👋 Good morning! 🎶 Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face… 🎶
I got emotional about Philadelphia sports three separate times this weekend, two of which were for positive, nostalgic reasons. The first moment came at Citizens Bank Park on Friday night, after me and 40,000 others waited out an hour-and-a-half rain delay to celebrate The Man.
Behind closed doors, the Phillies Wall of Fame planning must have been difficult over the past decade. I could be wrong about this, but the organization seems to have slow-played putting up some of the 2007 through 2011 core. That would make sense, because there were not a whole lot of future Wall of Famers that made their debuts from, say, 2012 to 2019. Aaron Nola, and… not many others. Perfect example of how the baseball side of the building can make the business side’s job much easier, or in this case, more difficult.
But now we are rockin’ and rollin’. Now we are ripping off, in the words of Chase Utley, World F——— Champions. J-Roll last year, Chase this year, and you gotta imagine Ryan, Cole, Chooch and Shane coming down the pike.
The Utley ceremony, which took place in a light drizzle that decreased as it moved along, was nothing short of awesome. Hand up, I got emotional for a lot of it… and there was a lot of it: The normally succinct Utley spoke for 14 minutes, which has to be his all-time record (although if he finds himself in Cooperstown next summer, maybe he tops that number).
But yeah, I loved all of it. Some highlights:
When the on-field orchestra played Kashmir
When Jimmy put the jersey on his longtime double-play partner
When Chase, talking about Pat Burrell, said that “I learned very quickly that nothing good happens after midnight”
When Chase apologized to Zack Wheeler, that night’s and maybe the most analogous current Phillie to himself, for taking so long
When the maniacally focused Utley, talking about how much he disliked the distraction of past alumni weekends, mentioned that he could not help but pay attention to Darren Daulton holding court in the clubhouse
When they cut to Ryan Howard to unveil Chase’s plaque
We spend so much of our lives watching these guys hit a little white ball and run around a field. How many years (OK, 13), months, days, hours and seconds did we all watch Chase Utley play this sport we love at an incredibly high level and with his hair on fire? Maybe you are not sobbing, but with all of that history in mind, I find it difficult not to get at least somewhat emotional during that stuff.
"You know, I'm asked all the time, 'What was it like to play in Philly?' And the truth is, you don't really just play in Philly. You survive it. You earn it. And if you're lucky, you grow from it.
To me, this city is about passion. It's about emotion, it's about toughness. But most of all, it's about winning. For 13 years, I tried to play the game that this city expects us to play: hard, honest, no shortcuts, no excuses. And you let me know every night whether I was doing my job. That's what I love most about this city. Because in Philadelphia, you don't get respect. You have to earn respect.
And standing here tonight knowing that I may have earned a small piece of that respect from you, that means more to me than everything."
Not bad for a Man of Few Words.
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Come on, you know you want to do it. Birds season approaching, plus the Sixers got LeBron. Speaking of…
LeBron Month
Alright, this is the last week until training camp. I promise.
Last week, I published some reasons for skepticism for the 2026-27 Philadelphia 76ers. We are trying to be completist over here at Broad Street Bulletin HQ. And before the reasons for optimism, of which there are many, get published later this week, I wanted to look back at a few moments in history.
The first of those moments has nothing to with LeBron James directly, although it does possess the obvious “Sixers missing piece” parallels: the local professional basketball team’s acquisition of Moses Malone in 1982.
Everyone remembers the Fo' Fo' Fo’ prediction (Fo' Fi' Fo’, as it turned out). Everyone remembers Moses dominating the glass. And everyone remembers the iconic Sports Illustrated cover.
Donnie Downer is currently in my ear, letting me know that Moses was 28 years old at the time and coming off consecutive MVP awards. Nothing gets by you, Don! This is not a one-for-one comparison I am aiming to make. In fact, we are not even there on the calendar yet to compare LeBron’s Sixers era to any of the Moses memories listed above. I simply wanted to look at the coverage from when the Sixers landed Moses. It is a story that I did not know well.
Thanks to my Newspapers.com subscription, I learned that we are currently not even at the point on the calendar that the Sixers acquired Moses. The Sixers signed Moses to an offer sheet on September 2nd, less than two months before the first regular-season game. That feels incredibly late. Free agency started in July, the two-time MVP is hanging out there, and the league waited until school was back in session to get to the matter of restricted free agent Moses Malone. There seemed to be legitimate reasons for the delay, which I will get to in a second, but it still pretty funny to think about. Regardless, it worked out for the Sixers.
Some other details from that offer sheet the Sixers signed Moses to:
💰 A record sum: The Sixers signed Moses to a six-year deal “in excess of $13 million,” which was one of the biggest contracts in sports at the time.
🎟️ Incentives: This part was pretty crazy. As part of the deal, Moses was entitled to “five percent of any gate receipts between $4 and $6 million, and 10 percent of anything beyond $6 million.”
🚀 Moses did not want to leave the Rockets: Malone made it clear that he did not want to leave Houston, and perhaps that staring contest explains why this took so long. He told Houston Chronicle columnist George Whitte, "I never wanted to be a free agent. I've hoped all along that we could get something worked out, but they didn't have that much respect for the things I have done."
🗓️ Time to think it over: Once the Sixers faxed that baby over, Houston had 15 days to match it!
🗽🇨🇳🇳🇱 Around the world: John Nash, the Sixers assistant GM, was essentially the Sixers GM during negotiations because Pat Williams was in China. The contract was hammered out in the wee hours of the morning at New York City’s Grand Hyatt Hotel with owner Harold Katz, coach Billy Cunningham, Moses and Lee Fentress, the lawyer who was representing Moses. And then Moses hopped on a flight to Amsterdam, unsure of where he was headed but a much wealthier man.
Katz was the dominant figure of this whole saga. He talked a big game, but he backed it up: The contract was mostly cash instead of deferred payments. That, in addition to all of the incentives, made it a difficult contract for cash-poor Houston to match. You do see some similarities to what the Flyers did this summer with the Leo Carlsson offer sheet, with the main difference being that 1980s NBA player acquisition reads like the Wild West compared to what pro franchises are allowed to do today. Katz could be creative as hell in drafting a contract that the Rockets found undesirable, and he was.
Restricted free agency was different back then, too. In the modern NHL, Anaheim only has the option to match Carlsson’s offer sheet or lose him and get the four draft picks. In the modern NBA, you can only match or lose the player and there is no compensation involved at all.
But back then, the Rockets had four options:
Lose Moses to the Sixers, with no compensation
Match the offer sheet, keep Moses
Match the offer sheet, work out a trade with the Sixers
Match the offer sheet, work out a trade with another team
That fourth option seems pretty wild. But the Rockets eventually chose Door No. 3, taking back Caldwell Jones and Cleveland’s unprotected 1983 first-round pick from the Sixers. That ended up being the third pick in the 1983 NBA Draft, which nobody cares about because the Sixers won the title and the Rockets drafted a forward named Rodney McCray. But can you imagine if it was the third pick in the following year’s draft? I will let you look up who that ended up being.
The Sixers introduced Moses before a Phillies game, “in a storage room in the bowels of Veterans Stadium” of all places. The was the 🐐 Phil Jasner’s lede that day: The tight little enclave of NBA owners that thought it had driven Harold Katz against a wall was last seen retreating sheepishly, licking wounds in places it didn't know it had.
And Moses, for his part, had a couple of quotes that the current Sixers can look to as they prep for the season.
"I know it's Doc's show, and I'm happy to be part of Doc's show… Doc'll still be the show, but maybe now it'll be a better show."
"The last four or five years, Philly had the best team in the league (but didn't win the title). We can win it now, but we can't be selfish, we've gotta play together."
⚾ Phillies get the most excruciating 1 of 3 of all-time: I can list the strong performances from Sunday and spin this in at least a somewhat positive manner. You know what, let’s do that first.
➕ Jesús Luzardo is the Phillies’ best starting pitcher at the moment. That does not mean Cristopher Sánchez and Zack Wheeler are not fantastic (they are), and that they have not had better seasons on the whole (Sanchy definitely has), and that things might change moving forward (they likely will). But right now, Luzardo gets through the opposing lineup easier than pretty much anyone in baseball.
Luzardo’s last 11 starts, including the one frustrating meltdown in Miami that included some Seth Johnson: 70.2 innings pitched, 96 strikeouts to 23 walks, 2.04 ERA.
The dude is flat-out getting it done, a treat to watch on a team that is not always a treat to watch. Luzardo dominated Toronto over seven two-run innings yesterday, striking out 12 Blue Jays in the process. Everyone make sure to wear your rec specs today.
➕ The scuffling Kyle Schwarber went deep twice. What a sight for sore eyes.
Schwarbs’ first homers since July 18th. They say they come in bunches.
I would be lying to you if I said that I did not have a, “The Home Run Derby is bad, and no Phillie should ever do it again” column in the drafts. Maybe that gets published in a week. This massive Schwarber drought was starting to get awkward. It was difficult to not speculate about the health of his back.
The Phillies kept Schwarber in the lineup, and he was on base eight times this weekend. Man, he needed that. Man, we needed that.
➕ The Phillies finally won a one-run game! Derek Hill, you beauty. Rec specs and toothpicks today, everyone.
No, this should not have been a one-run game. But it is noticeable that the Phillies won a close one in any context, because they have been on a brutal run as of late. Since the All-Star break, every single close game — defined here as one or two runs — the Phillies have lost. The Phils are 0-9 in close games during that span, and 0-10 if we add the Nationals extra-inning game that got away from them.
Since the All-Star break, the Phillies actually have a +10 run differential (12th). On balance, they are not playing that poorly. But they are 9-13 (21st) during that span, because they have lost a whole lot of close games for a variety of reasons.
And there are some positive signs. A top-ten offense during that span, despite Schwarber’s cold streak and Brandon Marsh forgetting how to hit. Trea Turner heated up right out of the break, and now Bryson Stott is on fire. On the pitching side, Aaron Nola has settled into giving up a few bombs while giving you a quality-ish start. We can work with that. Let’s see if Andrew Painter can keep up his recent form tonight.
And yet… everything is so hard for this team. Let’s point out two reasons why.
➖ The bullpen is in shambles. Since July 1st, the Phillies bullpen has a 5.40 ERA. That is 28th in baseball. Not great, Bob.
Jose Alvarado (two runs in 8th inning on Saturday) and Orion Kerkering (three runs in 8th inning on Sunday) almost blew two games single-handedly. They are probably the Phillies’ third and fourth-highest leverage pitchers, and whatever bad luck you can cite about their seasons, they cannot get anyone out right now. On its face, that is a problem that no manager can work around.
There is a theory among some Phillies fans that Don Mattingly has fatigued this bullpen with how often he has used them, and how much he has each pitcher warm up. Kerkering, for one, is leaking velo on his fastball. I am not saying that theory is wrong, and it sure feels possible. But I would just like to see a compelling argument with some numbers before running with it. If someone smarter than me writes (or has written) a “Donnie Baseball shot the bullpen” article, I would love to read it.
But Mattingly’s bullpen decisions continue to confound. Brooks Raley stranded the ghost runner in the 11th. Should he have been up in the eighth for lefty Andrés Giménez, who tied the game off Kerkering? Seems like it.
On the last pitch that a Phillie threw on Sunday, in the 12th inning, Caleb Killian grabbed his side in some real pain. “It didn’t look good,” Mattingly said. The attrition is real.
➖ The Alec Bohm of it all: Early in the week, everyone and their mother expressed skepticism about moving Bryce Harper to the outfield so Bohm could play first base. Let’s just say this weekend did not quell any of those concerns.
Bohm had some particularly bad late-inning moments in all three games against Toronto. Late in games this weekend, Bohm…
Fridee: Phillies have the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, Phils down one with one out. A sac fly ties the game. Bohm instead beats the first pitch into the ground, force play at home. Phils lose.
Saturdee: Blue Jays have first and second in the top of the tenth, game tied with one out. If Bohm executes a simple flip to Chase Shugart on a ground ball to first base, there are two outs. But Bohm, clearly not used to playing his position, completely does the wrong thing. It was like he thought he was still playing third base. The next hitter hits a sac fly for one run, which would have been zero if Bohm got the easy out. Phils lose.
Sundee: Phillies have second and third in the bottom of the tenth, game tied with one out. A sac fly wins the game. Bohm pops out in foul territory next to home plate. Luckily, the Phils still won.
After the popout, I was emotional for the second time about Philly sports this weekend. This was not positive emotion, though. But you know what, let’s get to the third time…
Life Without Lane
Sounded like a pretty loaded training camp practice on Saturday. Pads, scrimmaging, long practice. Football!
And yet, the biggest headline came from the interview tent after it was over.
Lane Johnson was back at Son of NovaCare after missing four practices. But Lane had some news to share: This is likely gonna be it. That is a departure from how he has framed the prospect of retirement in the past. And while Lane could always change his mind, this sounded like someone who had thought this through.
“Are you running to something or are you running away from something?” Johnson told reporters.
In this case, what Lane is running to is his family. This should probably not come as a major surprise. Back in the spring, as Lane surprised everyone with his unbridled enthusiasm for playing in Sean Mannion’s offense, he did mention his parents getting older as a reason for thinking about retirement this past offseason. And while Lane did not get into specifics explaining his absence from camp, he alluded to his mom having some health issues over the weekend.
But Lane is at the age where the pull of family is in both directions. His oldest child is turning 13 years old.
“It’s hard to get time back,” Johnson said. “Those years are very pivotal.”
Admirable sentiments from good dude who anybody that has come across over the past 13 years likes. Life happens. Over the past decade, we have seen Lane openly deal with anxiety and depression. Lane has been an open book throughout his career, whether he is dealing with his mental health or talking about why the run game stinks. It makes sense that his retirement calculus is relatively straightforward, and he is letting everyone know about it. The man wants to spend time with his family.
(That was the third time I got emotional, by the way.)
OK, all that said, Lane is a great guy yada yada…
🚨 THIS IS A CODE RED! WE ARE NOT GONNA HAVE HALL OF FAME LEVEL RIGHT TACKLE PLAY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A DECADE. I REPEAT, CODE RED! 🚨
When you combine quality of play, longevity and positional importance, I would argue that Lane Johnson is the best Eagle in a long time. Brian Dawkins and Jason Kelce are the only other players in his tier, and both of those guys are all-timers. I will not argue if you prefer either of them. But offensive tackle is a more important position than center and safety.
Lane provides a nice stylistic contrast with Kelce and Dawkins. Those guys jumped off your screen, whether it was Kelce blocking out in space or Dawkins decapitating some poor receiver. Lane, on the other hand? He has done his (very difficult) job all these years, pretty quietly. You barely paid attention to him in 2017, as he was on an all-time run of shutting out Pro Bowl pass-rushers. He did not slow down in his 30s. The guy was one of the best players on two Super Bowl champions, another NFC champion and six NFC East winners. The longevity and impact is insane.
The other side of that coin is that we will all pay attention to a bad right tackle in a hurry. Ironically, you focus on that position more while watching the game, fearful that your quarterback is about to get clobbered in a way that you never have with 65 out there. Remember The Winston Justice Game? I was locked in on Winston every snap.
The Eagles knew this day was coming, sooner or later. They famously have not drafted Offensive Tackle of The Future in the first round for three straight years. You thought they might eat their vegetables, but for a variety of reasons, they never did. It is all good, we got a parade in ‘24 because of it. But the future appears to be now, or soon at least. The Eagles have not had to fill a hole at either tackle position since drafting Lane in 2013. When Jason Peters was done, he handed the baton to Jordan Mailata.
This all makes Markel Bell a Very Important Person. Everyone is gonna be locked in on the gigantic third-round rookie from Miami’s preseason reps.
What Bell or anyone that replaces Lane could in theory have going for them is the Eagles’ new theory of offense. One of the arguments for adjusting the scheme to a more Shanahan/McVay look is that less is required of the offensive tackles. Lane has said as much all spring, he will not be on an island as much this year. But that theory requires Mannion to be good at his job and for this new scheme to hit. TBD.
For what it’s worth, Lane spoke very highly of Bell.
He’s one of the best rookies I’ve been around, just as far as being in the playbook. No complaining, haven’t heard him complain one time. He’s always asking questions, just a really mature young man who handles stuff off the field well. He’s just always asking questions. You can tell he was coached up well at Miami. I see a guy with that size and that ability and that wing span and movement, you can have a lot of success in this business.”
So, the intangibles are there. Let’s see if the kid can play.
Maybe Lane sees some of himself in Bell. They were both 0-star recruits that had to go to junior college, albeit in slightly different circumstances (Lane had no idea that was an offensive tackle at that point of his life).
If this is Lane’s Last Dance, let’s all do our best to appreciate him. We are not gonna see many more Eagles that have his level of career.
The news and notes of the day…
One quick practice observation: As much as I love training camp notes, plays like this remind you that, oh yeah, running the football is pretty darn important. We do not really have a sense of how good the Eagles are gonna be at it from training camp.
Saquon Barkley had some good runs today with the offensive line opening up holes for him. One such instance came when the Eagles’ offense was backed up against their own end zone and Barkley got freed up for a long touchdown run. Barkley found the end zone on a short run to cap off a successful drive by the offense. After scoring, Barkley went up to Cooper DeJean and got in his face to rub it in. Barkley then got into a shoving match with Quinyon Mitchell … but it looked more playful than truly heated. Fun to see some competitive intensity.
One other depth note: Preseason is incredibly meaningless nowadays, but the combination of Bell and Willie Lampkin on the offensive line will be fun to monitor. I cannot wait to see the 5-foot-11 Lampkin in action.
⚽ Union 3, Nexaca 1: Nice goal from the young fella.
The Eagles are back at camp, while the Phils are in St. Louis (7:45 p.m., NBC Sports Philly and FS1). We could really use a good Andrew Painter start tonight, y’all.
Let’s make it a good one.