39 years ago, nearly to the day, my dad took me to my first Philadelphia professional sports game. We made the hour drive up the Atlantic City Expressway to watch the 3-4 Eagles play the 2-5 Baltimore Colts. He called it the Toilet Bowl. We sat up in the nosebleed seats to watch Joe Pisarcik start the game at quarterback for the Eagles and hand the Colts a 17-6 snoozer of a defeat that had more field goals than touchdowns. We left midway through the 4th quarter “to avoid the drunks”. A few years later I saw my first Phillies game. Mike Jackson, who no one has heard from since, took a no-hitter into the 9th against the Expos who aren’t the Expos any more. My hero Mike Schmidt got the day off and I saw Rick Schu, who no one has ever heard of, instead. My older brother pointed out a guy passed out in the stairwell who had pissed himself.
The Phillies were at the beginning of a string of 20 seasons in which they’d make the playoffs once. The Eagles were in the middle of a string of six straight losing seasons and rumors that then owner Leonard Tose was moving the team to Phoenix. Veterans Stadium, only 14 years old at the time, newer in relative years than the marvel that is Citizens Bank Park today, was already a dump. The turf had a reputation for hurting players. The parking lot was the sort of place people disappeared never to be seen again. One could buy bad but expensive beer, soft pretzels and hot dogs…that was about it. That was Philadelphia sports circa 1985 or so.
By then, the Philly sports fan had earned a reputation as the worst of the worst in American sports. They booed Santa Claus. They threw batteries and ice balls onto the field and tried to kill people who wore the other team’s jersey to the game. Bitter old men on 610 WIP sports talk radio ran 24 hours of hosts and callers taking turns with one topic: shitting all over every player who ever played in the city. It was miserable.
That was then. My how times have changed.
In early August of this year, newly signed Phillies All Star shortstop Trea Turner was in the final third of the worst season of his career. Fresh off of a newly signed $300 million contract that lured him away from the Dodgers, Turner was supposed to be the last piece for a team that was ready to win the World Series. And he flopped. On August 4th of this year, about the time the legacy Philly fandom and media would have murdered him, something amazing happened. He came to the plate in the first inning against the Kansas City Royals and the sold out crowd rose to their collective feet and gave him a standing ovation. Turner, visibly moved, returned their affection with a hot streak that’s lasted through the playoffs. He took out a billboard to thank them. His mother cried. And the Philadelphia Phillies look like they’re going to roll over whatever comes their way right now.
Philly Bryce Harper, who while playing for a different team got beat up in the dugout by a veteran teammate for not running out a pop up has turned into Roy Hobbs. “I love this place. There’s nothing like coming into Citizens Bank Park and playing in front of these fans. Blue-collar mentality, tough, fighting every single day. I get chills, man. I get so fired up… I signed here for a reason, to do everything I could to bring back a trophy to this town, to Mr. Middleton, to this organization.”
Jason Kelce, the brother of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, got hammered and dressed up like a Mummer (it’s a Philly thing) during the Eagles Super Bowl parade. You can’t make this stuff up.
The Eagles have a fight song, which really isn’t a thing in the NFL. And everyone knows the words.
What the hell is going on in Philly?
Something good. The lesson in the contrast between past and present isn’t about winning. The Philly teams may win. They may lose. And that has mostly to do with the talent on the field. But what’s really going on there is something rarer than winning. It’s that the Philadelphia sports franchises have changed an entire culture of an area; one that took decades and generations to build; one that wallowed in anger and hate. They turned it into something infinitely more powerful. Solidarity. And the lesson of solidarity is that you can’t buy or gimmick your way into it. You have to build something worth banding together and fighting for; something people want to identify with; something people want to love. Right now the Delaware Valley loves the Phillies and the Eagles. And they love each other for loving them.
Have a good stadium. Sell good food. Play good music. Get likable players and keep them around. And let positive energy drown out the miserable losers. It’s hard to hate something that wants you to love it that badly.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows of course. It’s still Philly. And nothing lasts forever. But if you get a chance, catch a Phillies Red October home playoff game on TV this week. And you’ll feel what I’m talking about. It’s something. In a world that seems content to race to the bottom and tear itself apart on the way down, there’s still proof that locking arms and singing together with your neighbor is a hell of a powerful thing. Maybe the most powerful of all.