year after that, The Yankees did it to Jay Buhner. But, Phillies fans do it once to JD Drew (who turned out to be an even bigger asshole) and it gets pinned to a Phillies fan thing."

This commenter didn’t shit on any of the fanbases, but he made a point that just because certain Yankees fans and Cardinals fans threw batteries at opposing players (hell Padres fans threw a syringe at Barry Bonds), that doesn’t mean the entire fanbase is bad. The actions of a few define those few, rather than the entire fanbase—let alone the entire city.

In the world we live in today especially, it is easier to use generalized stereotypes about fanbases because everyone runs with them as if they are urban legend, and you can’t just google them and find out that every fanbase has some morons in it, that don’t define the whole group.

But I get it, in 2014 we are a lazy society, so I guess national journalists and pundits should set the standard that sports fans should be lazy. Then, ****heads can sit behind a computer all day and be keyboard warriors, attempting educate people like me who have actually done research and gone to countless games in this town, about how we are all assholes around here and don’t “stay classy”.