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Brotherly & Sisterly Love
for the Phillies--Finally
of TheColumnists.com
Notes of a Transplanted New Yorker in the Euphoria That is Philadelphia Now:
When we first moved to the Philadelphia suburbs in Haverford a little more than two years ago, I was struck immediately by the fatalistic attitude of Philadelphia Phillie fans. The Phils had such a long history of losing that fans wouldn’t allow themselves to think anything good would come of the Phils.
I was struck as well by the fanaticism for the football Eagles. On Monday mornings the Philadelphia Inquirer would run an entire section, the Eagles extra, on their Sunday game. If the Eagles played a Monday night game, the special section of eight or 10 pages on the Eagles ran on Tuesday.
The Inquirer showed a masochistic streak by making a big deal of the Phillies approaching their 10,000th loss in history. They beat their breast about this more than they showed any humor or light touch.
The Inquirer made a big deal of the Eagles opening their summer training camp this year, playing it over a Phillie game that day. The newspaper puts some of the most inconsequential sports stories on page one. Let an Eagle come up with an ingrown toenail and you can almost expect it to be on page one. With the Phillies charging and the Mets folding, the Inquirer didn’t send anybody up to cover the Mets in New York until the last weekend of the season; four columnists and a few reporters cover Eagle games.
The Phillies faltered in the latter days of the past two seasons. When they messed up, the wise guys in the stands went into chants of E-A-G-L-E-S.
So-called baseball sophisticate am I--having experienced all the baseball wars in New York over the years--I would assure new friends here that Philadelphians weren’t the only fans who suffered from paranoia. I pointed to the regular beatings the Brooklyn Dodgers suffered from the Yankees, the early Mets foibles, the long-suffering history of Chicago Cubs fans, the constant wailing of Red Sox rooters. I noted that the only fans in America who weren’t paranoid were Yankee fans, because they almost always have won.
There is joy now in Philadelphia, not only because the Phils won, but because they won when hardly anybody expected them to win. The Mets seemingly had the pennant sewn up early in the season, and appeared to be the winner even while they struggled into the middle of September. But the Phils won those seven straight games from the Mets and the Mets collapsed.
So there are love and kisses in the city of Brotherly and Sisterly Love. And for the nonce not many people are listening to the skeptics who say they haven’t won it all, yet; they haven’t won the World Series. Spoilsports!
There is a statue of William Penn atop City Hall here. There is a statue of Rocky Balboa on the grounds of the magnificent Art Museum. Benny Franklin is honored, too. Somebody might now be inspired to erect one to Jimmy Rollins, the Philadelphia shortstop and Most Valuable Player in waiting. It was Rollins who had the verve to declare before the season that the Phils were “the team to beat.”
Not only did most people dismiss him, but he suffered ridicule. As a Mets fan, I was dismayed by the boorish actions of a small segment of Mets fans who actually booed him at Shea Stadium for making what was nothing more than an attempt to rally his teammates. Those are the boobs who also boo the Braves’ Chipper Jones because he plays so well against the Mets.
Rollins played some of his best baseball against the Mets in the teeth of the booing. He seemed to own pitcher Tom Glavine. He hit home runs, he stole bases, he emerged as the superior shortstop over the Mets’ faltering Jose Reyes. He even inspired the figger filberts to unearth the feat of being the only player in history to get more than 200 hits, and more than 20 doubles, triples, homer runs and stolen bases in one season.
Rollins never took back his words even when the Phils struggled early. He said Sunday, “It was definitely a burden that I had to carry all season long. My heart was heavy at times…but I knew something special was going to happen.”
Sudden thought: the Mets fans booing of Rollins put a curse on them that caused their collapse, their “it’s-going-to-be-a-long-winter” collapse.
One of the amusing things for this transplant is that gloating Philadelphians lump all New York in mourning for the Mets. They don’t understand about Yankee and Mets fans. True Yankee fans enjoy the Mets’ demise. And Mets fans would enjoy Yankee miseries, except that there hardly ever have been any. Well once; the Yankee collapse in the playoffs against the Red Sox in 2004-losing four in a row after winning the first three games-not only elated Red Sox loyalists, but gave a measure of pleasure to Mets fans.
The Mets’ disaster rivaled the Phillies’ implosion in 1964. The Mets blew a seven-game lead with 17 to play; the Phils blew a lead of six-and-a-half games with 12 to play.
Some sly New York scrivener can provide Mets fans with a little salve now by doing what Philadelphia Daily News columnist Larry Merchant did in 1964 when those Phillies missed the World Series. He wrote amusing pieces keeping track of imaginary day-by-day phantom Phils experiences in the World Series. I think he had them winning it all.
©2007 by Stan Isaacs. The photo of Jimmy Rollins is courtesy of Wikipedia. This column first posted Oct. 2, 2007.
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