This topic has been rattling around my head for the past couple weeks after attending a couple of the Phils-BoSox games last month up in Bean Town. I was absolutely astonished at how positive these people were. How can these be the same fans that three years ago went into the fetal position for an entire winter after the Aaron Boone home run in Game 7 of the ALCS? Wasn't this the very same fan base that vowed to make life very unhappy for the Red Sox front office, not to mention the Grady Little family, if he was brought back for another year after failing to pull Pedro?
For a second there, I seriously thought I had been transported to a game in the Midwest where the fans tend to be more positive in a Stepford Wives/Mindless Sheep type of fashion. This positivity is rarely seen in Northeastern cities like Philly, New York, Boston and D.C, which are usually vociferous, raucous, cynical, and not afraid to let their true feelings be known to those seated around them. Here are a couple of examples of surprising Sox fans behavior:
-During the 7th inning of the Saturday 6/24 game, which Big Papi won with a moon shot in extra innings off Flash Gordon, journeyman middle reliever Javier Lopez got the Sox out of a mild jam and got a standing ovation for his work. I sat there incredulously and looked around to figure out what the hell everone was so excited about. Excuse me, but the last time I checked the job of a reliever is to pretty much get your team out of innings like this. If the roles were reversed and the game was in Philly, I don’t think Cormier doing the same thing would have raised much of a ripple through the crowd, much less a standing ovation.
-In the bottom of the 8th with 2 outs and two men on base, Tito Francona (the fact that he’s a beloved World Series winning manager in Boston after his ignominious tenure here is another story for another day) brings in rookie closer Jonathan Papelbon out of the pen. The ovation from the crowd was simply unbelievable. I’ve never seen or heard anything like it. Not since Ricky Vaughn entered the 1989 single game playoff between the Yanks and Indians for the AL East title had a crowd gotten so excited by the sight of their closer taking the field. Frankly, I only expected a reception in Boston like that if Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, Tom Brady, Doug Flutie and Yaz all took the field at the same time. Then I noticed all the Papelbon jerseys in the crowd. At that point, I realized that the Red Sox fan base has completely lost their friggin' minds.
Anyhow, back to my premise. Would a World Series win and three Super Bowl titles in 5 years change us in the same way the Boston faithful have been transformed from a cynical lot to the nauseatingly positive group they've become? I doubt it could happen here, but I’d really like to see what it would feel like to test my hypothesis.
A title for the Birds, Phils, Fly Guys, or Sixers would be absolutely fantastic, but can you see an Eagles fan biting his tongue when D Mac overthrows a wide open receiver the next year in a tense NFC East battle? Will the collective Flyers’ fan base show some patience and withhold the urge to yell “shoot” and boo when the Orange and Black squander a 5 on 3 power play after celebrating a Cup a year or two earlier? Is it possible that Phils' fans could turn a blind eye to Pat “the Bat” whiffing with 2 outs and men in scoring position simply because he was a hero in the postseason the previous autumn?
Sorry, but Philly fans are an impatient, demanding bunch by nature. I don’t see a title or two undoing years of behavior ingrained in our collective DNA. The Sports Guy talks about a 5 year grace period when a team wins a title and the fan base should give the team a pass for any and all ineptitude. As usual, the Sports Guy has a point as it makes sense for most towns, but not here. In Philly, such a grace period with the fans would last 5 months…strike that…5 weeks before we’d return to our normal selves and question the effort and expertise of the front office and team at issue.
Oh well, it was a nice hypothesis and like I said, I sure like to test it out when a team finally breaks through with a title.
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