From Boston With Love

The Sports Guy Feels Our Pain

IT WAS A THROWAWAY LINE in Bill Simmons's NFL preview last Friday, but it bears repeating, in that it perfectly captured the living hell in which the Philadelphia sports fan exists:

Giants (-7.5) over EAGLES
At my Philly signing on Wednesday, I couldn't believe the body language of the locals -- signing a sports book for these poor people was like signing a romance novel for Jennifer Aniston right after Brad and Angelina started dating. You can't even imagine how many people asked me, "Can you sign it, 'Maybe this will happen to the Eagles' someday?'" How can Philly have no titles over the past 22 years, yet the Florida Marlins won two World Series titles in the past eight years alone? How does that make sense?

How indeed? There are so many ingredients for sporting success in our cupboard: a large media market; passionate, intelligent fans; lengthy tenures by all of our teams; ownerships that by and large are willing to spend some scratch. So how come we end up with flavorless casseroles so often? Okay, sure, once in a while someone treats us to a nice meal out, but not once in 22 years has anyone ponied up for a five-star, gourmet experience. In fact, for most of those 22 years, it's been frozen dinners and microwave popcorn. And the rest of the country wonders why we're so hungry.

Comments

[Jeff Martin]

The two questions at the end of your pull quote there became an away message on my AIM the second I read them on Simmons' page last Friday.

[gr]

i wonder if there is a correlation between the backdoor nature of our local political culture and the backwards nature of our local sports heritage. that is, in similar ways, does each constantly undermine itself for the benfit of short-term, near-sited, self-centered interests? is it a result of a certain set of character traits which define the region? there's got to be a prof at penn or temple who spends his/her waking hours thinking about this.