The Beer List

About a month ago, I went to the Saint Joe's-Penn game at the Palestra with my buddy, Gary R. Butterworth. (By the way, if you're looking for an enlightening read, you may want to check Gary's post on his blog about how former Jeopardy champion, Ken Jennings, measures up against his favorite game show contestant, Wesley "Two Scoops" Berry from the original American Gladiators. Here's the link. For some reason, I remember toasting "Two Scoops" quite a bit during my Bachelor Party.) After the game, we decided to walk back to 30th St. Station and grab a beer at the bar. This bar had some different stuff on tap so I ordered something off the chalkboard in front of me and Butterworth did the same. As the bartender went to get our beers, Butterworth pulls out a pen and piece of paper from his wallet and starts writing something. Intrigued, I asked him what the hell he was doing. He told me he was writing down the name of the beer he had just ordered because he keeps an excel spreadsheet of all of the beers he's had in his lifetime. Just as I started to make fun of him, I stopped. I realized how genius this was. It's essentially a log of debauchery. I love it.

I told you that story because I've decided to blatantly steal Butterworth's idea and keep a tab of all the beers I have tried. I don't know why I didn't think of this first. Every time, I walk into Total Wine off of Naaman's Rd. in Claymont, DE, I always think to myself how great it would be to be a real beer connoisseur. That's pretty yuppie, I know, but it's a dream nonetheless. To be perfectly honest, I know nothing about beer. I only know I like it. So, this might be a good way to expand my horizons a little bit.

As far as my current list goes, it's a little pathetic. Right now, I only have 22 official entries. I know I've had a lot more. However, since I started the list well after my beer drinking career began, I know I'm missing quite a few. I included only those I have had since I stared the list about a month ago. Plus, I went back to Maxim's recent 99 Best Bottles (And Cans) On Earth (January 2009, Hilary Duff) and used it as a guide to add those beers I know I have had.

What's the connection to this blog? Well, most of my beer consumption comes while watching sports, so there you go. Plus, to be quite honest (and a bit pompous), I don't really need a connection. This is my blog.

I invite any who reads (if anyone reads) to suggest something they like. I don't know if anything will trump Yuengling as my personal favorite, but like I said I'm willing to branch out a bit. While I'll keep the master list on an excel spreadsheet, I'll periodically post updates here.

So, here's it goes. The Beer List...

Blue Moon
Coors Light
Corona Extra
Dogfish Head - 90 Minute Imperial IPA
Flying Fish - ESP Amber Ale
Flying Fish - HopFish India Pale Ale
Heineken
Heineken Lite
Magic Hat Number 9
Miller Lite
Natural Light
Newcastle Brown Ale
Olde English
Pilsner Urquell
Rolling Rock
Sam Adams - Boston Lager
Sam Adams - Irish Red
Saranac Irish Red
St. Pauli Girl
Stella Artois
Yuengling Light
Yuengling Traditional Lager

Cole Hit the Big Time

I found this on the700level.com today. Forget about curses. That's a pretty nice cover, if you ask me. I'll hit Barnes & Noble tomorrow to pick grab this one. Here's a link to the article.

By the way, I took advantage of the Phillies single game pre-sale last night and bought a pair of tickets for Saturday, May 2nd against Jose "they always say something about us and we don’t even focus on them" Reyes and the Mets. I'm stoked.

Flyered Up!

I watched about two and a half periods of the Flyers this weekend, which is about two periods more than I had watched all season until this point. Apparently, I picked a pretty good weekend to jump back on the Flyers bandwagon, as they took care of the Islanders 5-1 at home on Saturday and then embarrassed the Rangers 5-2 at the Garden on Sunday. That's a combined 10-3 bludgeoning of both New York teams in just over 24 hours. It doesn't get any better than that.

I'm the furthest thing from a hockey analyst. So, I can't really say much more than what's already been said. Marty Biron played exceptionally well in back to back starts. He stopped 38 of 39 shots in Saturday's win against the Isles. He, then, followed that performance by stopping 35 of 37 total shots. Rookie Claude Giroux looked impressive as he chipped in with a total of two goals and two assists over the course of the weekend. Plus, Mike Richards set an NHL record on Sunday by netting his third career three-on-five shorthanded goal. Overall, not a bad weekend.

Maybe now that we're creeping up on March and the playoffs are around the corner, I'll start to get a little more Flyered Up. I just needed to force myself to sit down and watch some hockey to realize how much I've missed the Flyers since last May.

Anyway, I don't think I've posted a decent hockey fight yet on this blog. So, without further ado, here's a pretty nice Arron Asham beatdown from Saturday's game. I guess when you can't think of anything else to say about hockey, you might as well end with a good hockey fight.

Reuben Amaro…The First 100 Days

I heard on WIP this afternoon that today marks exactly 100 days since Reuben Amaro took over GM responsibilities for our Phils. Apparently, this is some kind of new benchmark as the media has adopted the 100 day mark as the first milestone for our new President. So, I thought we should take the opportunity to look at the progress of our new GM after his first 100 days in office. Overall, I’m pretty impressed.

First of all, I commend Reuben for nailing down deals with both Cole Hamels and Ryan Howard. With brand spankin' new deals, both players can avoid the annual albatross of the arbitration process for the next three years. Nothing good ever comes out of an arbitration hearing, so the Phillies definitely didn’t need that distraction to plague them every offseason for the foreseeable future. Hamels, Howard and the Phillies organization can now worry more about the task at hand than on a pending gruesome arbitration process. With these deals, Reuben was able to prevent a great deal of headache down the road.

Secondly, Reuben was also able to lock down three more important second-tier players as well, by signing Jayson Werth , Ryan Madson and Jaime Moyer. The deal with Moyer was especially important because I think Moyer probably had a lot to do with Cole Hamels development so far. Moyer brings a lot of experience to the table so keeping him around to mentor the young pitchers will pay huge dividends.

As far as the Ibanez deal, the jury is obviously still out on that one. Yes, I think Ibanez serves as an upgrade over Pat Burrell. I don’t think anyone will dispute that fact. However, as I wrote before, I have a problem with the economy of the deal. I’m not convinced the additional output we’ll get from the left field position will be worth the $36 million over three years the Phils spent. Ibanez will be 39 by the end of this deal. Will he still have the numbers at that point to justify his contract? Eh, I’m not sure. I think the better move was to keep Burrell for two more years at the discounted price Burrell accepted with Tampa.

Plus, Burrell would have provided the right-handed bat the Phillies desperately need. Although the numbers show Ibanez can hit lefties, I still don’t feel completely comfortable with the 3-4-5 part of the lineup all hitting from the left side of the plate. This might pose a problem for the Phils in the late innings of a tight game. With the middle of the lineup full of left-handed hitters, they may find themselves on the short end of a matchup war in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings. This lack of a solid right-handed bat is my main criticism of the Amaro era this far.

I give Reuben a solid A- for his first offseason in the corner office. He didn’t exactly inherit an easy situation with so many key pieces of a championship team arbitration-eligible. However, he was able to avoid a lot of bitterness and provide some solid peace of mind by lock up some of his biggest talent. With the payroll now north of $130 million this season, the Phillies will surely pay for it though. I guess that’s the price of a champion. Now I know how the Red Sox feel.

The Boring Days of Winter

I've watched very little sports since the Eagles lost in the NFC Championship Game three weeks ago. Sure, I watched the Super Bowl and I even caught a Saint Joe’s basketball game at the Palestra. Other than that, though, I would probably put the over/under on the number of hours Comcast SportsNet has graced my television at 2…and I’d take the under. The Eagles absolutely killed me. The game in Arizona sucked the passion right out of me for a while. Before the Phillies won, I guess I went into all big games with a certain understanding that I would probably be disappointed. But when the Phillies won the World Series, I started to expect to win the big games. That’s probably why this game felt more like a stomach punch than even the Tampa Bay game did in 2002/03. For about three weeks now, I’ve been searching for air and I’ve still yet to find it.

Aside from the tough Eagles loss though, my complete disinterest might be product of the very boring month of February. The sports calandar just doesn't give me anything to keep me watching right now. In the last ten years or so, I’ve become pretty casual about the Flyers and Sixers so I won't get too charged about about either of these teams until playoff time. Also, I don't jump on the NFL draft and fee agency bandwagon like many others. I can't get excited about football when we're about six monthes away from the start of training camp. I like college basketball, but I’m mostly interested in the local teams. Unfortunately, most of their games aren’t even broadcasted. So, here I am, stuck in the sports black hole I like to call February. I try to turn on the TV or WIP, but I can only listen to so much fallout from the Eagles season and I don’t need to psycho-analyze Donovan’s comments about the Eagles defense blowing the game in Arizona. It’s just not that interesting to me at this point. Oddly enough, I find myself much more engaged with President Obama’s economic stimulus that the happenings on Broad and Pattison.

Yesterday, though, I did see the light at the end of the tunnel. As I was washing my car in the 65 degree weather, the excitement of the upcoming baseball season really hit me. Pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater on Saturday and I count this as one of my favorite events of the year. Everything's fresh during Spring Training. From, here on out, we'll have a game just about every night. Plus, the start of the baseball season signals the arrival of warmer weather, lazy days, BBQs, Harry Kalas and all of the other cliched, sappy things I love about summer. Plus, we're the defending World Champions. How sweet is it this year that the Phillies are being chased and not doing the chasing?

Five days and counting.