October 30, 2008

Despite needing to keep my voice for Saturday when I sing with the Spartanburg Chorale, nothing could keep back the long and loud scream at 9:58pm Wednesday night. The Phillies, the losingest team in the Majors, wrapped up a World Series title, beating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 4-3 and taking the series four games to one. The writing here may be toned down, but I was ever so glad that I didn’t witness Wild Thing Part II. Lidge did what Williams did not, and that was shut the game down through pitching. If there was truly the Curse of Billy Penn (having a building built higher than town hall’s statue of him and never winning a championship since), it was finished by someone’s clever placement of a smaller statue of Billy on top of the newest tall building in town, the Comcast Center. That was this June, and now the Phillies won the World Series, making me wonder if there really WAS a curse and if it’s finally broken for good. So that can go down as classic.

What’s even more classic was the post-game ceremonies. You gotta understand, we’ve had our hearts broken for so long that we crave our time to cheer. We love our teams so much that we hate the players on those teams that make the teams look bad. (Exhibit A: Terrell Owens. Exhibit B: Eric Lindros.) On the other hand, true heroes are untouchable. (Exhibit A: Dick Vermeil. Exhibit B: Rocky.) So you can say we’re passionate about our teams and we pretty much will hoard attention to them. This explains the booing when Bug Selig stepped up. The man who interrupted Cole Hamel’s great game. Doesn’t matter if we still won, boo the guy! Charlie Manuel, class act that he is, offered a congratulatory note to the Rays for what was, without a doubt, a great five games. Even more boos. Doesn’t matter if we won, doesn’t matter if they were (besides game four) all close games, boo the losers! The crowning moment was when a pack of fans drove down I-95 a few miles to Delaware (yes, out-of-state) for the sole purpose of heckling the Rays players as they walked from their hotel to the buses.

It’s not all bad. The fans saved their loudest cheers for Charlie Manuel, who, barring a meltdown of epic proportions, should ascend to the ranks of “hero” in Philly for the rest of his life. Even watching some of the pre-game interviews on the local Fox affiliate (”Kalas on Game 5″) the fans were chanting for the play-by-play radio announcer. You can’t make this stuff up.

Philly has finally forced the sporting world to give us the respect we’ve deserved for so very long. That means you, Ken Rosenthal. That means you, too, ESPN - “Rays in 5. Well, okay, Rays in 6. No? Maybe Rays in 7. Doesn’t matter, Philly will never win.” Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of a city of 3 million laughing at you right this very second. This is our night, our weekend, our team, our city, and, finally, at long last, our trophy.