Charlie Manuel Sends More Surprises, and Sends Brett Myers to Bullpen

The Phillies are fast becoming a Twilight Zone episode.

Imagine, if you will, a team entering a baseball season with lofty expectations, only to find that their best laid plans have ... so far ... gone to waste. The manager, feeling the pressure to keep his own job, blows up at a Philadelphia radio personality. The aftermath included Charlie Manuel doing his best Drew Rosenhaus impression:

"No, what happened last night happened, and I just want to move on. I mean, that's over. I want to move on. I've got to concentrate on our team and winning ballgames. Actually, that has nothing to do with our team. As I look at it, that has nothing to do with our team and it has nothing to do with us winning or losing games ...

Next question:

"I don't want to hash on it," "I don't want to go over anything," "Let's move on," "I just want to move on," "I want to just concentrate on our team," "I'll say this and then I don't want to say nothin' else about it," and "I don't want to talk no more about it." He followed that last one with this: "I know I'm talkin', but I don't want to say nothin' else about it,"

Then, some introspection from Manuel:

"I've got to be bigger than that," he said. "I've got to be a bigger man than that. Like, I've got to be able to handle something like that. And as a professional, that's probably the only thing that I would probably regret about last night."

Then, as if the road couldn't wind enough, some reflection ...

"When I first started as a manager in this game I used to grab guys, I'd slam them on the wall," he said. "Really. I mean, that was no problem. I had no problem doing that. And you know, like, I'm older now and things like that, I'm 63 years old, but at the same time, you know, like, I've still got that same passion, I've still got that same fire....People don't know me and they don't take the time to know me. They see me around the ballpark and they kind of look at, 'Well, there's Goodtime Charlie,' or you know, like, 'Take-it-Easy Charlie,' 'Laidback Charlie,' 'Uncle Charlie,' 'Grand-pa Charlie,' whatever."

Wow, it's like a psychology class with Manuel ... could he have possibly blown up at Eskin because he called Manuel laid back and happy? It sounds like that in Manuel's world, being laid back and happy is equated with getting older. And Manuel may have wanted to show that he could still be angry like he was when he was younger and still show he could do it, like when Tony Soprano beat up the bodyguard half his age just to show his crew that he wasn't getting soft. (Yeah, I'm probably reading way too much into this.)

But oh no, were not done there. Because after that came the surprise ending:

Then there were baseball questions. Nine baseball questions. Quiet banter. Finally, out of the blue, Manuel drops this: He's putting his No. 1 starter, Brett Myers, into the bullpen. There was five seconds of silence. Literally. I timed it later. Then laughter. Much laughter. The beat writers attempted to convince Manuel that he was joking. They stared at each other. Literally, jaws were dropped. One writer offered to bet Manuel $100 that he was kidding. Finally, they realized he was serious, and they launched into the pitching staff inquisition. The two Philly-area TV guys were long gone by this point. We had gone from Manuel talking about something he wasn't going to talk about, to idle baseball chatter, to bombshell news. It was all too bizarre, and the weirdness continued. When we eventually tracked down Myers, someone asked if he'd be able to throw harder now that he was working in shorter bursts.

"Let me let you direct that question to my arm," Myers said, putting his arm in the writer's face.

The arm then kept saying that he didn't want to talk about it over and over, and the whole vicious cycle started over again.

So would you like to see how this all started? Yeah, me too. Let's watch together, shall we: