Spike Eskin Says: Our Unfortunate Dose Of Reality
By Spike Eskin
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – One word to describe last night. That's what Angelo Cataldi was asking for this morning. Every day when I come to work here at 400 Market St., Angelo's show is blasting through the speakers. My reactions have a wide range, from laughter (often) to fury (also often). Today, his question just made me think a little bit. I heard callers suggest many one word descriptions, and read Tweeters and Facebookers (is that a word?) suggest many more.
Depressing
Nightmare!!!
Exhausting
All legitimate suggestions, all true in their own way.
Then I got an email from a gentleman named Will. The subject line was "WORD FOR LAST NIGHT." The body of the email simply said, "reality."
Ouch.
I should have known not to open the email when I saw the subject line in all caps. That's never good. But he was right.
That's the worst part about those three games last night. The fact that our worst case scenarios for all three teams may be a lot closer to reality than we'd like to believe.
The Phillies are going to have trouble scoring runs all season, and have a sub-par bullpen, because that's who they are.
The Flyers will have trouble winning a Stanley Cup until they have a goalie who can win them games that they shouldn't win. Simply "not being the reason they lost" is not enough, and not why they gave Bryzgalov that contract.
The Sixers can't score because they don't have enough ... scorers. That's who they are.
We knew all of these things before last night, even if we buried them deep in the back of our mental closets. We went to bed with the closet light being on, and the door to the closet wide open. And the worst thing about that closet light is it doesn't usually have a shade on it. It's just a light bulb, bright as can be.
It's true that last night's dose of reality isn't the only reality.
The Flyers have some outstanding young players, and appear to have a bright future.
The Phillies have three of the best starting pitchers in all of baseball, and will still likely add two of their best hitters to the lineup.
The Sixers all of a sudden may have some clarity about their young backcourt, and a couple of guys who have that elusive "clutch" gene (whether it actually exists or not).
All of those things are true, but don't quite feel as real, or as close as last night's reality.
Reality. Yuck. I'm going back to sleep.
