Phillies stick it to fans as usual

Do not mess with a Philadelphia icon and do not interfere with our baseball broadcast. Is that too much to ask from a Phillies team that has made it to post-season play once in the past 23 years and has a grand total of one World Series championship in their over one-hundred year history?

Apparently it is, as this organization most recent stunt is yet another example of how they continue to show no regard or respect to the baseball fans of Philadelphia. The Phillies have the most losses of any professional franchise in the history of sports (approaching 10,000 this year), yet the fans still support the team, watching with much interest year in and year out.

Phillies, Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Kalas is one the main reasons for this (if not the reason). He has been broadcasting Phillies games since 1971 and needless to say he has called way more losses than wins, but he does it in a way that Philadelphians have grown to love.

He is our guy and I challenge anybody to find a more popular figure in Philadelphia sports over the past three decades. Kalas and the late great Richie "Whitey" Asburn are like members of our family. They bring baseball to our living rooms, porches and backyards like none other.

However Whitey is probably turning over in his grave as we speak, with the recent reports that the Phillies may be trying to push Kalas out of the booth.

Now granted these are only rumors, but the writing seems to be on the wall with the team's proposed broadcast team changes for 2006 and Phillies fans are not stupid. Rob Brooks, the Phillies new manager of broadcasting has recently announced a tentative plan to have Kalas do the first through third innings and seventh through ninth innings with Chris Wheeler on the television broadcast, with Kalas working on the radio in between. The middle innings on television plan to consist of Wheeler and Scott Graham. Larry Anderson is out of the television altogether and will only work on radio. Anderson and Kalas were becoming a great duo on the air and Wheeler is downright awful, but this that is a whole another story.

It is no secret that Kalas and Wheeler do not get along, so what a better way to "push" Kalas out of the booth, than to put him with Wheeler for six innings for 162 games. I hope this is not the case, but with the Phillies anything is possible.

Kalas is bigger than the Phillies and the Phillies brass better realize this real soon. Kalas has earned the right to go out on his own terms and frankly I could not imagine watching or listening to a Phillies game without him. He simply knows how to call a baseball game. He tells us what we need to hear and realizes there are times during a baseball when nothing needs to be said at all. We as fans can live with no pitching, lack of clutch hitting and clueless general managers, but mess with "Harry the K" and we have a problem.

Go away Gumbel

Bryant Gumbel, host of "HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" without a doubt put his foot in his mouth once again this week with his comments about the Winter Olympic Games. Gumbel stated that he has no interest in the Winter Olympics, which is fine, until he went on further.

Gumbel went on to say that because of the lack of black athletes the Winter Olympics should not be taken seriously and that the athletes should not be considered the greatest athletes in the world. Why do people continuously feel the need to make everything black and white in our society? Color has nothing to do with these games and Gumbel should be ashamed of throwing these comments out there solely to gain some publicity for his show which nobody watches. Yes, Gumbel is still around, although one would think he fell off the face of the earth after doing football for CBS sports.

Gumbel is nothing but another shameless, self-promoter who has nothing better to do, then spew out useless information which he presents as fact. Is there a reason people who like the Olympics can just watch them and those who do not find them interesting, simply can chose to watch other programming. The only thing Gumbel's statements do is to take away the glory from the athletes who have been working around the clock for the past four years to get a glimpse of the spotlight. Also it appears Gumbel was too busy looking in the mirror or doing whatever to notice the gold and silvermedal performances byAmerican speed skater,Shani Davis in the1000 and 1500meter races respectively.

Davis happens to be African-American, but should that really matter anyway?

Time is up for Sixers Billy King

Billy King, the Philadelphia 76ers general manager is a nice guy, always available to the media, fan friendly and probably works extremely hard at his job, but he has not done a very good job since taking over the general manager's position four years ago.

It is time for King to go and the Sixers need to fire him as general manager of the 76ers. The results, big contracts to garbage players and no help on the way speak for itself. King has put this team in such a
big hole and there is no way to get out of it. This team has won just one playoff series since King took over and is currently in serious jeopardy of not even making the playoffs for the second time in three years.

King has given big multi-million, multi-years contracts to well below-average players such as Steven Hunter, Kyle Korver and Kenny Thomas in recent years. Maurice Cheeks is Kings fourth coach in as many years and enough is enough already. King had his chance, did not get the job done and it is now time to move on.

Have and questions or comments?Agree/Disagree?Send all responses to blkovack@yahoo.com.