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Phillies' Ruben Amaro Jr. eats words

The general manager did some quick backpedaling after blasting fans.

Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. (David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)
Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. (David Maialetti/Staff Photographer)Read more

T HE TEXT buzzed Ruben Amaro Jr.'s phone sometime in mid-afternoon yesterday, after he issued a couple of mea culpas on the radio and before appearing in front of reporters and television cameras inside the visitor's dugout at Citi Field.

"Dad, what did you say about the fans?" Andrea Amaro asked.

"Sweetheart, I'll talk to you later," the Phillies general manager texted back to his high school-aged daughter. "I'm going to go and apologize now. There was a little bit of a misunderstanding."

Yes, there was indeed.

Like a little bit of napalm in a fertilizer silo.

By now we all should have the apology memorized. He chose his words poorly and/or he did not use enough of them, Amaro has said, when he told CSNPhilly's Jim Salisbury that fans, "Don't understand the game" or "the process" and then "bitch and complain because we don't have a plan."

He did not mean all fans, but rather those who wish for him to promote pitchers Aaron Nola or Zach Eflin to the big leagues soon or even now. Honestly he loves you fans, loves your "passion," even if some - OK, many - of you don't love him. "I told my kids when I took over after the 2008 season that for about three or four years fans will really love your dad," Amaro was saying over the phone last night after his self-made day from hell was winding down. "And after that, they're really going to hate your dad. And what you have to understand is that this is a cyclical business.

"But your dad is your dad, and it is what it is and this is just part of being involved in professional sports. Particularly here in Philadelphia where there is such great passion. Does it affect you personally? Yeah, you wouldn't be human if it didn't. But my goal right now aside from my own personal goals is to get us back on track and make us a contender."

Amaro is in the last year of a contract that there hasn't even been rumors of renewing. Yesterday couldn't have acted as a trigger to such a conversation. The Phillies hierarchy has been loyal to their 50-year-old human shield thus far, but selling tickets to watch this team is already enough of a shell game without someone on the inside mocking the marks.

That's where he was clumsy, he repeated. He was simply explaining an organizational philosophy that some see as conservative, but is pretty much par inside of developing franchises. Nola and Eflin may make the Phillies more watchable now, but if the upside of not calling them up is creating more polished pitchers a few years from now, who is not for that?

No, the real disenchantment here is about Ruben. It has, as it once did with his old boss Ed Wade, taken on a life of its own. Twenty-somethings may not recall this, but Wade was replaced by Pat Gillick after an 88-win season, after three straight seasons of 86 wins or better. He was fired despite the development of Chase Utley and Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins and Carlos Ruiz and Cole Hamels, despite plucking Shane Victorino via the Rule 5 draft.

Yeah, Wade made some bad deals too, and was notoriously thin-skinned, but what finally undid him were those consecutive near-misses after the public had endured the bad baseball of his building years.

There's some of that happening here too. It's really how he got himself in trouble, responding to criticism that he is coddling his prospects, even if that makes no sense for a guy who really needs to show results now. Amaro ruined the Phillies with bad drafts and bad trades and holding onto players too long is the narrative. And if that narrative has changed somewhat with the trade of Rollins that brought Eflin or the Nola pick, or the arrival of players like Maikel Franco to the big leagues and J.P. Crawford and Roman Quinn making strides to get there, there is at best grudging acknowledgment of it by at least some fans, if not many - or all.

I asked Amaro if he thought the same fate that befell Wade awaited him at season's end; that he won't survive long enough to see his wrongs righted, to oversee the turnaround here. Does he hear the clock ticking inside of the crocodile?

"I really don't think about it all that much," he insisted. "Everybody knows I'm at the end of a contract and decisions have to be made as far as long-term viability of the organization. I believe in the people who work for me. I believe in the organization and in my ability and my experience to get us back on track . . . We've only been in this process for six months and I already see a lot of progress in the players we've acquired. In the players who are coming to the big leagues through our international system. In the players we have traded for. And that's what we have to continue to focus on and improve on.

"I hope and believe that I should be the guy to get us there and hopefully enjoy the benefits of that. But if I'm not? Then, that's part of the process. That's the stuff that I can't control."

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon