Philadelphia. The city of Brotherly Love. The city where freedom was born. The city where my parents grew up. The city I went to for field trips, and where I spent time with my grandmother. I love it there, and I love South Jersey and my beloved suburbs. And, by extension, I love Philadelphia sports teams. The Eagles, the Phils, the 76ers, the Flyers. I have watched those teams my whole life. My entire extended family has watched those teams for THEIR entire lives. In the Philadelphia area, loving those teams is a culture, a way of life. You don't know what it's like to even consider rooting for someone else if Philly is in the game. And more importantly, you know the misery of watching those teams. You've seen them fail season after season, even after coming gut-wrenchingly close to winning it all. 1993, 2005, 1997, 1987, 2001. All losses at different levels. You become so used to losing it all even when you're close that an immense dread comes over you when they start doing well, simply because you know they will mess it up. It's just how it worked there. In my generation you heard the tales of past teams, the 70's and early 80's becoming this mythical era our parents knew but we didn't, and couldn't even fathom after so many failures.
And yet, with all of this heart and love we have for our teams, we are hated by the rest of the sports community. I've never understood that my passion could be abhorred by others, when I thought we all had a right to support a team. As soon as you hear "Philly sports" you hear about boo-birds and assholes, how we are terrible, rowdy people who make sports ugly. People scoff when we mention the Philly curse, saying the Boston curse or the Chicago curse is real, and ours is apparently manufactured by a bitter old city. Well, wake up Boston, you have the Celtics and the Patriots. And Chicago, I happen to remember the Bulls doing pretty well for awhile. I had never even tasted glory until last night.
To me, cities like NY and Boston look at their fellow colonial compadre with scorn. We are the drunk uncle they like to pretend they aren't related to because we are loud and booed Santa in the 60's. Or we are their kid brother, who is pressing his face to the glass doors of their championship party. They ridicule us and laugh when we say we have our own curse. Well, Boston, Philly was actually happy for you when you won the World Series after 88 years. Why can't you be happy for us? And New York, the Yankees have all the money in the world and too many titles. Give the little brother a chance to prove himself. We are passionate, and we love sports even when we boo our players. It's called tough love.
And we deserve our World Series title. We hungered for our chance in the spotlight again after watching so many other cities celebrate what should have been ours. For a city that loves its teams, this is vindication. A gift from our teams to us for our undying support. So all of these other cities who hate us can shut the hell up. That was one of the greatest nights of my entire life, watching them win. So leave us alone, let us hog the spotlight and act like total idiots. According to all of you who hate us, it is what we are good at.
GO PHILLIES!!!!!!! I love you Philadelphia!
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