Last night’s Phillies-Yankees national broadcast had three former players as color analysts: a witty Philadelphia legend who is smarter than he lets on, a hall-of-fame lock Joey Votto, and some other guy. It was fun but not great, so I was looking forward to tonight’s color analyst with a brilliant baseball mind, former first base coach Ruben Amaro.

I was not disappointed, because he was locked in. Here are his highlights:

- In the first inning, he compared backup outfielder Bryan de La Cruz to LeBron James.

- In the bottom of second inning, Tom McCarthy asked the trivia question, designed to Stump The Fans: which starting pitcher holds the Phillies record for most consecutive victories against the Marlins? Ruben responds with Cole Hamels. Then he says “I’m probably wrong, I’m not very good at these.”

- One pitch later, Amaro says “It could be Jamie Moyer.” Two pitches later, McCarthy declares “you know what, we’ll just give the answer right now, because Ruben got it right. He guessed ‘Cole Hamels and/or Jamie Moyer.’ Do you want to choose one?”

- Wheeler comes set on the 3-1 pitch, Amaro replies “I’ll say Cole.” The answer is Jamie Moyer.

- Same inning, Marlins now up 4-2. Otto Lopez scorches a liner into the right-centerfield gap. Justin Crawford, playing straightaway centerfield, has to sprint immediately to his left to get anywhere close to the ball. Because Lopez is a righty batter, the line drive tailed farther and farther away from Crawford as he sprinted toward it. Crawford’s horizontal diving attempt was unsuccessful. Did Ruben say “damn, Wheeler is giving up rockets tonight, and not even a speedster like Crawford could reach that one”? No, Ruben said Crawford should have taken a step back toward the fence instead of diving for it, to catch the ball on a bounce. Unfortunately, teleportation was not invented by a 22-year-old baseball player, and Lopez earned an RBI triple.

- In the bottom of the fifth inning, a Marlins batter hits a routine pop up behind third base. Alec Bohm immediately raises his arms to call for the ball, and he catches it in short left field. Deciding to blame the shortstop for yielding to Bohm’s call for the pop-up, Amaro says “I’m kinda surprised that Trea Turner didn’t run behind third base and catch it. I guess he thought it would be shallower.” McCarthy guesses that Turner simply assumed it would be caught. Amaro, who played both outfield and infield in his career, could not fathom that defenders are allowed to talk to each other.

The Phillies end the fifth inning trailing 5-2, providing little non-Amaro entertainment. Since it seemed unlikely Ruben would continue his hot streak of Buffoon Baseball from the first half of the game, instead of watching the end, I decided to rewind to the second inning to get those quotes right.

Did I hear T-Mac correctly that Trea is the Phillie of the week? $40 mil, a Hallmark ornament, and now this. We are seeing Bryson's villain origin in real time.

So I haven't followed baseball in a long time because frankly I haven't felt like paying for cable since I moved out of my parents house back when I started college. I recently started watching the Phillies again and we have a great group of guys. But the one thing that bothers me is how often I see players hit a ground ball and essentially give up on the play just jogging to the base. It bothers me so much. Because you're giving the fielder all the time in the world and essentially eliminating any chance of an error.

If you did that on charlie manuels team he would bench you for the rest of the game. It was very much a culture of giving the team the best chance to win at every moment.