But what if the season is just 5 weeks old and your team is already 25 games under .500? What if Allentown, a city in the Lehigh Valley that waited nearly a half-century for professional baseball to return - it appears the wait is

ongoing - had been stuck with a Triple A International League team that has played 35 games and lost 30 of them?

The Lehigh Valley IronPigs are the Phillies' highest minor league affiliate. When the state agreed in 2005 to help fund a ballpark that would eventually cost $49.4 million and be named Coca-Cola Park, owners Joe

Finley and Craig Stein bought the Ottawa Lynx and a transfer of the franchise to Allentown was under way. The Phillies were happy to play a lame canard season in Ottawa for the chance to move even closer to the Money Pit and to play in a ballpark similar to their spectacular Bright House Field in Clearwater, Fla. That it was built with OPM was the apple in the Pig's mouth, so to speak. The real

winner appears to be Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, which replaced the sad-sack Red Barons with the Yankees' transferred

Columbus franchise last season. SWB leads the Pigs by a mere 20 games.

So how bad is a team where four of the five victories have gone to 31-year-old lefthander Brian Mazone? In 1972, Steve Carlton accounted for 27 of the Phillies' 59 triumphs, a record 45.7 percent of their total.

Mazone is on an 80 percent pace, but this lefty is no Lefty.

In a nice ingot of irony, the most effective pitcher for the Pigs - they get the Iron back when they root their way north of .500 - has been a lefthander named Swindle. Robert J. Swindle is a 24-year-old Independent League refugee who was just choppered in from Reading as part of an ongoing relief effort the parent Phillies began about 35 games too late.

Swindle was sentenced to hard time in the Pig Sty despite an 0.54 ERA in 11 relief appearances for Reading, in which he walked just one hitter in 16.2 innings pitched while striking out 16. The book is you can catch Robert J. with a pair of tweezers but nobody has ever been able to hit him. Somehow, he strikes out a lot of hitters.

As for the rest of the Pigs,

manager Dave (Why Me?)

Huppert's top power guy, Andy Tracy, won't turn 35 until later in the season. A majority of the guys in his starting eight are over 30 and you won't find many of their names in the Phillies' media guide because most of them were still looking for work when it went to press. The Pigs' 25-man roster has been involved in more transactions than

Warren Buffett.

The Phillies have exiled two lukewarm prospects in Allentown. Both are Triple A repeaters. Lefthander J.A. Happ is 0-4, but his ERA is a decent 2.97 for a team that fields like a bear act on ice skates. (Recently released Opening Day shortstop Chris Woodward reached seven errors before collecting his seventh hit.) Happ will be 26 in October and is projected at this point as no more than a middle reliever if he sticks on the 40-man roster. The other 40-manners are 25-year-old setup reliever Joe Bisenius, who has been brutal, and switch-hitting catcher Jason Jaramillo, ditto.

Jaramillo, also 25, had a decent season with Ottawa in 2007 and split catching duties on a prospect-loaded Team USA that defeated Cuba for the gold medal in a World Cup upset last fall. But he didn't hit a lick in spring training. The organization's eyes already have focused on Lou Marson, who is batting .330 at Reading, is just 21 and is still

optimistically projected to

develop a power stick. Whatever, Jaramillo is being edged into the past tense.

It is almost impossible to put together a Triple A team this bad - even if Mike Arbuckle & Co. had actually tried. There is such a glut of washed-up players at the Triple A level yearning for that one last shot, you can always find experienced hands - even if the feet and arms that go with them are clutching the downhill toboggan. I mean, look around Triple A, particularly the International League, and only a few clubs still use it as the top level for their prime prospects. The Pigs are getting scrappled by teams stitched together from the same lackluster talent pool, Dr. Frankenstein's teams.

For the record, losing record in this case, the losingest team

in International League history was the 1926 Reading Keystones. Those bad boys reeled to a 31-129 record, a .194 winning percentage. The Pigs' current percentage is a flatulent .143.

And could the Phillies' brain trust see this debacle coming? This egregious insult of the baseball fans of the Lehigh Valley? One member of Dave Montgomery's firm, begging anonymity, recently said this:

"Did I see it comin'? Well, hell, yes. I had a lot of 'em in spring training and most of 'em kain't play. There's no power up there and not much defense and only a few of 'em who can pitch and no team speed. So that's a pretty good recipe for a real bad ballclub."

The scary part . . . T.J. Bohn has already been up and down. T.J. is cruising along the interstate. J.D. (Traffic and Weather on the 8s) Durbin's ERA recently was 8.88. Who's next? *

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