Champs to Chumps- Opening Night With the Phillies

Before I talk about my night somewhat well-spent with the Fightins, I do have to comment on the pathetic performance my Villanova Wildcats put on for the entire nation to see Saturday evening. Although they did only lose by 14, the moment my astronomical expectations came in touch with reality, I looked sadder than Queen without Freddie Mercury. I totally enjoyed Dante Cunningham's emotional locker room interview with tears running down his face: it was raw emotion at its finest. I only hope he doesn't make an NBA Live commercial proclaiming that once he gets to the NBA "more people will cry" (I think the only people that have cried because of Adam Morrison are those in Los Angeles subject to viewing the worst 'stache in history perform nightly). The fact that the Wildcats lost to the eventual national champion, North Carolina, would make it a little bit nicer, except for the fact that it has happened 4 out of the 5 last years. I'm not quite sure how I would have reacted had the Wildcats pulled off the upset and won the championship, I suppose neither the world nor this blog will ever know. One could base it off the last, and only, time a team the Sobel Soup has rooted for has won a championship.

I am of course talking about the Philadelphia Phillies, your 2008 World Champions of baseball. If you are not aware of the spring weather, baseball season has again started up. This brings a breath of fresh air with it, not for the particular reason that I get to watch the Phillies again. It is mostly refreshing because when describing the baseball season, I only have to use one year. As opposed to the other sports, where they play before and after the New Year, the baseball season avoids confusion by playing all of its season inside of new years. Besides that, Sunday's Opening Night was an exciting one, because the Sobel Soup was in attendance. That's right, Jeffrey J. pulled some stunts to get three standing room admission tickets. We had an extra ticket, so we decided to bring along O-Star Superstar, who you all know pretty well by now. Our trio's pregame buzz was all but ruined when we saw a man drop his pants and proceed to take a leak right in front of us while we walked to the stadium. I'm fairly certain that is illegal, and with all the police surrounding us, he must have had some kahonas, or he probably would have had to squat. It was quite awkward walking by him, as you can imagine none of us made eye contact. Now, I take a leaker in public as much as the next guy, but usually one does the common courtesy of positioning themselves in a somewhat concealable manner. Not this guy. He literally started to pee right on the sidewalk. Luckily he was facing the other way, so none of our eyes were permanently damaged. As for the reasoning behind this man's bold move, one can never be certain.

After looking for about five minutes for the ESPN cameras outside the stadium that show people walking around, we decided to head inside. Once we got in, a huge advertising opportunity awaited me. Standing right in front of us was a gigantic Phillies championship t-shirt ("Phinally" bore the front) that was available for Phan signature. The pressure was on when I took the Sharpie, and since I spent my time searching out a spot to write, I had no idea what to sign. I ended up putting "Sobel Soup." In retrospect, this would have been the perfect opportunity to write out "sobelsoupkitchen.blogspot.com." It would have been a mouthful, sure, but I would have gotten it done. Anyway, if someone is ever in the presence of that big shirt, look at the very bottom right hand corner and you will most likely see the Sobel Soup's signature.

The pregame festivities were all pretty fun. The best had to be when the parachuters came down. For those of you that saw it on TV, I'm guessing you didn't get to see this fine display of money well-spent by the United States government. Parachuters actually landed in the middle of the field. If you couldn't guess already by the description, it was really cool. It was also hilarious because one of the parachuters landed outside of the stadium. Either that or he somehow got lifted up into the air again and came back down onto the field, but I'm bargaining on the former. All of the parachuters stuck the landings to make it even more ballin' than it already was.

After all of this, the crowd was ready for the game to start. If you don't already know, the Phillies had lost 3 straight opening day games. The Phillies winning the World Series last year made about as much of a change to this trend as moving Sportscenter to the West Coast did for that fine piece of programming (I'll give you a hint: that means it didn't change!!). Brett Myers looked to be in his mid-season form by channeling his inner minor-league self for yet another year.

Even though the Superstar and I were displeased by the play on the field, we were thoroughly entertained by the couple standing next to us. This included several things, one of which included getting beer spilled on my shirt. I'm pretty proud of myself because I did indeed handle it very well. The woman bought me a soda to make up for it, and she probably would have offered to buy the Phillies for me if she had not had to leave, the reason of which was her boyfriend flipped the bird to a Braves reliever. This whole beer-spilling experience was worth it simply because Omar made a fool out of himself. We were leaning on a ledge when it was spilled and I took my shirt off. No, the ladies did not get a free show by getting a good, long glimpse of the Sobel Soup at his finest without his shirt on: I did have an undershirt on. I accidentally placed the tail end of it back into the mess when I was taking it off and getting it cleaned. Omar proceeded to call me "such an idiot" for this act. It was a few minutes later when he came back to eat his words when he realized he was still leaning on a part of the beer puddle, and that his sweatshirt had gotten wet because of it.

The time that we didn't spend getting beer spilled on us, we spent listening to how this girl's brother plays catcher for the Rhode Island baseball team. Apparently, like Derrick (I had to put this link in because it is the best rendition I have ever heard), he too has not had a carb since 2004. Believe me, I have searched the website for a freakish, 6-4, 250 pound catching prospect who could someday play in the majors, but I have yet to find him. He is supposedly "the biggest guy (the man next to me has) ever seen." Besides this, the man taught us many a life lesson, including do not go to Temple, major in business and earn $1 million a year because it simply is not worth it. We should go out West and enjoy the good life. The last highlight of the night with this inspiring figure was when he got in a fight with a woman named Tina, who unjustly accused him of turning around and then proceeding to talk about her with his girlfriend. When she called him out on this, he told her that she has "some kind of inferiority," but that she had to "deal with it on (her) own and not bring (him) into it." (I am doing the word-substituting thing the papers do, it's more professional that way) Score: 1 for the man with the insight, 0 for Tina.

That just about sums up the highlights of the night.

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I did have a suggestion for this week which I will have in the next post. The reason I am not putting that in is because when I saw the video below, I knew that it had the Soup Kitchen written all over it. It is fairly recent, so I am imagining that some of you have already seen it. Even if you have, you probably know that it is well worth another look. Just a little note, my two favorite passengers would have to be the guy in the front left with the pen in his mouth and the guy at 2:17 that does the nice gang sign. Killer.




Always Serving,

Sobel Soup