Two Phillie Dogs To Go, Please

Angel and Sandy of Lindenwold, N.J., prepare for an exciting Game 1 of the 2008 World Series, as Wizard Cat types a furious protest letter to PETA. Here's what they're saying on various computer tube machines about the Phillies' 3-2 victory over the Rays ... • Arms Hold Down Rays. To go into the Orangina SunnyThunderDome ... that stupid bubble, that dumb turf, its monster truck rally lighting, those kickball rules, that Little League World Series camera angle, the "ring your bell if you've been a fan for 15 minutes" crowd ... to go there and stop the buzzsaw the way Hamels, Madson and Lidge did. Unbelievably clutch. Nothing was stopping these pitchers tonight, and I loved Utley's snap homer to get it started. Very quietly, Utley is sneaking past Shane Victorino as the Phils' most valuable hitter this post-season. [ Beerleaguer]• Rays Whiff, Phillies Take Game 1. I was wondering how long the anthem by the Backstreet boys was going to take. Rays flat all night, a whole lot of costly mistakes hurt them big time. Kaz had the rough 1st inning but them clamed down. That’s okay, the Rays lost game one of the ALCS and that turned out okay in the end, didn’t it? [ Rays Of Light] • Fans Pay $400 For Fraudulent Tickets . Mike Gary Jr. and his father, Mike Gary Sr. stood outside Gate 4 of Tropicana Field trying to find a way in after paying $400 for a set of fraudulent tickets. "I'm out 400 bucks. I'm crying. I scraped that money to take my dad to the Rays game for the World Series," as a birthday present, said Gary Jr, of Safety Harbor. His father, 69, is from Brooksville. "I didn't know I was going to get burned." [ The Heater] • World Series Game 1 Recap. Double-digit men left on base, baffling managerial decisions, ineptitude from Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard... and they won it anyway. It's the first World Series victory for the franchise since Curt Schilling's five-hit shutout in Game Five of the 1993 Fall Classic, and it couldn't be appropriate that Schilling's ace successor, Cole Hamels, took the win. [ The Good Phight] • Phillies Present Rays With A Lump Of Coles. With three games in the City of Brotherly Love following tomorrow night’s Game 2, you can almost feel the Phanatics counting down the days until their 28-year title drought is broken. To which I say, “not so fast, cheesesteak heads”; remember, the Rays lost the first game of the ALCS, too, and we all know what happened after that. At least I do. [ Bugs And Cranks] • The Morning Tailgate. The calendar reads late October, so that man could only be Fox's Tim McCarver. With the World Series getting underway last night, we got yet another dose of the most uninformative and yet shockingly arrogant analysis that the baseball broadcast world has to offer. [ Joe Sports Fan] • Was It A Balk? In the bottom of the sixth inning, Carlos Pena hit a grounder to Ryan Howard, who is not known for his great defense. As expected, he had some trouble fielding it and Pena reached base safely. As Hamels was about to deliver his first pitch to the next hitter, Evan Longoria, Pena broke for second base. Hamels, seeing Pena break for second perhaps a moment too soon, threw towards first base, and Howard threw to second base where shortstop Jimmy Rollins applied the tag in time for the out. As soon as Hamels threw over, the entire Rays bench screamed “Balk!” but that alone isn’t enough to hand out a verdict. They’re biased, of course. But my initial reaction was that it was a balk, and the replays seem to agree, though the balk rule is so unclear that we’ll never really know. [ Crashburn Alley]