The Philadelphia Phillies have lost nine of their last 14 games and are having a lot of trouble scoring runs. Following a 4-3 loss to the New York Mets on Friday night, Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel was in no mood to answer trivial questions.
Chase Utley made his return from the disabled list in the loss and stranded men in scoring position on two different occasions. Manuel pointed out that he hit the ball hard, which he said was encouraging. When FOX 29’s Howard Eskin asked about the rest of the lineup, the 69-year-old manager went off on a tirade.
“Stop thinking about that — ‘Is the rest of the lineup gonna be fine?'” Manuel snapped back, via CSNPhilly.com. “Do I know if the rest of the lineup is gonna be fine? If I knew that, don’t you think I’d do something about it? Does anybody else know that Howard? Do you know it? I don’t think so. I know you don’t as a matter of fact. Who does know it?”
Eskin then pushed further and started to ask Manuel a question about whether or not there are any changes left to be made if the lineup doesn’t start producing.
“I don’t know what I can do,” Manuel interrupted. “If we don’t hit and score runs, I don’t know what we can do. I don’t know what nobody else can do about it and I know you can’t do a damn thing about it. So what else you wanna know? Anything else?”
At that point, Manuel stood up and began walking away from the press conference in disgust. On his way out, Eskin asked when the team is going to score 10 runs.
“When I knock you out,” Manuel turned around and said. “That’s when.”
Oh boy. The good news is the Phillies were able to come away with an 8-7 victory over New York on Saturday on a walk-off win that inspired an epic crotch chop from Jimmy Rollins. However, Eskin may want to watch himself. If we have learned anything from epic meltdowns like this, it’s that Manuel tends to have a pretty short fuse.
Here is a video of the exchange between Eskin and Manuel:
H/T Hardball Talk
