Thank You

What an amazing night. It seems like everything came to an crashing crescendo last night for PhilCokesBrain. It had everything: celebrities, media buzz, girls who are paid to stand around and be cute, a flood of new Twitter followers, Yankees failure, an absolutely dominant pitching performance, oh and Justin Verlander pitched too!  This night would never have been possible on my own.  I need some space to thank some of you who have been a part of this.  I’m sorry if I miss you, I’m sure I appreciate you as well. (except for Charlie the Hot Dog guy. Mustard sucks.)

• Thank you to the fine people who drink Miller Lite by the case for allowing the company to have plenty of money to obtain a suite.
• Thank you to Justin Verlander for taking care of the preliminaries until the real, big boy pitching needed to be done.  Way to start things off big guy.
• Thank you to the wonderful staff with the Tigers. They are absolutely first class and, yes, they even have a sense of humor. I’m sorry I tried to take an extra rally towel… My bad, poor form.
• Thank you TBS broadcaster Ernie Johnson for not calling security while I creepily ogled him in the elevator.
• Thank you to all the new twitter followers! Last night I blasted past 10,000 to 10,225. Thank you to everyone who has, for some strange reason, decided not to unfollow over the last year and half.  I’ll give special shout out to my 10,000th follower Joey Hewlett, @jhewlett7. Thanks!
• Thank you to Reggie Jackson and the rest of the Yankees crew up in the suites. Your dour faces and silent shuffling gave me great joy. To see your temporary satisfaction with Nunez’s home run soon be crushed made me happier than AlAl with hours of free time and a bucket of baseballs. I think I saw your fat Yankee rings droop just a little. That is a good thing.
• Thank you @catswithbats – Alex Simon. She was pretty much my first follower and a great fan.
• Thank you to @DNR_Rogo who, through his own originality and foul mouth, proves over and over that baseball can be a lot of fun. (and cripplingly depressing)
• Thank you to @VivaTigres for helping me make some connections.
• Thank you to @Chris_Iott for being a good sport and tweeting at me even in “the early days”. He is the pride of everyone who looks like a Lego head everywhere.
• Thank you to Ben Verlander and Patick Leyland for being on twitter and dealing with my harassment.
• Thank you to the BlessYouBoys crew for their support and link power! Kurt, Al, Allison, Rob, Patrick,Melissa, Matt and yes, I suppose even Tokarz. Thank you to Ian Cassleberry for his role in making BYB the premier Tigers blog.
• Thank you to Kevin Goldstein, who is now with the Houston Astros, for retweeting me early on and generally having a good sense of humor. #want #have
• Thank you to Chris Bootcheck who has provided me with some really good insights into the world of baseball.
• Thank you to Gray Papke for running all the other twitter accounts I haven’t mentioned here.
• Thank you to Lynn Henning for being the anvil of error for me to slam my truth hammer against. Wow, that sounds worse than I intended. Oh well.
• Thank you to Lance Armstrong who selflessly had the courage to lie and cheat to raise money to fight cancer.
• Thank you to Jason Beck for allowing me to use him as the brunt of a silly running gag. #beckfacts
• Thank you to Craig Calcaterra, Joe Sheehan, Jamie Samuelson, Bob Wojonowski, Matt Crossman, and James Schcemehl and all the other real life baseball media guys for giving me the time of day.
• Thank you to Jim Leyland for giving the people what they want. More Phil Coke.
• Thank you to all the Tigers players, especially Delmon, for providing almost nightly inspiration on which to make stupid, snarky comments.
• Thank you to the PCB family and Mrs. Brain. Wow! 🙂
• And finally, let’s be real. All the thanks really goes to the entire man himself for being fun, eccentric, goofy, profound, philosophical, inspirational, persistent, patient, dedicated, and especially for not trying to stab me with a knitting needle.