HOW 'BOUT THOSE PHILLIES, HUH?

Wow. What an incredible couple of days in the world of Phillies baseball. Today's an off day for the Phillies--they'll continue their series with the Dodgers tomorrow in Los Angeles. Presently the Phillies are up 2-0 in the series, with some pretty incredible stuff happening in the first two games.

Game 1: Cole Hamels pitched well, despite giving Manny a nice little wild pitch to hit early on in the game. Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Pat Burrell did quite well offensively. (Nice to see Utley back on his game!) Despite the fact that the Dodgers were the first team to put a run on the board, they managed to fall to the Phillies 3-2. Hey, I'm not complainin'. If you want more details on what happened during this game, click here. (Also: my inner word nerd loves the term "Utlage," coined around the 10:07 mark.)

Game 2: Brett Myers vs. Chad Billingsley. The latter is not cute, not cute at all, since for the length of this series I've issued a moratorium on Dodgers being cute. He's a troll. A troll who got removed in the third inning 'cause the Phillies turned it into a slugfest. And at the heart of that slugfest? Brett freakin' Meyers. Last week he terrorized CC Sabathia with his at-plate performance. This time around, he caused even more damage by batting 1.000, having 3 base hits in his first 3 at-bats, becoming only the eighth pitcher in baseball history to have a 3-hit game during the postseason. Well done, Myers! The coolest Hawaiian in baseball, Shane Victorino, also had a hell of a night at the plate (singling, tripling, driving in runs...oh my!), plus he made an amazing play on a Casey Blake-hit ball that would have allowed the Dodgers to rack up some extra runs had Victorino not caught it. (Also: Condolences to Victorino on the passing of his grandmother, and to Charlie Manuel on the passing of his mother. And happy, happy birthday to Pat the Bat!) Props to the Phillies bullpen for working their magic and to Greg Dobbs for hitting a totally hot .667 average yesterday. The Phillies won game 2 of the NLCS 8-5 and have now become the 19th team in history to win the first 2 games of the NLCS, which is fabulous news because, of the teams that have started this series with a 2-0 lead, 16 of those 18 teams have ended up winning the series. Let's hope that the Phillies can become #17... They've got an off day today, but the baseball goodness starts back up again tomorrow at Dodger Stadium at 8:22 PM.

In other playoff team-related chatter, look at what those American League female fans are doing for their teams! (That being said, if my favorite AL team, the super-smokin'-hot Twins, were in the postseason, I just might be doing something crazy like this, too.) In the ALCS, the BoSox lead the series 1-0, with the next game in the series happening today.