You notice who is not mentioned in Jimmy Rollins letter?
JOHN MIDDLETON
Neither father nor son (@johnmiddleton He's on Twitter! ! !)
No one from the Betz family. No one from the Buck family. The players had to wear patches on their uniforms for Claire Betz and others when they passed on, but Jimmy does not mention them.
That tells you everything you need to know about who owns the Phillies and what they really care about. Even one of the most infamous MLB owners in many of our lifetimes, Marge Schott, was not unknown to her players. Sure many of them wish she had been a "mystery" to them, but she did care about the team. None of the people who despised her doubted that whether players, fans or MLB writers.
No one has ever seen John Middleton at Citizens Bank Park. No one from the other families (crime?) are ever seen at CBP. Clearly the players do not know them. Jimmy Rollins mentioned everyone of consequence in his letter who had impacted him, and as we can see, in the 18 years he spent as an "iconic player" no one in the ownership of the Phillies made any impression on him.
How many times have we watched Bill Giles hand the NL Trophy to a team not named "Phillies" in October (you noticed he skipped this year?)? Bill Giles father was the President of the National League. It was this connection - that Bill Giles was born with - that allowed Giles to assemble this group of billionaires in the Philadelphia area to purchase the Phillies and take a 15% cut of the ownership as a commission for doing so.
Mentions of Bill Giles in Jimmy Rollins letter?
ZERO
I don't get to watch other local TV coverage for MLB teams but I've seen Mike Ilitch watching his Tigers many times. I've seen John Henry watching his Red Sox. Hal Steinbrenner, the son of George, holds press conferences to address the Yankees on-field issues. I've seen Mark Walter in the stands at Dodger stadium high-fiving other Dodgers fans as the Dodgers score runs.
Yet I've never seen John Middleton at a Phillies game. The cameras sweep the entirety of Citizens Bank Park 81 times per year on Comcast SportsNet (CSN). Yet John Middleton is never in focus during a Phillies game. We are treated to interviews (really annoying too) by Greg Murphy of all manner of celebrities during Phillies games, but John Middleton is never one of those interviews. Neither is any member of the Betz or Buck families.
I would like to thank Jimmy Rollins as a Phillies fan for not only all the great years of baseball, but for what he said after the 2014 season ended when he challenged these owners of the Phillies to spend money, to shop the open markets and buy the players needed to make the Phillies a winner again.
Of course, the rest of the MLB media both in Philadelphia and nationally ignored this Jim Salisbury bylined article full of spot on quotes from Jimmy Rollins. Oh Salisbury is a fixture at the rumors site, but not this article.
No, every professional and wannabe professional MLB writer knows who and what the Phillies owners are, and all of these well kept folks (blackmailable?) know better than to go against the wind being blown from the lungs of John Middleton. These writers have never mentioned John Powers Middleton being on Twitter (@johnmiddleton). They never will. They pretend to not know that J.P. Middleton exists.
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| BILL CONLIN Philadelphia Daily News |
You won't read one article about the missing Phillies owners in Jimmy Rollins farewell letter. Every sports media outlet -local and national- provides cover for the bloodsuckers who are robbing the Phillies fan base of their money. The Dodgers and Angels celebrated their new TV deals by purchasing division titles, and now the Dodgers spent the most money in MLB on their front office to remake their roster to advance further in the playoffs and to remain a playoff team every year.
Oh, and the Dodgers payroll is still sky high, and the Dodgers are paying a lot of taxes on that payroll, something which the Phillies have never done. That's correct, the Phillies have never paid one dollar of payroll tax.
John Middleton? Well, John Middleton celebrated the Phillies $6 Billion TV deal with Comcast by announcing a rebuild, apparently from the ground up, the fifteen year kind of rebuild where the big club has no payroll and all the TV dollars and other revenue streams distributed by the Commissioners Office go straight into John Middleton's bank accounts.
Rusney Castillo was rumored to be signed by the Phillies, but it was the Red Sox who paid Castillo $72 million to sign. Hanley Ramirez or Pablo Sandoval would have looked great in a Phillies uniform playing third base, but it was the Red Sox who signed both.
Refresh my memory, was it the Red Sox who signed a $6 Billion TV deal or was it the Phillies?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
34 YEARS
JIM THOME and CLIFF LEE
That's it.
These two are the only impact free agents signed by this Phillies ownership group in 34 years. You would think looking at this that the Phillies must be located in a rural, mountainous suburb of Pittsburgh rather than the fourth largest market in the USA.
That is FELONY FRAUD, GRAND LARCENY and ORGANIZED CRIME.
Where are the perp walks by the FBI for John Middleton, John Powers Middleton and the Betz and Buck families?
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| John Powers Middleton wearing Dodger Cap 2014 |
Look at this picture. This is an unaltered screen grab from the Twitter account of John Powers Middleton just hours ago. Read the text. "Gangsta"
Yes sir. "Gangsta" He stole our money. We the Phillies fan base sold out Citizens Bank Park. We the Phillies fan base delivered the highest attendance in MLB to the Phillies for two straight years (2011 and 2012).
How did the Phillies get a $6 Billion TV deal? The Phillies fans delivered the Phillies the highest local TV ratings in all of MLB.
So how do we the Phillies fans get compensated for this? Why we get a fifteen year rebuild!
Yeah, John Powers Middleton, he be Gangsta baby!
And what about John S. Middleton the father? What's he doing to occupy his time? Turns out he's a busy man. John S. Middleton isn't building a winning baseball team in Philadelphia with all those billions of dollars we Phillies fans gave him, but he is building something in Palm Beach, Florida.
Something really big!
Down in the lower right corner of this picture you can see a wave rolling in. You can also see that John Middleton's little bungalow is bigger than his Palm Beach neighbors little shacks. Oh the property wasn't a vacant lot either, no there was an 8,000+ square foot mansion on the property when John Middleton bought it in 2010. It was not the biggest mansion on the block though and a little 8,000 square foot mansion is like a little A-frame mountain retreat to someone like John Middleton so that had to go. In came the bulldozers while the architect got busy planning this 17,000+ square foot mega-mansion.
More on this later.
I'm still trying to digest the greatest SS in Phillies history being shipped out of town to John Powers Middleton's favorite team in his city for two "prospects" who look like they'll be playing for the Camden Riversharks five years from today.
But hey, that puts another ten million dollars in John Middleton's bank account. The annual property taxes on what you're looking at above in Palm Beach are currently $432,000.
How much would your house sell for?
Yeah Derek, he did Jimmy like that.
