Maybe you missed the news.  It is Super Bowl week.  You have likely spent the last few days trying to figure out who to boo the loudest at the party on Sunday, Tom Brady or Eli Manning.  Forget about it.  The “Gnats” deserve your attention.

They tried to avoid it.  They announced their new “Not Friendly to Phillies Fans” policy with great stealth.  It came on a Friday afternoon, the eve of Super Bowl weekend and a day when Philly sports fans were preoccupied with Wing Bowl, an annual Buffalo wing eating contest. 

Sneaky those “Gnats,” like a Cole Hamels changeup.  They are making single game tickets for the May 4-6 series against the Phillies available via an exclusive presale for season ticket holders and residents of Washington, Maryland and Virginia. 

Phillies fans looking to attend can take their cheesesteaks and go home.  “Gnats” chief operating officer Andy Feffer told mlb.com, “Frankly, I’m tired of seeing the Phillies fans in our ballpark in Washington more than anything else.” 

Where’s the brotherly love?  Phillies fans are an amicable bunch.  They might belt out the occasional “Chooch” to recognize favorites such as Carlos Ruiz, but there is little to fear.  These are not your father’s Phillies fans.  They rarely even boo anymore. 

Just prior to embarking on their current streak of winning the National League East five years in a row, the Phillies became the first baseball team in history to lose 10,000 games.  That is a whole lot of heartbreak. 

It has now turned to joy.  An organization committed to winning will do that.  Even last year’s early postseason dismissal, as disappointing as it was, has failed to damper the optimism about spending summer nights in south Philly, or to follow the team on the road.

This was once, not long ago, unmentionable.  Maybe you took the transistor to the Jersey Shore, but that was as much to listen to Harry Kalas and Whitey Ashburn call the games as it was to keep up with the Phillies. 

It’s different now.  Phillies fans are proud of their team.  They are pleasantly surprised to find thousands of their kind, wearing Utley and Howard jerseys, bonding with one another on the road. 

Phillies fans are not hitting the road to hate on the fans of other teams.  They’re doing so because they just can’t get enough of their Phillies.  They are relishing the moment and they are sharing it with one another.  It simply doesn't get any better. 

This all began with the winning, of course.  Still, loyalty to the Phillies runs deep.  Millions of Phillies fans endured bad baseball for years, whether at Shibe Park, Connie Mack Park or at Veteran’s Stadium.  Throughout, they sat next to plenty of other teams fans who cheered as the Phillies got pummeled.

Attempting to keep out Phillies fans can mean only one thing.  The “Gnats” are nuts.  This is not a surprise.  It’s been apparent for awhile.  They broke the bank, remember, to sign Jayson Werth.  Werth is a good player on a great team.  The “Gnats” are not that.

And maybe, that is the problem.  In announcing his “Take Back the Park” initiative, Feffer informed mlb.com that, “For several years now, our fans, everybody have been screaming about the number of Phillies fans that invade our park when we have a series here at Nationals Park.”

Aiming ire at Phillies fans is misplaced.  It’s a smokescreen that obscures the real problem facing the “Gnats,” bad baseball.  Phillies fans who visit Nationals Park in droves are doing Nationals fans a favor. 

Their presence pressures the “Gnats” ownership to put a team on the field worthy of fan support.  If the Nationals are better this year, they should thank Phillies fans, not work to ban them. 

Especially for a team engaged in our national pastime, playing in our nation’s capital, keeping out Phillies fans is not only ungrateful, it is un-American.  Like betting against Rocky Balboa. 

Cheesesteak anyone?          

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

Big trades, including the Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Hunter Pence trades, have sent the Phillies' best prospects in recent years to other organizations.

On the other hand, there are many guys in the system who go underrated and underappreciated by scouts and fans.

Here's a list of a player at each position who's undervalued and how their assets could drop them onto peoples' radars in the future. 

Begin Slideshow

That textbook covered an enormous amount of time and history, and frankly, it was impossible to get through the whole thing in one year. So, your teacher would have you skip around from chapter to chapter, reading the most "important" information but leaving some of the more interesting chapters and people out of the curriculum.

The history of the Phillies is very similar: It's extremely long and very hard to cover in its entirety.

With just about 130 years of Phillies baseball in the books, scribes skip around from year to year to cover the greatest moments. The World Series teams of 1980 and 2008 are givens. We've all heard about the Whiz Kids of 1950, the first Phillies team to appear in the World Series in 1915, and the string of dominant clubs during the 1970s, led by Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt.

Those are a lot of great clubs, but generally speaking, barely a fraction of the history of this organization. Created in 1883 as the Philadelphia Quakers, hundreds of excellent players have worn the Philadelphia uniform in some way, shape, or form, most of whom are often forgotten about as time takes its toll.

Those players accomplished great feats; feats that will no longer go unnoticed.

The goal of this slideshow is to bring some of the greatest players in the history of the organization into the forefront of the minds of the casual Phillies' fan. You diehard fans may have heard of some of these players, but I'm willing to be there are a few surprises.

Shrouded by recent accomplishments, the history of the Phillies has become somewhat of an uncharted territory, and there are still plenty of great names to uncover.

*All statistics refer to time spent with the Phillies' organization alone, unless otherwise stated.

For up to the minute Phillies information, check out Greg's blog: The Phillies Phactor.

Follow @Greg_Pinto

Begin Slideshow

As they do, they have decisions to make regarding roster spots, lineups and pitching staffs. The players also have to get into game shape or improve for the following season.

These things, and a number of others, place pressure on the players to get themselves ready for the season.

The following are the ten Phillies who will be under the most pressure during Spring Training.

Begin Slideshow

Some fans believe that fate plays a hand in the outcome of the regular season, while others will boldly proclaim that the hottest teams make the playoffs and the hottest team of them all wins the World Series, but all can agree that it's not easy.

All of the pieces need to fall into place. Team chemistry is one thing that great teams have always stressed, but no team would make the postseason without a vast amount of talent. You don't get to the playoffs without being a good team, and you don't win the World Series unless you're firing on all cylinders.

But once a team reaches the postseason, magical things happen.

Sure, that sounds like a cheesy thing to say, but how else can you put it? Great moments are crafted during the regular season, but the postseason is a different beast. The stakes are higher and emotions run wild, and now, when great moments happen, they are so much more than just great moments—these moments are what legends are made of.

The Philadelphia Phillies have had their share of memorable postseason moments. Since their inception in 1883, the Phillies have appeared in the postseason following 14 different seasons. That opens the door for a number of great moments, but which of them made the cut?

Begin Slideshow

Pat Burrell was as much of a bat as Walter Payton's game was of sweetness, Jerome Bettis was a bus or Ed Jones was tall...too tall. Why? He did exactly what a bat could do...he could hit something hard, while being solid itself. The key word though is could, not would. Bats, and Pat being one of them, could hit something hard.

Burrell always seemed to require someone to swing him, though, otherwise he was like a bat that was not picked up or was just sitting on the bat rack and not doing anything. Something needed to fire him up, in order to whack something. When he did, he did it well. But that's how I will remember Pat Burrell.

I think back to when he was coming up, not paid yet and starting to break into the league. Larry Bowa inserted him into the cleanup spot in 2002 and he took off from that point, going on to hit 37 home runs that season while driving in 116 runs for a very mediocre baseball team.

Then, he was rewarded with a big contract and the team added Jim Thome in the 2002-03 offseason. So with Thome and his MVP season on board swinging away, Pat the Bat went back on the rack.

A few years later, Charlie Manuel came on board as the new manager. Manuel of course was the players' coach-slash-hitting guru. His approach to managing swung Burrell, literally and figuratively.

Instilling confidence in Burrell, he swung him for a career-high 117 RBI. Burrell's average would slip nearly 25 points the next year, all while Ryan Howard emerged and there was no need to swing Pat's Bat.

The bat would sit on the rack until 2007, when the Phillies were starting to crumble with injuries. Chase Utley was among the biggest injuries faced in the second half, and it was around that time Pat would start being swung.

Why? The team was desperate for a 3-hole hitter, so that got Burrell going. He would explode for a .435 average in July and ten August home runs.

They were part of his second-half power surge of 22 home runs. The team needed a nice swing and a long drive to get away from the awful start to which they began the season.

Within that 2007 season were a few of the hardest swings the bat ever swung. Burrell and a former Phillies reliever had gotten into a feud through the papers, with Pat Burrell calling Billy Wagner a "rat."

Twice did the "bat" swing hard and drive one far off the "rat" in big games, twice leading to Phillies victories to complete sweeps against the New York Mets, as they would win the division by one game.

This was the following year after Burrell and Wagner got into it. It's not the only time a Mets closer has caused Burrell to swing hard, as he often would battle with Armando Benitez. Burrell three times burned Benitez with home runs, each of which caused the two to boil even more with each other.

The bat seemed to always swing well when it was mad. I still have the image in my head of Pat Burrell ripping a two-run home run to left field in 2005 against Texas and slamming his bat down viciously.

The cause? Bobby Abreu, at that time the hottest hitter in the world, was plunked by a pitch. That was enough to make the "bat," his protection in the lineup, swing and take one for a long drive.

It's one of plenty images we've seen of Burrell being angry and looking to do something viciously.

Remember his seemingly unnecessary and childish staredown with Roy Halladay in the 2010 National League Championship Series? Well, in the at-bat immediately following that one, Burrell would rip a double to left field and then proceed to later score the last Giants run of the night.

His biggest "Pat the Bat" moment was in the 2008 World Series. His hit in Game 5, his only hit in the series, led to the series-winning run.

But even in a moment that big, he needed to be swung. Jimmy Rollins had barked at him in the clubhouse tunnel right before the at-bat, which got the "bat" swinging.  

In all these cases, he needed something or someone to swing him. He never seemed to do it himself or automatically.

His teammates even used him like a bat. One of his other nicknames around the ballclub was "Bait," because of his ability to get women at bars and clubs.

In a different sense, his teammates were using him to hit something. It was really just like a bat though. Pat the Bat.

Even when he walked around in the gimp outfit as "The Machine" in Brian Wilson's interview, you have to wonder if that was really him doing that automatically. You have to think that Brian Wilson picked up the bat and swung him in that direction to seriously go on national television dressed like that.

This was as silly as the seemingly rehearsed Spring Training home run he hit off former teammate Cole Hamels in an exhibition game at Citizens Bank Park. Burrell homered, leading off, then immediately left the game. There was reason to think this, too, was an act of someone swinging him.

And so that will be Pat Burrell's legacy in my mind: being one of the best nicknames in sports. He contributed to an increasingly weak category, nicknames in sports.

No "Tony Plush" nonsense, just a catchy, rhyming nickname that was appropriate. I will actually think of his nickname more than I ponder the quality of his career.

It is an interesting question: Did the Bat do enough? To do enough, was it swung enough and swung correctly with the first overall pick?

Nicknames aside, Burrell did have a nice career for a No. 1 pick, winning two World Series in three postseason appearances.

Those were team accomplishments, but individually he did well for himself, collecting six 27-plus home runs, 85-plus RBI seasons, and slugging a respectable .472 percentage. But isn't that what a bat should do?

It's the question that his career and legacy will face, being a No. 1 overall pick. Was he not swung enough? And would you have swung this bat with the first overall pick or would you have taken the pitch?

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

All the attention goes to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee as the aces of the Philadelphia Phillies, but what about the only World Series MVP on the staff?

That's right, I'm talking about the fun-loving, wavy-haired, San Diegoan Cole Hamels. But he is the No. 3 starting pitcher for an already-stacked pitching staff. As dominant as Halladay and Lee are, Hamels is just as vital to the Phils as the two aces.

If Cole were on any other MLB team, he would arguably be the ace. 

So actually it's quite simple for the Phillies: Pay Cole what he is worth. He is more than capable of providing 20—if not more—wins.

But where is this money going to come from? Well, if they can pay the astronomical prices of the two aces and the under-performing Ryan Howard, I'm sure Ruben Amaro, Jr. has enough tricks up his sleeve to dish out the dough to the more than deserving Hamels.

He single-handedly led the Fightins to the 2008 World Series Championship.

What Ruben and the rest of the organization need to do is let him know how important and crucial he is to the club.

If it were not for Hamels, there would be no 2008 World Series Championship. It's as simple as that.

Tell and let Cole know how important he is to Philly. If Ruben does this, Cole will, without a doubt, spend his entire career in Philadelphia and be forced to wear No. 35 for as long as he plays in the City of Brotherly Love. 

Read more Philadelphia Phillies news on BleacherReport.com

This is Ryan Howard, who, just before the moment of this photograph, was the proud owner of two healthy Achillies tendons.  This was the final at-bat of Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS, and even up until the final batter that night, the Phillies still had hope to pull that game out and advance.

That's because the Philadelphia Phillies were, and remain, a very, very good team.  And so, as the Fightin' Phils head into 2012, most of the pieces are already in place for another run at a World Series.

There are, however, a few minor moves the Phillies should still make to bolster their bench and bullpen and a few bigger ones to look into for the continued success of this franchise.

Begin Slideshow

While Ruben Amaro Jr. made a huge splash in free agency at the Winter Meetings with the free-agent signing of Jonathan Papelbon, it seems clear at this point what the GM set out to do to improve this club.

Improve the bench with versatile players that can play a myriad of positions and have some pop in their bat. Charlie Manuel now has much more flexibility in the later innings with the acquisitions of Ty Wigginton, Laynce Nix and Jim Thome.

A prospect that can play more than one position has a better chance of playing in the big leagues. They can fill different needs that a team may have over a grueling 162-game season.

Here are the Philadelphia Phillies' most versatile prospects.

Begin Slideshow

The Philadelphia Phillies have watched thousands of players don their uniform. We hear stories about the great ones all the time. Mike Schmidt was probably the greatest third baseman to ever play the game, and Steve Carlton was one of history's best lefties. Robin Roberts strung together one of the most successful stretches of pitching in baseball history, while Pete Alexander was purely untouchable.

Those all-time greats provide the horsepower, but some of the organization's most underrated players steered the bus. Baseball is the ultimate team sport. You can't win with just one man, whether or not he's a pitcher who throws a shut out or a slugger who launches three home-runs. Without each other, there's not much to be done.

In a lot of winning seasons, it is that group of underrated players who often do unmentioned and unrecognized, but without them, history would look very different for the Phillies. It's time to give them the proper respect.

For the sake of this article, the word "underrated" will be easily defined. I'll take a look at each player's statistics (and intangibles, if that's your thing) and assess their value to the club against the attention they received for it. Who's value went unnoticed, though invaluable?

*All statistics refer specifically to the player's Phillies' career, unless otherwise stated.

For up to the minute Phillies' information, check out Greg's blog: The Phillies Phactor.

Follow @Greg_Pinto

Begin Slideshow