Arrogance Needs to Be Earned

10.31.2008

ARROGANCE NEEDS TO BE EARNED
Philly fans are the reason their professional sports teams have not won a championship in 20+years

The one bad thing that comes with the Phillies winning the World Series is the entire country gets to see the pompous and arrogant Philadelphia fans. Around the country people complain Boston fans are obnoxious but they are relatively tame compared to Philly fans.

Yes Boston fans will hurl insults and expletives at Yankee fans. They will taunt and tease A-Rod, Eric Gagne, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and the rest of Major League Baseball but it is done out of jocularity. Whether it is taunting J.D. Drew for not signing with the Phillies out of high school or hurling batteries and beer bottles at officials during an Eagles game, Philadelphia fans are just down right nasty.

Boston fans are the most knowledgeable sports fans in the country. We are passionate fans that go to the ballpark, stadium or arena and root for our teams not just against the opposing teams. Yes we want to see the Yankees, Rays, Colts, Lakers and Canadiens go down in a ball of flames but it does not stop Boston fans from rooting for their team. In Philly, it seems as if the fans are rooting more against their opponents than for their own teams.

It is general knowledge that if you walk into Fenway Park wearing Yankees garb you will get obscenities hurled your way and maybe even beer poured on you, but there is one thing Red Sox fans do not do. We do not go after the young children unlike some Eagles fans who thought it would be funny to pour beer over a five year old Patriots fan at Super Bowl XXXIX. Pretty classless if you ask me.

Phillies pitcher Brett Myers exemplifies Philadelphia in the perfect way. Everyone in Philly thinks he is funny by the practical joke he played on teammate Kyle Kendrick at the beginning of the season but Boston fans know him for what he really is: a coward. During the World Series, Myers made the remark if the Red Sox had made it to the World Series he would not pitch in Fenway Park.

His statement is from an incident that occurred two years ago after he was arrested by Boston police for domestic abuse but still started for the Phillies the next day. (I have a few things to say regarding that later.) There were at least two eye-witness accounts that said the Phillies pitcher “slapped [his wife] across the face” and “dragged her down by the street by the hair.” The next day, he was welcomed by the Fenway Faithful to a chorus of boos and chants of “wife-beater” just like the infamous Jason Kidd.

Two years later Myers retorts this by saying “he was trying to protect her.” Sorry Brett but punching your wife is not the definition of “protecting.” When two people can confirm you hit her and then dragged her by her hair, it kind of puts a hole on your side of the story. And on that note, he told USA Today he was “pelted by plastic beer bottles in the bullpen” while warming up? Fenway Park does not sell bottled beer. It is all draft and at an expensive $7.50 per cup. Another strike against the compulsive liar.

How can fans root for a team that does not punish a player for domestic abuse? The fact the Phillies organization and the fans turned a blind eye to it and allowed Myers to start the next day was disgusting. By allowing him to start was the organization’s way of saying winning means more to us than the health of a human being.

Do not think for one second, Philly fans, Sox fans would react the same way if it was one of their players because we would not. Remember former Red Sox second baseman/left fielder Wilfredo Cordero. He was arrested for domestic abuse and never heard the end of the wife beater chants from Red Sox Nation. The organization cast him out to sea the following year. Bob and Myra Kraft and the Patriots are the same way. They created the R.O.S.E. Fund (Re-gaining One’s Self-Esteem) to help combat domestic abuse.

Maybe the reason Philadelphia has not won a single a championship, until this year, in the last 26 years is because “the apple does not fall far from the tree.” The values of the owners shape the fans. If the owners are respectable and have a good moral high ground then, more likely than not, the team and their fans are going to be that way. The owners would never have it any other way. They toss any fans to the curb who are casting them and their organization in a negative light.

Behind a championship team there are great owners and it is also the underlying factor why Boston had three teams combine to win six World Championships in the last nine years. The Krafts, John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino as well as Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca have created a positive environment conducive towards winning from the front office to the fans who, loyally, attend each game. On the contrary, the Phillies might be one of the only championship teams to not have champion quality owners.