Thank You Pat Gillick & The Philadelphia Phillies

Dear Pat Gillick - GM of the Philadelphia Phillies,

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for enabling me to forget abuot the 2006 season before it even starts. Your attempt to slowly dismantle a team one superstar from being successful is working out well. After being named the GM of the Phillies in October you sent me a personalized email (ok it was a mass email but I felt it had a personal touch) where you stated you would do everything in your power to keep Billy Wagner and build a championship team.

Boy did I take the bait, hook, line and sinker on that one. What you did was pull an Ed Wade and the same manuever every Phillies GM has done before you. "We're going to build a championship team. We've got money to spend!"

Yeah you've got so much money to spend what you did was send Jim Thome and a shit load of cash to the White Sox for Aaron Rowand - who isn't bad but he's no Brian Giles. Then you attempted to keep Billy Wagner but what you failed to do was you failed to get in front of Wagner before the competition did. Therefore, the Mets jumped in front of you. Minaya played the "we'll build a team around you" card. What did you do? NOTHING!

Like Ed Wade did with Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen you were quoted as saying you would do everything you could to keep Billy Wagner. Ed Wade said the same thing abuot both players. He also said that he would build teams around them and he did. He built the Cardinals around Rolen and helped build the Diamondbacks and Red Sox around Schilling.

With all of that I would like to thank you! Thank you for giving me the summer of 2006 back. Thank you for helping me to realize that 2005 was a fluke. Thank you for not encouraging me to go to your stadium 5 times next year to spend and average of $150 each trip - that equates to a cost savings of $750!

There is one thing that I do ask. Can you encourage the team to suck balls from the start of the season? I'd rather not have the dillusion that we have a chance come May, June, July, August or September like I had last season. If they can do that for me then I'd be inclined to come to the stadium at least twice.

Yours truly.
Darren

p.s. you'll be receiving a photo album of my little league years, my parents couldn't afford a camcorder in the 80s, please use this as my resume to fill the position of closer for your team. Unless Urbina somehow beats the attempted murder charges but I think the cards are stacked against him.