Weird game

Among my bike ride, lawn work, running to some stores and visiting with Christine's mom, we were kind of out of the baseball loop today.

It was a little surprising to see Scott Atchison starting the game because Daisuke Matsuzaka was suddenly injured. It was even more surprising to see a guy I had never heard of, Daniel Nava, starting in left field.

When he came up with the bases loaded in the 2nd inning, I wanted to call to Christine, who was in another room, "Hey, come see this guy hit a grand slam in his first at-bat." But I could not get the words out in time as he sent the first pitch from Joe Blanton into the bullpen.

Needless to say, Christine isn't thrilled with Nava's remarkable story, nor Blanton, nor the Phillies, who will try to avert the sweep tomorrow after another bad loss to the Red Sox, 10-2.

Bullpen news, good and bad

Good news! Scott Atchison made the cut.

The Globe's Peter Abraham sums up how I've been feeling all day: "Yeah, it's corny. But if you aren't happy for Scott Atchison today, you have no heart."

I hope he has a good season. He deserves success.

"That is special," he said. "I've been up and down before but I've never made a team out of spring training."

Atchison, smiling widely, said it was third-happiest day of his life behind the day he got married and the day Callie was born. Can't beat that.

If he didn't make the team, you can bet that Ruben Amaro Jr. would have been looking him over.

Joe Blanton will be out three to six weeks, which means three Phillies pitchers are starting the season on the disabled list. Kyle Kendrick will get to start, but the Phillies are scrambling to fill out their staff. There's no such thing as too much pitching.

Starting off eccentrically

Jamie Moyer had a dominant start last night, but like most of his spring starts, it was against weak competition. (OK, the Yankees are a little bit tougher than the Blue Jays B squad.) The Phillies haven't announced it, but everyone expects the 47-year-old to open the season in the rotation despite Kyle Kendrick's fantastic spring.

You can argue either option, but it's clear that J-Moy will start a game this year, and Rob Neyer notes what a remarkable feat that will be:

Moyer turned 47 last fall. There have been exactly three men in major league history who started a game after turning 47.

Phil Niekro, a knuckleballer, started 32 games in 1987, when he was 47 (and he started 26 more the next season). Jack Quinn, a spitballer, started one game in 1931, when he was 47. Satchel Paige, a Methuselah, started one game in 1965, when he was 58. And that's it, friends: 60 starts, with one knuckleball pitcher accounting for 58 of them.

The word "remarkable" is thrown around a lot, but I think it's not overblown to use it here. As Neyer also said, there isn't much suggesting a good season from the old timer, but there's no doubt he will be one of the most interesting pitchers we will ever see.

Red Sox staff: They've also thrown things for a loop, using a five-man rotation, but throwing Josh Beckett twice before Clay Buchholz, who I guess was demoted to fifth starter, appears:

After Beckett, Lester, and Lackey pitch the opening series against the Yankees, Wakefield will start in Kansas City. Beckett will pitch the next game, followed by Buchholz. From there, the rotation will be Lester, Lackey, Wakefield, Beckett, and Buchholz.

I am glad for Wakefield and hope that Buchholz's poor spring was just a minor blip.

Scott Schoeneweis story: I was familiar with some of Scoeneweis' life story, but didn't realize how complicated it was until reading Nick Cafardo's account. I wonder whether I'm going soft because I didn't feel like shouting out roider when reminded he was in the Mitchell Report. I'm still rooting for Scott Atchison though.

Pitching comebacks inspired by children

There's a pair of human interest stories on SoxandPhils pitchers who are on completely opposite ends of the baseball spectrum and are attempting completely different sorts of comebacks. But each is inspired by his child.

Cole Hamels is looking to reclaim his throne as a baseball king, while Scott Atchison is just trying to claw his way back into the kingdom to facilitate the special care his 2-year-old daughter needs for her rare genetic disorder.

Hamels' rise and fall has been well-documented, but Andy Martino did a decent job recapping it and adding insight from the pitcher as he attempts to return to dominance. This comeback is in part inspired by his new son, Caleb:

The baby stared at unfamiliar objects with fierce interest and approached challenges with a determination that struck his father as admirable. And after enduring the most serious setbacks of his athletic life, Hamels embraced the inspiration.

"Kids never quit," the pitcher, now 26, said last week, smiling when asked about his son. "They're going to fall down a million times before they learn how to walk. There's something I can learn from that in baseball, about how you have to get beat down in this game before you finally fix yourself."

From a PR standpoint, I'm most impressed that in another part of the article Hamels says he will try to think before he speaks because he has realized how his statements can be perceived differently from how he means. He even boned up on making innocuous statements by watching other athletes' post-game comments in the offseason.

While lacking the name and panache of Hamels, Atchison's story is more interesting. Back from Japan, the 33-year-old hopes to squeeze onto the Red Sox roster to be closer to the hospital in Dallas where his daughter gets treatment for thrombocytopenia-absent radius.

This is some heady inspiration for a guy trying to make his way into a bullpen chock-full of established stars:

There are no guarantees for Atchison this spring. He must fight his way through an overcrowded clubhouse, stuffed with low-cost, last-chance relievers itching to be the 25th man on the roster. That spot will go to a pitcher who can get lefthanders out, and Atchison will have a chance.
[...]
"Theo [Epstein] told me I'd have a chance to win a spot, and that's all I can ask for," Atchison said. "I'm getting a little older. I need to be somewhere where they're going to contend because that's who's going to use somebody in my position, whereas a team that's not going to contend might be looking at younger guys and I don't really fit that bill anymore."

Needless to say, the Atchisons have have some supporters here at SoxandPhils.

More on sharing pitches: The other day, Hamels acknowledged patterning his cutter after Jon Lester's. In today's column, Nick Cafardo casually mentions that Roy Halladay learned his sinker from Derek Lowe. I'm not sure if I knew that, nor whether I'm particularly pleased presuming that this occurred when D-Lowe was still a Sox and Doc still a Jay. Unless Halladay promised to never use the devastating pitch against the Red Sox.

What??

I had a busy day at work and was constantly running around.

At one point I quickly checked my e-mail and saw Christine sent me a message with the subject of "What??"

For some reason, I thought it was something personal. You know by now it wasn't, or I wouldn't be mentioning it here. It was:

Burrell traded to Mets

By: Tom Haines
phillyBurbs.com

Former Phillies outfielder Pat Burrell has reportedly been swapped twice this morning, eventually landing with Phils division rival the New York Mets. The Tampa Bay Rays traded the slugging left fielder to the Chicago Cubs then the Cubs dealt Burrell to the Mets. Names of other players involved in the deals were not immediately available.

I repeated Christine's "What??" out loud. Fortunately, none of my cubicle neighbors questioned what had disturbed me.

A few minutes later I bumped into a Mets fan who hadn't heard that the Mets were getting Pat the Bat. ESPN.com didn't have a story, and a quick Google search yielded Mets deny reported Burrell trade:

A club official shot down the report, saying that the report was uncategorically false.

Ouch.

Phillyburbs.com has removed its story.

Red Sox: SS/P prospect Casey Kelly will no longer be bipolar and will focus solely on pitching. ... We signed a Texan, Scott Atchison, who had been pitching in Japan. ... And Terry Francona is confident he will have a left fielder by spring training:

I'm sure when we head down to Fort Myers we'll have a left fielder. We always do. They're really good about that. We're amazingly consistent in that every year we always have a left fielder and I'm guessing we're going to have one this year, too.