I GUESS I'm a little confused by the suggestion that the Phillies' hiring of Andy MacPhail as president-in-waiting represents some sort of climactic step toward a new baseball renaissance in our fine city.
Sure, you would think last week's announcement will serve as a mere prelude to an offseason in which the executive suite is razed to its foundation and rebuilt from the ground up. But you also would have thought the Phillies would have made such a move sometime before the most pivotal two-month stretch of the baseball calendar, when the draft, the international signing period and the trade deadline combine to present an organization with a slew of decisions that will still be dictating its fate five to 10 years from now.