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Random Philadelphia Phillie of the Day: Mickey Morandini
By Matt Schultz
Published:
Today AI has given us Mickey Morandini as our random Philadelphia Phillie of the day. Thank you, gracious AI, for supplying us with this bounty. Without further ado:
Mickey Morandini played second base for the Phillies for 8 years, from 1990 to 1997. During that run, he logged a .268 average, 28 home runs, and 249 RBIs. According to my research (I was not born for the bulk of his Phillies tenure, and so have turned to Google to help me out here), it seems like Mickey was your standard, right-down-the-middle, highly respected glue guy. He played solid, smooth defense, was a traditional contact hitter without much power, and was about as fundamentally sound a second baseman as you’re gonna find.
And that is exactly what Random Phillie of the Day is all about! Giving a blue-collar, bring-your-lunch-pail-to-work kind of guy his time in the sun. I wish I could go back in time to 1995 and tell Mick that, decades from now, his day in the spotlight would eventually come.
“Listen, Mick, you’re on the right track. Just keep your head down, keep working, stay with it. I know it’s not easy, but believe me: Someday all that grinding will be worth it. Why? Because you, my friend, will have a brief write-up on a blog.” I can see Ol’ Mick dropping to his knees, sobbing, overcome with gratitude. “Thank you… Thank you so much… How can I repay you?…” The answer, of course, would be simple: All I ask if you keep being yourself. Keep being Mickey Morandini.
From where I’m sitting, there are two main things that must be mentioned when discussing Mickey Morandini. The first, it probably goes without saying, is that he looks remarkably regular. I see this exact guy around every day: on an elliptical at Planet Fitness, as the Produce manager at ShopRite with AirPods in, sitting next to me at a red light in a nondescript car, windows down, listening to radio commercials. Mickey was an expert at looking like every member of my dad’s fantasy baseball league morphed together into one guy, and that is worth celebrating.
The second thing that must be discussed is that Mickey turned an unassisted triple play on September 20th, 1992 against the Pirates – only the 9th unassisted triple play in MLB history at that time.
What else? Mickey was an infield coach for the Phils from 2013 to 2017, was one of the few guys to play on the ‘93 team and then coach in the organization later on, was born in Leechburg PA (just Googled it, it’s way out west by Pittsburgh), and — most importantly — is today’s random Phillie of the day.
Kinkead: Mickey Morandini is one of those great Harry Kalas names. I can hear him saying it in my head.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…)