The Meaning of "Swag"

Yikes, this is stupid.

Ryan Fagan becomes the latest dumbass to invent nonsense to explain winning.

Comeback? Never a doubt in Phillies' minds
Defending champions have swag to go along with roster full of talent

Oh yeah? Well the Dodgers have flog. Boatloads of flog. It is my hypothesis that....

Dodger flog > Phillies swag.

Go ahead, prove me wrong.

PHILADELPHIA - A baseball lifetime ago, Jimmy Rollins was sitting in the visitors' clubhouse in St. Louis talking about what his Phillies needed.

I'm guessing it doesn't have anything to do with starting pitching. Cause hey! Guess which problem got fixed?

This was long before Rollins delivered the two-out, game-winning double Monday night, the extra-base hit that lifted his Phillies to a 5-4 victory over the Dodgers and put them a win away from the opportunity to defend their World Series championship. No, the Jimmy Rollins in the visitors' clubhouse on that sweltering August day in St. Louis had just three playoff games under his belt — all losses, to the Rockies the year before — but a firm grasp of what he considered the essential element to winning in the postseason.

Flog?

Swag.

Jimmy, you had it all wrong. That's why you hadn't won any playoff games yet.

Yep, swag. Confidence. A belief in yourself and your teammates.

At least you finally defined it.

Rollins knew his team had the talent. They needed swag.

"Rollins knew his team had talent" is "a belief in himself and his teammates." You're strongly implying that they had Thing A, but not Thing B. THING A IMPLIES THING B. FFFLLLLLOOOOOOOGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!

At that point in their development as a unit, they needed to eliminate the excuses.

Scene (hypothetical): April 2008, bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th, 2 outs. Phightin' Phils down by 2 to the New York Metropolitans. Chase Utley at the plate.

Utley: ::smokes a Billy Wagner pitch....it's going back, back, back, and Carlos Beltran leaps and makes a gamesaving catch over the fence, game over, Phils lose::

Rollins: Ummmm...what the fuck was that?

Utley: I murdered that ball! He just...he just made the catch is all!

Rollins: That sounds an awful lot like an....

Utley: Excuse?

Rollins Precisely. (Disclaimer: Jimmy Rollins has never said that word in his life)

Utley: I know but....

Rollins: Listen here Chase, I didn't win the MVP award last year with bullshit excuses. That's what lost us the game today. You've got to believe and cut this crap out. NO EXCUSES ON THIS TEAM! How do you think Matt Tolbert hit that game-tying bouncer up the middle for the Twins one and a half years from now?

Utley: MATT TOLBERT IS THE WORST PLAYER IN THE HISTORY OF BASEBALL AND RON DARLING SHOULD BE FIRED!

Fin

"When you've got swag, it's ‘They got away from us today’ or ‘They pulled it out just in time’ or 'We just missed a couple of pitches' or 'If we could have just found the hole here,'" he said with an earnest look in his eye. "But without swag, it's 'We couldn't hold them here' or 'We couldn't get a big hit' ... you see that? It's the same thing, but your mindset is different, the way you think about that."

You're at the plate and it's a big situation. Clayton Kershaw can either bring the heat, or "Public Enemy Number 1", the knee-buckling curveball. How the hell does any of this help you?

Well, these Phillies have swag. No doubt about that.

Hoomagawha?

And thanks to that swag, they also have a commanding 3-1 lead in the NLCS.

You were always that child on 3rd grade standardized tests who matched the cause "The ice melted" to the effect "The sun was shining brightly", weren't you Ryan?

Now keep in mind, this is an opinion column. Here is the remainder of the column.

Johnathan Broxton, who throws 523 MPH, pitched baseballs, but Phillies NEVER SAY DIE! The Phillies were on the bench, believing in themselves, and that energy flowed 150 feet away to Johnathan Broxton, who walked Matt Stairs on four pitches, and Broxton was SO UNCOMFORTABLE, beaned Ruiz, Dobbs lined out (no excuses, Dobbs!), and the Phillies were already halfway to the clubhouse knowing they had won the game, and willed Jimmy Rollins to hit a baseball into the gap. Brad Lidge is a Phillie. Rollins had a really uninteresting track record both against Broxton and in the game, 1-4, but I'm going to write it anyway. Jimmy Rollins was 1-4 in the game and against Broxton in his career. That's a .250 batting averaeg. (he actually spelled it like that) Carlos Ruiz eats 27 tacos per day, but Jayson Werth thought the Phillies would win, so a jetpack magically appeared on Carlos Ruiz's back! Andre Ethier, busy trying to grasp why the umpire would allow a clearly illegal device in play, forgot how to throw, and the Phillies scored! Phillies win! Phillies win! Phillies! Ryan Howard has a sense of humor, and knows how many more games the Phillies need to win to go to the World Series!

I may have edited that a little. With the power of FLOG!