Wow. I guess all my bitching and moaning about the Safe-Deposit Box has paid off.

Granted, it was pretty obvious something had to be done. But surely the influence of this meager blog played some role, right? Yeah, right.

Nevertheless, the left field wall at Citizen’s Bank Park will be moving back five feet and spurting 2½ feet in height, reducing the number of home runs by 18 to 22 per season, according to team president David Montgomery.

Amen.

Now if they would just get rid of all that shrubbery in centerfield and use the brick hitting backdrop as the wall out there, we could have a real unique looking ballpark.

In other news, Pat Gillick’s free-agent signing spree continued today with the addition of journeyman reliever Julio Santana, whose career 5.26 ERA inspires the same kind of confidence I feel when I think about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes procreating.

While I was writing the post below, Pat Gillick went out and signed the guy who filled in for Scott Rolen last season to fill in for the guy who replaced Scott Rolen three years ago. Dizzy?

Abraham Nunez comes to Philadelphia from St. Louis for two years and $3.35 million. He’ll most likely platoon at third base, getting David Bell’s sub-Mendoza Line average against right-handers out of the lineup. Even having almost no sense of who Nunez is, I’m fairly confident he’ll be able to handle those pesky things called ground balls better than Bell.

In other news—well, buzz—it seems the Phillies’ semi-annual pursuit of Tom “Flash” Gordon is back on again. While we’re at it, maybe Lee Smith would like to come out of retirement and tack on a few more saves in an effort to make the Hall of Fame. What’s Rob Dibble doing these days? Mitch Williams still throws in the 80s, right? Is Hoyt Wilhelm still alive?

Just because Wagner went up the Jersey Turnpike to New York doesn’t mean the Phillies need to bring a guy down the Turnpike who should keep on going down I-95 to Florida.

A funny thing happened on my way to Philadelphia last Wednesday afternoon: the Phillies traded Jim Thome and $22 million to the Chicago White Sox for centerfielder Aaron Rowand and two highly-regarded left-handed pitching prospects.

OK, maybe it’s not that funny.

Neither is the reported three years, $24 million the Phillies could have had Billy Wagner for back in July. Now that he’s a Met at four years, $43 million, Ed Wade’s in-season impotence has killed the Phillies again—and he’s not even the GM anymore.

And while we’re on the topic of unfunny Philadelphia sports antics, the Terrell Owens saga came to a just and ignominious conclusion the same day as the Thome trade.

Lastly, I had roughly three minor strokes during the Texas-Texas A&M game on Friday as my alma mater barely escaped with its undefeated season still intact.

What a weekend.

Now that I’m finally back at my computer, I guess I can once again weigh in on things well after the fact.

Thome for Rowand

This trade is like passing a kidney stone—excruciating, but absolutely necessary. It’s a good deal considering the limited trade options the Phillies had with Thome. Think of it as paying $22 million for both Rowand and Howard. And unless the Phillies brass decide to fix the Safe-Deposit Box, Rowand is going to hit a lot of home runs there. The “Burrell at first base against left-handers” idea is also intriguing.

Adios Wagner

I heard a lot of talk on WIP this weekend questioning whether it was wise to even pay Wagner the relatively modest amount the Phillies were offering him compared to the Mets because he probably doesn’t have anything left in his arm. I was at the Phillies’ final series here in Washington, and it looked to me like the guy had no trouble throwing the ball 100 mph. Call me crazy, but that’s usually not the sign of a dead arm.

Mark my words: This will be what kills the Phillies next season. Not only did they lose one of the few bona fide closers in all of baseball, they lost him to a division rival. Now the club is stuck with no closer and a manager who can’t figure out how to use the double-switch to employ the set-up men before that. Fantastic.

Did the Mets overpay? Is the Pope Catholic? But three years, $24 million in July would have been a steal. The Ed Wade legacy lives on.

T.O.

The Eagles stood up and took one for the league here, and they better be rewarded with a nice, soft schedule next season. Remind me not to take Drew Rosenhaus with me next time I have to buy a car.

The Eyes of Texas

I believe I called this one. Vince Young looked like he was trying to win the Heisman instead of the national championship, and he almost lost both. My cardiovascular system is mostly back to normal, but after watching the Longhorns struggle to contain A&M’s freshman QB, the thought of Reggie Bush running amok on January 4 gives me cold sweats.

Wow.

I must say I didn’t expect the Eagles to fall from the Super Bowl back into the team that used to wrap up the season around week 7, all in the course of one year.

After dominating the sickeningly overrated Cowboys for 56 minutes, Lito Sheppard fell asleep on a crucial third-and-long blitz and McNabb followed that up—20 seconds later—with a throw so bad you’d think he owed money to some bookies.

And that was it. A season lost.

With Giants and Redskins having already lost, a win would have put the Eagles right back in the thick of the NFC East, and a win the following week against the Giants would have had them in first place. Instead, at 4-5, they can pretty much pack it in.

And even though you’ll probably hear it hundreds of times over the next few days from his few, yet very loud defenders, the Eagles did not lose this game because T.O. wasn’t playing. The fact that they’re 0-2 without him is pure coincidence. Has everybody already forgotten that they made it through the playoffs to the Super Bowl without him? They would have lost those games with or without him because the team is playing poorly and the defense is giving up big plays, something it never did last year.

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The Phillies wasted away faster than Lindsay Lohan and now the Eagles are gagging on their own success. All I have left is my alma mater with a very scary Thanksgiving game on the road against their most hated rival and, if they get past that (and the less scary Big 12 championship), a national championship game that may as well be a home game for their opponent.

First the Eagles and now, most likely, the Longhorns. I shouldn’t complain about losing two championship games in two years, should I?

Some would argue the point I’m about to make is moot now that Virginia Tech was clobbered last night. They would be wrong.

Earlier this week, when there were still five undefeated teams and my co-workers and I had 15 minutes to kill, we set to creating a viable college playoff system.

Here’s how it would look:

Eight teams. The champions of the ACC, Big 12, Big 10, Big East, Pac-10 and SEC all get automatic seeds. That leaves two spots for either 1) the champion of Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt or WAC if—and only if—that team is undefeated, or 2) the two highest remaining teams in an average of the AP and coaches polls that did not receiving an automatic bid by winning their conference.

As for the Bowls, a group of seven (Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Rose, Sugar and two others) will rotate the playoff games each year. As for the other bowls—does anyone care that the Continental Tire Bowl isn’t part of the upper echelon of the current bowl system? Of course not. So, all the teams that don’t make the playoffs can fill out those lesser bowls, the same as they do under the current system.

But won’t these players be missing classes and finals? Without laughing too loud at the hypocrisy of that argument, let’s address that “concern.” An eight team playoff would take three weeks. When I was in college—not that long ago—I remember having four to five weeks between the end of finals in the fall and the start of the spring semester. Seems to me this playoff could occur while there aren’t any classes or finals.

So, in 15 minutes, three guys standing around a water cooler came up with a perfectly feasible college football playoff that would finally settle all the controversy and make money hand over fist for the NCAA.

Isn’t making money the real point here?