It’s a crazy time for Philadelphia sports. The Eagles winning the Super Bowl in February and Villanova taking home the NCAA Championship in March ushered in the sort of spring awakening usually reserved for BBC nature documentaries or Disney movies. The blossoms were blooming big, the air smelled fresh, and everything had a bright sunny aura about it. Strangers were shaking hands with strangers, exchanging smiles and pleasantries. Life was good. So good, in fact, the Sixers and Flyers had to get in on the winning. Both teams put together late season surges that had the town buzzing. From February until the end of the season, The Flyers lost only 8 times in their final 32 games. The Sixers, meanwhile, set a franchise record and became the only NBA team ever to end its regular season with a 16-game win streak.
Still, with all that winning and attention in the national sports spotlight I couldn’t help but employ a cautious optimism about it all. In talking to friends and other fans that air of apprehension and angst seemed quite common. It all seemed a little too good to be true. Sure enough, the Flyers got booted in the first round of the playoffs by the cross-state rival Pittsburgh Penguins, giving up 28 goals in 6 games. The Sixers got exposed by the Celtics in the second round of the playoffs giving Boston a little revenge for the Patriots’ Super Bowl loss, and stoking the rivalry between the two colonial powerhouse cities. Then, the icing on the cake came when the Phillies’ season began with a series of questionable coaching decisions and laughable losses. All was right again in Philadelphia.
Philadelphia was once unparalleled as a hub of industry and manufacturing. At one point in colonial America, the city boasted one of the busiest ports in the world. For nearly 150 years after the founding of our great nation Philadelphia was a bastion of freedom and intellectualism. Some time in the early 20th century that all started to change. The city slowly eroded as industries left for less taxable locales and urban elites fled to the sprawling suburbs. Left behind were the crumbs of prosperity. It’s a story common to many cities dependent on shifting industries. With rising unemployment and growing blight so too came crime, corruption, and neglect. These wounds would leave deep and tangled scars wrought with environmental injustice, racial prejudice, and misguided economics still impacting the city today.
Through it all, though, Philadelphia remained, and even thrived, in it’s culture of arts, food, and, of course, sports. Philadelphia has more murals and public art than any other city in America. The musical history of the city rivals that of Motown or Nashville. A melting pot if immigrants over time created a mix of cuisines ranging from Italian to Cambodian to Ethiopian and everything beyond or in between. Even with these cosmopolitan accolades, the looming specter of the city’s once great global intrigue and its inherent blue collar nature created a chip on Philadelphia’s shoulder no more noticeable and realized than in its professional sports.
From 1967 to 1983, the Flyers, Sixers, and Phillies combined for 5 championships. Philadelphia was home to some of the best athletes in the world, and the city finally had a culture of winning unlike it’d ever seen. Perhaps the bar was set too high. Over the next quarter century no titles would make their way to Philly. There were plenty of close calls. Seeing some Philly teams come so close to championships only to lose in the end was almost more devastating than the numerous Philly teams toiling in mediocrity. Making matters worse, it seemed that all of Philadelphia’s ostensible rivals were enjoying the rewards of victory. The Cowboys, Redskins, and Giants all won multiple Super Bowls while the Eagles had none. The Celtics dominated their rivalry with the Sixers. The Flyers were consistently good, but never great enough to lift Lord Stanley’s cup, while the Penguins, Rangers, and Devils flourished in the post season. The Phillies were all but irrelevant until they made headlines in 2007 by losing the franchises 10,000th game and becoming the losingest team in sports. Then, in some miraculous “fuck you” to the sports gods, those same Phillies won the World Series the next year in 2008. For many, that glimmer of hope with the Phillies was merely an isolated incident among the doom and gloom of Philadelphia fandom.
Philadelphia was never the type of city to assign mystical reasoning for its sports woes. There were no curses or superstitions to blame. We were just a city experiencing a very long course of downtrodden times. Losing is part of life, a part of life that Philadelphians know al too well. So, now that we’re winning again it’s almost as if we don’t know what to do. This is the part where an outsider references the mayhem that occurred in the weeks after the Super Bowl, when national outlets highlighted the destructive nature of Philly fans celebrating the city’s first Super Bowl victory. Often the butt of jokes, Philadelphia fans have been misrepresented and vilified. We’re the fans who threw snowballs at Santa Claus during halftime. Were the fans who vomit on children and pick fights in the stands. Were the fans who required a fully functioning court room and jail cell at Veterans Stadium, the former home to the Phillies and Eagles. But our celebration was just that, a celebration. In comparison to many other city’s celebrations ours was actually quite tame.
I say it’s a crazy time for Philadelphia sports because of the manic swings experienced by the fans on a daily basis. No matter how many games are won and trophies are lifted, there will always be that feeling of “too good to be true.” Whether its Woodergate, NBA free-agency, the Phillies putting up 22 runs in one night and then struggling to score a single run over the course of 5 games, injury prone star players, or coaching carousels it always seems like Philly sports are one tic away from ultimate disasters.
My dad was living in Philly in the mid-70’s, attending medical school, during those years of exceptional Philly sports. He often talks about how fun it was to watch the Broad Street Bullies literally beat up opposing teams on the ice, seeing Steve “Lefty” Carlton strike out batter, after batter, after batter, after batter, or watch jaw-dropped as Dr. J defied the laws of physics on a the basketball court. Throughout my childhood, Philly teams seemed to offer their fans two options. They’d either dwell in the basement of league standings or give the city a glimmer of hope only to crush it all right before achieving the highest championship honor in their respective sports. As a boy I wondered if my dad and I, and other Philly fans would ever again see the success of those past teams. Now, with the taste of victory so fresh in our mouths and a near-future full of bright young athletes, we no longer have to wonder when the success will begin, but rather when will it end?