Buster Olney: Howard turns on the power switch

A nice long ESPN The Magazine article about Ryan Howard by Buster Olney reprinted online for your enjoyment if you are not a subscriber. It talks about how he is always working towards making his swing better and how frustrated Howard has been this spring. It talks about the holes he used to have in his swing in the minors and how much that hurt him. It's a good read, thats why I'm passing it on to you.
On a side note, Philly and Beyond will be returning with more postings once the season starts, I haven't had much to say because I didn't really want to get into the whole thing of whether spring training actually means anything or not.
ESPN.com - MLB/PREVIEW07 - Olney: Howard turns on the power switch: "Relationship trouble. Howard and his swing are not getting along at the moment."

Mets reliever Sanchez out until August

ESPN.com - MLB/SPRING2007 - Mets reliever Sanchez out until August: "When told Sanchez is out til August, closer Billy Wagner turned to Aaron Heilman, who will likely assume role of primary setup man, and said: 'guess that means Aaron you've got three innings and I've got one.'"

It's funny to see how confident Wagner is in his team's starters since he says that the bullpen will have to cover 4 inninngs. Just passing along some NL East to everyone. The Phillies' bullpen isn't looking as bad now.

Villanova’s Reynolds staying

Source: Villanova’s Reynolds staying | Daily News | 03/21/2007:

According to the Daily News a source has told them that Scottie Reynolds has decided to not test the draft waters. It is a wise decision and seems to be pretty obvious, but after last year with Lowry leaving early it's good to see Reynolds staying. With all the players forced to go college this year the draft is looking to be pretty stacked since all those guys have gotten a year better along with the college kids. Villanova should be great next year with the freshmen guards they got coming in, let's hope they get some dominant bigmen somehow so they won't have to play a 5 guard scheme.

Rest In Peace Vuk

Remembering John Vukovich
Phillies.com

Profile in courage: Vukovich, No. 18
Phillies coach was an all-around wonderful friend and teacher
Phillies.com

Longtime Phillies coach Vukovich dies
Daily News

Phils coach John Vukovich dies
Inquirer

Vukovich dies at 59
ESPN.com

And here is Jayson Stark's comments he made in his blog, normally the blog is "Insider Only", but not for this article, so check it out. It's a very personal article from a person that has covered the Phillies for a long time as many of us know, here's one good piece from it:

John Vukovich should have managed someone's baseball team. As recently as six months ago, his friend and mentor, Dallas Green, stopped me in the Phillies' press room to ask me, please, to get this guy's name out there last winter, to connect him with somebody's managerial vacancy.

But by November, our friend's health was already beginning to worsen. So he couldn't have taken one of those jobs even if he'd been offered one.

All I got to say that it's very sad to hear of the passing of John Vukovich. He was a connection back to the 1980 team and through all the years of bad coaches and new coaches he was a coach that no one ever bad-mouthed and everyone liked.

Spring Training Pictures

There are plenty of places out there to give you the highlights and happenings of the Phil's spring training games and I am not one of those places. There are a couple good reasons for that: I'm pretty busy with work these days and it's hurting my blogging, there's not much news to report on (come in it's early even for spring training), and I can't even see these Phillies games since I'm not in Philly to watch comcast (if only comcast baltimore were the same as comcast philadelphia). One thing I can do is download the pictures of spring training that I've found and share them with you in a web album. I can't get the pictures off of Philly.com cause they have theirs in a flash slideshow so if anyone knows where else I can get those pictures that'd be great.
Otherwise check out the album on the right there and browse the pics.