General Manager Roger Angelo III, left, meets with new acquisitions at Red River Springs retirement home in Haverford, Pa. Reginald Carlson, center, will serve as 34-year-old first baseman Bryan Harold’s personal dietician. Cletus Grant, right, will slide into the fourth spot in the team’s starting rotation, featuring a fastball of 17 miles per hour.
Philadelphia Phillies fans are very familiar with the team’s partnership with Citizens Bank, as the ballpark boasts the name of the long-time sponsor. But not many are aware that the Phillies have recently reached an agreement with a local retirement home, Red River Springs, in Haverford, Pa.
With the deal, the Phillies have agreed to trade the young talent in their farm system for wrinkled, arthritic and occasionally senile folks anywhere from ages of 70 to100.
“We believe this can be greatly beneficial for both sides,” Philadelphia General Manager Roger Angelo III said in a press conference. “They get hard-working young men who need to put some community service hours on their college resumes, and we get some seasoned veterans to fit right in with the rest of the ball club.”
After a strong run of results in the late 2000s, the Phillies have not been able to bring forward another crop of young talented players to fill the shoes of superstars like Bryan Harold, James Rodgers and Carlito Reese. The team has embraced this fact and, through this deal with Red River Springs, there will be no prospects cracking the 25-man roster anytime soon.
In the past few years, Philadelphia has resigned these aging players while bringing in even more washed up contributors like JA Bridges, Markus Boyd and Robert Abraham. It is obvious that the Phillies are aiming to field the oldest roster in the league, but at a few positions, such as 25-year-old center fielder Branden Rover, the team is still painfully youthful.
“You can never have enough veterans to impart their wisdom and experience on us young guys,” Rover said. “I was thinking Major League Baseball veterans would be a bit more effective than World War II veterans, but I trust that the front office has a plan in place.”
A lot of fuss has been made about the front office’s lack of commitment to analytical evaluation of their players in the process of roster building. Angelo still will not acknowledge the common sabermetric approach to the game, but did hint at a new statistic that the Phillies would track very closely in the near future.
“These nerds with their calculators and computers think [Wins Above Replacement] is very important in the annals of baseball analysis,” the general manager said about the statistic, which attempts to sum up a player’s contribution to the team in one figure. “In Philadelphia, we won’t be focusing on WAR in the traditional sense. The only WAR we care about is whether you fought in World War II or the Vietnam War; that’s it.”
One veteran to look out for in particular is Cletus Grant, a 92-year-old man who will be expected to slide into the fourth spot in the Phillies’ starting rotation. Grant has been clocked at nearly 17 miles per hour on his fastball, and his curveball breaks almost four feet, mostly due to the gravitational pull of the Earth.
Another newcomer, 84-year-old Reginald Carlson, will be brought in primarily to take Harold under his wing. In recent years, the 34-year-old first baseman has had trouble keeping his weight at a manageable number, so Carlson will be keeping tabs on Harold’s diet for the entire season.
“At the home, they give us a lot of Jell-O, Ensure and prune juice to help keep us healthy and regular,” Carlson explained. “I really think Bryan could benefit from this type of diet. I always tell my grandkids, ‘Consistent bowel movements equal consistent weight.’”
Because of these acquisitions, Philadelphia has requested that the MLB move all 162 of their games to the daytime, due to the early bedtimes of their new players. Even though the quality of play may only improve a few games from last season, the Phillies’ marketing department is very excited to tap into a new demographic.
The team is excited to welcome new sponsors, Centrum Silver and Life Alert, and their new marketing campaign — Philadelphia Phillies Baseball: Aged Like Fine Wine — will be posted around town throughout the season.