Is there anything better about a local team going to the World Series than local news guys interviewing fans in a bar before and after the game? Absolutely not. Last night on Comcast SportsNet, Art Fennell had my favorite interview, first interviewing a guy about his lucky Phillies shirt (”Hey, keep wearing that shirt and your lucky hat”), following that up with a borderline-nonsensical statement (”You don’t often get an encore performance in a sports bar”) and finishing up with a weird comment about Cliff Lee (”He’s already given you blood”) that elicits the only possible response (”More blood!”). The “More blood!” guy was our expert of the night, because he knew the game would be up to Cliff Lee and Chase Utley or whatever. There was also a dude in the background twirling a rally towel and somebody chanting, “Two more wins!”

The way I see it, interviewing fans postgame is about the silliest, most pointless part of any station’s coverage, so it might as well be done as a sort of surrealist theater, where people use empty phrases to cheer on the Phillies. Good job, Comcast SportsNet and Art Fennell. You’ve elevated sports bar interviews to an art form.

Also good were these two signs, shown in the first inning when A-Rod came to bat. If it wasn’t going to be a centaur joke, I’m glad it was a steroids one.

I enjoy these actual signs more than the signs that said things like “YEAH BABY” and “TUNE IN WEDNESDAY NIGHT FOR THE NEXT GAME.”

Here are John Bolaris and Hugh Douglas starting a “new tradition” after Phillies wins this season, smoking Phillies blunts. (Thanks to the city’s partial blunt ban, you can’t even get single blunts at many convenience stores in Philadelphia.)

This celebration is totally awesome, of course, but somehow I don’t think this new tradition will continue when the Phils win again tonight. Sadly.

If you’re going to give the finger to an opposing player, you might want to get off the cell phone first.

Later, this dude left in the eighth inning (probably).

(via Deadspin)

While many newspapers are using the run-up to the World Series to run some of the most inane baseball coverage ever published, at least one newspaper came through with a somewhat-interesting sideshow article: The New York Times covered the Phillies’ train ride to New York City, and answered the “why” question:

The reason for the train was neither historical novelty nor an exercise in team building in advance of the World Series, which begins Wednesday at Yankee Stadium. It was pure convenience. The distance between Philadelphia and New York is too short for a flight, and a fleet of buses traveling up the New Jersey Turnpike could spend as much time on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel as the entire train ride.

So for the first time in recent memory, the team boarded the Phillie Express from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia about 4:45 p.m., bound for New York’s Penn Station. [...] The Phillies have been boarding Amtrak charters for several years to Washington to play the Nationals. Normally, the Phillies take a bus to New York if they come directly from Philadelphia.

You don’t come here for fancy New York Times news articles, I think. But don’t worry, there’s a fun part: The train arrived just around rush hour, which means the Phillies have already done their part to annoy New Yorkers.

“It’s almost 6 o’clock now,” said John Williams, an Amtrak police officer, who was hard at work clearing the sidewalk outside Penn Station of commuters trying to get home after work. “This is killing us.”

It will only get worse, Mr. Williams. The Phillies will be doing some more killing of New York when the World Series starts tomorrow night.

Here’s this week’s SI cover.

Don’t worry, fellas. Ryan Howard is so awesome not even the Sports Illustrated cover curse can contain him. (via)