Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I think that Philadelphia is the largest city in the country that isn’t thought of like the others, which is to say that it’s not cosmopolitan or the hub of anything contemporarily cultural. There’s obviously as much History there as one could hope for, but past that its reputation is mostly absent. For a very long time though, it was one of the 3 major cities in the country, along with New York and Boston. It was so important that for a long time it also had two baseball teams: the Phillies and the Athletics. This is a sign of national prominence, you could say, since now that the Angels are officially the Los Angeles Angels the big three cities have a pair of teams, one in each league.

Baseball teams didn’t switch cities until the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, but the Athletics moved to Kansas City shortly thereafter. (The Boston Braves followed suit and went off to Milwaukee, and then of course the big ones, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the NY Giants moved to the west coast.) Yet, until the early ‘50s, all of the major league baseball teams were east of the Mississippi River, and not much farther south than D.C., or maybe St. Louis, depending on which is farther south. In fact, my dad tells me, some players who played for the Pacific Coast League preferred to play and live out there rather than go play in the majors, especially if they might only be a bench player back east, and so the Pacific Coast Leagues were extremely competitive.

The Phillies had some good years, he continues, like when the “Whiz Kids” won the NL pennant in 1950, only to lose to the Yankees in the World Series. They had a guy named Jim Konstanty, who was the first star relief pitcher (and even won an NL MVP at one point). It all came together for them in the sense that a bunch of guys had career years at the same time, and that was enough to win the pennant.

After that, the Phillies weren’t good again until the ‘70s and early ‘80s, with Mike Schmidt & Steve Carlton. For a long time, they were one of the teams like the Pirates, Cubs, Reds and Braves who were comfortable being among the second tier. “One thing’s for sure -- if you never win and you’re never expected to win, everything is OK. If you’re a Cubs fan in the ‘50s,” my dad says, “you didn’t expect them to win and they didn’t win, and that was fine. Phil Cavaretta was managing one of those years, and they asked him after spring training where he thought they’d finish. ‘With this team,’ he said, ‘we’ll finish either 7th or 8th’ -- out of 8 teams. Whoever Wrigley was in power at the time didn’t like that and so he fired him, and then they finished 7th or 8th.” Can you imagine a manager saying something like that? Hardly seems possible these days. Now it’s just permutations of ‘we just need to take it one day at a time.’

There’s one other year my father noted: the 1964 Phillies had one of the all time great collapses. “Everyone figured they would walk into the Series, and they lost just about every game of the last few weeks. Up until the last game of the year the would only have to win 1 game to force a playoff, and they couldn’t even do that -- they lost 10 to nothin’. That was the first year I was teaching in Chicago, and I would listen to Harry Caray on the radio for the Cardinals. He would do his little ditty: ‘The Cardinals are coming, tra la, tra la!’ Sure enough, they won and the Phillies didn’t.”

I went to one game in Veteran’s Stadium, which is where the Phillies played until last season. I was so young that I don’t remember the game itself, but I remember that after the game, we came out to look for our car near a landmark by the ramp to the stadium. Unfortunately, that landmark and ramp repeated itself 6 times around the stadium. This sort of things sticks out to an infant, wandering around lost looking for your car in a massive dark parking lot, in a strange city.

I think one thing that hurts the Phillies is that they don’t have a rival. You would figure that maybe it could be Pittsburgh, being National League teams in the same state, but just drive from one city to the other some time and you can see that Pittsburgh just won't do -- it's a whole other world over there. There are theories of knowledge which argue that one cannot know something except through its opposite. That is, we could not understand hot if we could not also understand cold, and vice versa. The analogy doesn’t extend perfectly to baseball, but it certainly helps one understand a team -- to attribute character, personality, identity -- if there is a rival.

At least, that’s what I was thinking as we drove across the Pennsylvania Turnpike all day. If you know someone looking for a career change, I might recommend becoming a Sheriff in Pennsylvania, because I think there was a stretch of three miles there west of Harrisburg where we didn’t see a cop; obviously they need more. Factor in the constant construction, where two lanes become one in endless repetition, and it wasn’t the best drive. It was, however, sunny and hilly and full of winding roads with views overlooking forests, and I suppose that counts for something.

It started to rain as we neared Philadelphia, and it was the sort of rain where the clouds are very low in the sky and create a sort of half rain / half fog mix. Other than the new skyscrapers, I thought the approach to Philadelphia from the west felt more like entering a European city than most American cities: there are old train tracks and steel bridges with faded graffiti, concrete smokestacks belching everywhere but with scattered patches of trees. Most American cities would have knocked many of these areas down already and rebuilt them.

Philadelphia has conceded to the vice of being a sports fan by moving all of its major stadiums to one small corner far south and a little east of downtown, all by themselves. Citizen’s Bank Park (Phillies) is right next to Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles), the Wachovia Center (76ers and Flyers), and the old Spectrum. They compose a sports campus square with plenty of parking and so on, all set at the very last exit in Pennsylvania on Interstate 76, at the far edge of the city before you cross the Delaware River into New Jersey. It is thus impossible for sports to interfere with the rest of the city. It’s like the Red Light district in Amsterdam: go ahead and do it, just do it over there.

I asked my father when Philadelphia got its reputation for having negative fans -- complainers and hecklers -- fans that would boo Santa Claus, and all that. He wasn’t sure, but he remembered, “I know they gave Richie Allen a hard time.” Then he thought about it, and said that he still wasn’t sure, but that when you think about it, the fans from all three of those great old American cities -- New York, Boston and Philadelphia -- have that reputation, so maybe there’s something there, even if we’re not sure what it is.

Our hotel is one of only a few other buildings out near the sports campus, so we could just walk on over to the ballpark. Before we left, my father asked the concierge if the hotel had access to tickets. They didn’t, but he knew a guy who had some. He put in the call, and a minute later a friendly scalper came by and sold us a pair in the lower level at face value. Citizen’s Bank park is another one of the new stadiums that gets things right. I think that the days where they close in the outfield view and position the upper decks far back from the field are behind us. Good riddance. Instead, they stack the upper decks on top of each other to keep them close to the field, and they put a large jumbotron scoreboard in left field with open air on either side of it. In right field, there’s a neon Liberty bell that lights and rings when the Phillies hit a homerun.

We spent some time walking around the park, visiting the history display they had out behind centerfield. I learned that the Phillies have the longest running moniker in the major leagues. Then it began to rain, a heavy thundershower that felt warm and tropical, created by Tropical Storm Ophelia, which was spinning off the coast south from Philadelphia in the Atlantic. The rain finished a half hour later, in plenty of time for them to prepare the field for the game.

The game meant something to both the Phillies and the Braves. The Braves were 83-62, in first place, and they had a chance to knock Philadelphia out of the divisional race for the most part. Ramirez was pitching. The Phillies were 77-68, very much alive in the Wild Card race, and were starting Lidle.

Our seats were 19 rows up from the Phillies’ dugout, even with first base. Clouds continued to swirl above us all evening, but it never rained again. In the bottom of the first, my dad commented that he has now seen all three generations of Bells -- Gus, Buddy and David. The Phillies scored three in the bottom of the first, and then four more on a grand slam by Ramon Martinez off Ramirez. The final was 12-4, but it was over in the third. Even the Philly Phanatic didn’t seem all that into it, dancing on the top of the dugout.

Still, there’s a reason you stay until the end, and we were rewarded by Andruw Jones in the top of the 8th. You can pick your own verb -- crushed, blasted, tattooed -- but I prefer to say that Jones murdered one into the upper level of seats in left field. The beat writers report that it was 434 feet, but that seems too short. I would have said 450’ or more. As my dad said, “That’s what you call a majestic homerun.” I think it was still going up as it cleared the fence, and the left fielder never even budged as he watched its flight.

Our second night, the Phillies had the chance to complete a 4 game sweep of Atlanta, which would in turn make the division race interesting. Didn’t happen. Chipper Jones hit a pair of homeruns over 400’ to center, and that was enough to win the game. We had seats behind home plate in the upper level, with a fine view over left-center and beyond to downtown Philadelphia, which is surprisingly large in area and dense with big buildings. I’m telling you -- Philly is bigger than you realize (or at least than I realized). From behind on the concourse, we could look across the Delaware river to a land of steel bridges and smokestacks and cargo loading areas -- New Jersey, I’d say, although it could be Delaware, but my stereotype idea of New Jersey fits the image better.

In the top of the 4th, with two outs, a Braves rookie named Langerhaans hit what should have been a single to right field, but Abreu -- the Phillies All-Star -- was lazy with his throw to the cutoff man, and Langerhaans took the extra base. The Philadelphia fans let him hear it. Of course, in the bottom of the fifth when Abreu hit a homerun, then they liked him again. Still, most of the fans left early despite being down only 6 to 3 (6 to 4 at the end) and the ones that stayed until the end were vocal complainers on their way out. I guess it doesn’t matter that they won three out of four from the first place team and stayed alive in the Wild Card race.

I’ve reached the conclusion that sports fans in Philadelphia are just not happy people, and this is no way to go through life.