1. If you’re not reading the New York Times’ baseball blog, BATS, for updates from the MLB Congressional hearings, than you are chump. The highlight so far, in my opinion:

(Christopher) Shays (R-Conn.) continued, and later during his five minutes referred to Rafael Palmeiro as “Palmerry.” Mitchell kept his composure during a confounding question, regarding whether Palmeiro had tested positive “before his three-hundredth hit?”

A knowledgeable baseball fan despite recent events, Mitchell responded: “I’m sorry, before what?”

2. The Philly Phanatic is voted number one sports mascot. No argument here. Though, I will take issue with the ninth ranked mascot, Rally, who apparently is affiliated with the Atlanta Braves. Has anybody ever heard of Rally? I lived in Atlanta for three years and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a Braves mascot.

3. Bill Conlin takes a moment to do the only thing that he really does well — talk about stuff that happened 50 years ago. In this case, he’s talking about the life of recently deceased Johnny Podres, who was a pitching coach for the Phillies under Jim Fregosi, and before that led the Brooklyn Dodgers to the 1955 World Series championship. It’s a good read. You can also read about Pods here and here.

In a recent column, Bill Conlin wonders whether the Phillies could possibly do better in 2oo8 than they did in 2007.He says probably not:

So everybody in Charlie Manuel’s core lineup had either a career year or made contributions that ranged between substantial (Burrell) and outstanding (Howard). Third base was and will be a black hole, the least productive offensively in the majors. And whenever Abe Nuñez was on the bench - too often - third was a defensive liability, as well.

And, as I pointed out in a previous post, Conlin isn’t too wild about the Phils’ pitching:

The rotation? Cole Hamels (knock wood) and Brett Myers (make a novena) are set at the top. Then there is Kyle Kendrick and Jamie Moyer and Adam Eaton and Chad Durbin and Travis Blackley and . . .

I’m not so sure I agree with Conlin. I think the Phils have improved their roster this offseason, and their record will be better in 2008. Here’s why.

First, the team’s rotation will be better in 2008 than it was in 2007, by virtue of having Brett Myers on board, and by not having Freddy “Mr. 1.60 WHIP” Garcia (who was 1-5 last season in 11 starts). It’s easy to minimize the impact moving Myers to the rotation will have, since he’s not new to the roster. But he’s a power pitcher with nasty stuff — 18 wins is not unrealistic.

Second, the team’s bullpen could be improved if Brad Lidge proves an adequate replacement for Myers. Also, a full season of J.C. Romero in a set-up role won’t hurt.

Third…is third. Yes, third base is a weakness for the Phils. But for how long? Among the MLB third basemen who will be free agents in 2009 are Joe Crede, Nomar Garciaparra, Hank Blalock and Troy Glaus. You have to believe that a few of those guys will be available via trade. Maybe all of them.

Of course, the Phils lost Aaron Rowand to free agency and it remains to be seen if Shane Victorino can be a capable CF or if the Geoff Jenkins/Jayson Werth platoon will be productive. But there’s no reason to think that either of these experiments won’t work.

What’s important to remember is that, when we talk about “improving”, we’re not talking about turning around a losing team. We’re talking about the Phillies winning 95 games instead of 89. That would be one fewer than the 2007 Red Sox won and one more than last season’s Yankees team.

Can the addition of a stud starting pitcher, an improved bullpen and a late-season 3B addition add up to six more wins? Time will tell. But I say yes.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin is at war with the blogs. And the blogs are winning.

But here’s something the blogosphere has yet to unearth.

In July, the Daily News asked Conlin — “a writer who has covered the game both then and now” — to reflect on what he misses and what he is glad has changed.

We bring you his responses, as well as our snarky comments, Fire Joe Morgan-style.

THREE THINGS I MISS

1. Sitting around with the scouts in media lounges around baseball listening to these rococo poets break down games to their most minuscule points, each wrapped in a rich velour of anecdotal remembrance and apocryphal yarns.

I learned a lot from those scouts. They tought me about the evils of “wishful fan numbers”. Oh, and speaking of wrapping oneself in rich velour, I picked up a few fashion tips, too. Did you know that Hawaiian shirts can be worn pretty much year-round?

2. Day baseball and our old 5 a.m. deadlines, which caused the executive decision of the day: Do I dare risk writing after having dinner with Paul Owens? Or do I write now and miss him ripping, “My little [bleep] shortstop?”

Answer: I didn’t dare risk missing dinner.

3. Being able to buy a player a drink or pick up a dinner check at a time when the major league minimum salary and baseball beat man salary were in the same low-rent ballpark. My first full year on the beat, 1966, I was making a little more than the ML minimum of $10,500. I loved big-timing rookies.

I still love big-timing rookies. And I can do it, too. After all, I’m making ballplayer money for two columns a week! And not 1966 ballplayer money, either. The DN “gave me a generous signing bonus, a quarterly performance bonus and matched the lump sum that would have accompanied the buyout package. They also continued the subsidy of my Florida condo that has been paying the taxes and monthly maintenance since 1987. By law, they had to begin paying me my full pension in 2004, so at age 73 I’m making the top salary at the paper plus collecting the biggest monthly pension check ever paid out.”

THREE THINGS I’M GLAD HAVE CHANGED

1. Not having to take part in the group “one quote serves all” interviews that have become the sorry lot of the baseball beat writer.

In fact, I’ve stopped doing any reporting whatsoever!

2. Not having to write my stories and columns on an Olivetti portable with an “i” key that sticks … Then sending the story via a 30-pound fax machine that was called a “Telecopier” at 6 minutes a page. They were fragile and you weren’t supposed to check them with luggage, but everybody did, so they didn’t have to risk a hernia carrying them a half-mile to the gate. It was fun to see them come careening down the baggage-claim carousel chute, hit the railing and fly open in a shower of cheap plastic fittings. After that came the Radio Shack 100s holding one 25-inch story that would be lost forever if you accidentally got unplugged, as there was no memory in the early ones.

Now I write my stories on an Apple MacBook Pro, but the “i” key still sticks. What, they can come up with portable music players that work under water but they can’t invent a barbecue sauce-proof keyboard?

3. Google, instead of having some harassed clerk look up an obscure fact in a library where any clips worth reading had vanished years before. They were the days when the morgue really was …

… was … umm, I’m sorry. My heart stopped for a couple of seconds there. It does that on occassion. Where was I?

We thought we had a pretty good story when, earlier this week, Philadelphia Daily News baseball writer and former BWAA president Paul Hagen agreed to do an interview with our site.

But it turns out we went after the wrong Daily News writer. Because when it comes to providing good copy, columnist Bill Conlin has no peer.

Yesterday, Conlin wrote a column about why Jimmy Rollins deserved the NL MVP Award. It was what we in the industry call a “blow job piece”. And it was, by any measure, pretty stupid.

Not long after its publication, Fire Joe Morgan took the bait and picked Conlin’s column apart, sentence by moronic sentence.

But today, the real fun has begun. Crashburn Alley emailed Conlin and very politely asked why he thinks Rollins deserved the MVP more than Mets 3B David Wright. And this is what Conlin had to say:

Know what, pal? Bash this. . .Tell your bloggers, my career against theirs. . .

And that was just the beginning. Conlin has (so far) emailed Crashburn three times. And each email is better than the last. You can read them all here.

You could interpret Conlin’s emails as just one guy venting his mounting frustration with the blogosphere. But I think it’s more than that.

I think Conlin’s angry (and often confused) words reveal a guy who is fighting a losing battle to remain relevant. Baseball and the way we evaluate players is changing. Conlin and many other baseball writers no longer speak the language.

But don’t shed any tears for Conlin, or any other baseball writer for that matter. It’s not like they’re the only journalists who have to deal with change. The entire field of journalism is in flux. Reporters are now being asked to carry video cameras. They have to learn to write for the web. They have to learn how to record and edit podcasts.

When Conlin says calls sabermetrics “wishful fan numbers that bear no semblance to reality”, I see a guy who has taken a look at his changing profession and at the changing game of baseball and said, “Screw this. I’m too old to change.”

And if the Daily News wants to continue to employ a guy who long ago stopped doing any meaningful reporting, a guy who doesn’t want to grow as a journalist, a guy who turns a blind eye to the changes going on all around him, it’s their funeral.

This is the lede sentence from Philadelphia Daily News writer Bill Conlin’s Monday column:

GOOD MORNING, Philadelphia. And how does it feel being Terry Francona’s bitch?

Now, it’s true that the word “bitch” has lost some of its shock value in recent years. From when Barbara Bush said Hillary Clinton was something that “rhymed with witch” to the near-constant use of “bitch” in rap songs, it just doesn’t pack the punch that it used to.

And the Daily News isn’t the New York Times. It isn’t even the Philadelphia Inquirer. But that is still pretty strong language for the sports section. And daily papers are usually the last places you’d expect to see anything offensive. They usually go out of their way to be politically correct and family friendly. And Conlin — you’ve probably seen his fat slovenly ass on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters” — is old school. I’m really shocked that he used the “b-word”.

As for the accuracy of the statement, well, there’s no debating that. The Phils got handled by the Sox this weekend and probably would have been swept had not Francona chosen to rest Curt Schilling on Sunday, opting to save him for tonight’s game against the Yankees.