Open Thread: Game 68 - A's vs. Phillies

Yeah I know, it's Sunday, but Blez asked me fill in for him today as apparently he tweaked a leg muscle during his pre-game blog warmups, and is listed as day-to-day. So I'm handling today's game thread, while otherwise knee deep in the euphemisms known as "middle school report cards". Remember those? To understand them, you need a basic "Euphemism-to-Reality" Dictionary:

• "Veronica is learning to verbalize her frustrations." = "At least she's not biting the other kids anymore."
• "David continues to bring creativity and energy to my class." = "He should try doing the project I actually assigned--although this might involve sitting still for 2 entire seconds at a time."
• "Sarah is emerging as a writer." = "Tell you what: I'll pay her college tuition to UNLV if she can spell it."

Get the idea? So if I were writing report cards for the A's, it would look something like this:

• Tim Harikkala: "Timothy's pitching shows tremendous empathy for the opposing hitter's longing to succeed."
• Ken Macha: "Kenny's lineups demonstrate terrific independence and consistency in the face of logic and common sense."
• Eric Byrnes: "Eric is emerging as an outfielder."

Feel free to practice by adding your own...and maybe some day you too can be a teacher.

Today's pitching matchup is Jon Lieber against Joe Blanton. If only the A's had a catcher named Blantonthal. The starting lineups haven't been posted yet. As soon as I have them, I'll list them as a post within this thread...