IS TAKING DOC TO SEE THE DOC
I know this is a baseball blog, but with the NFL's conference championships on Sunday, I've decided to relay a little story about the two head coaches in the AFC championship game.
Three weeks after the Eagles lost the Super Bowl to the New England Patriots in early 2005, I ran into John Harbaugh in a hotel bar during the scouting combine in Indianapolis. Harbaugh, then the Eagles' special teams coordinator and now the Baltimore Ravens head coach, was excited because he had just come from a conversation with Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
Harbaugh said halfway through his conversation with Belichick, he realized that the three-time Super Bowl champion coach was picking his brain and pumping him for information that might help him at some point in the future.
"So I thought, 'I have to come up with something to get out of him,' " Harbaugh told me.
At the time, Nick Saban had just left LSU to become the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Saban and Belichick are close friends.
Harbaugh's question for Belichick: "Do you think Saban will be successful in Miami?"
"Oh yeah," Belichick said.
"Why?" Harbaugh countered.
"He'll get rid of all the (wimps)," Belichick said.
As the Ravens get ready to play Belichick's Patriots for a trip to the Super Bowl, I wonder if Harbaugh used that conversation to help build a Baltimore team that has reached the playoffs in every season since he has been there.
Bob Brookover and Matt Gelb team up for their third straight season covering the Phillies for the Inquirer and philly.com.
This is Brookover’s second stint writing about the Phillies, having joined the coverage team after seven years as an Eagles beat writer. Brookover was hired by The Inquirer in 2000 as the Phillies beat writer after spending 13 years writing about the team for two suburban newspapers. While on the Eagles beat, Brookover, who had covered just two winning Phillies teams in 15 seasons, saw the Phillies move into a cash-cow new ballpark and begin playing a brand of the game he found unrecognizable. Follow him on Twitter here.
Gelb is in his third season covering the Phillies. He was hired by The Inquirer in August 2009 after graduating from Syracuse University. He has also covered baseball at The Star-Ledger and Cape Cod Times. Born and raised in Bucks County, he attended Central Bucks High School West. Follow him on Twitter here.
To submit a question for Matt Gelb's Phillies mailbag, click here.
 | Join on Facebook |  | Follow on Twitter |
