Philadelphia and the Battle of Bannockburn

With a week to go in the Phillies season, history is not on our side. Not only are we statistically speaking the biggest losers to ever be allowed to play professional sports, but we’ve also won an incredible amount of games over the last four seasons for a team that never got to play in October during that time. It is nearly impossible to finish with the consecutive seasons the Phillies have had and to never have made the playoffs. You would think Philadelphia would be pessimistic right now, you would think that we know we’re going to find a way to fail – all our teams do, and the Phillies often with the gusto most of the group.

A common criticism of hardcore sports fans is that it is childish to affiliate ourselves with anything so apparently immaterial, consciously contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team. The same way in which we look at tabloid-obsessed women over their love of Brangenlia (I get that one right?) so does much of the free world scoff at us. Those worries – that we are childish, and that in a time of war and global crisis our energy is misplaced – do not seem to bother Philadelphia fans in the least.

What does bothers us is not that our caring – real, deep, serious, emotionative caring – is trivial; but rather it is that our caring always comes back to burn us. We have no fear of the love itself, but do feel that it will inevitably break our hearts. Because of this we have learned to distrust winning, to hate the players, the coaches, and the general managers of the teams who tease us with failed dreams of a chip year in and year out.

This Phillies team has changed that. For the first time in a long time, pennant or no, this season has been a success. We love this team in spite of the fact that they will break our hearts, not just up to the moment when they inevitably will.

In my experience there have been two real stars in Philadelphia that have gotten a pass despite not winning a championship – Dykstra and AI. We blamed Dykstra’s team and AI’s management, but the two individuals were off limits to fans because when they were on the field, when the ball was in play, they didn’t care about their career at all, they cared about making the play.

I remember Lenny doing an interview one day during the 93 summer about how foolish the drag bunt was, how charging at the pitcher mid-pitch was an invitation to get a hand broken and that Larry Bowa – his third base coach at the time and a man who had made the move famous in Philadelphia – was a moron for ever trying it. That weekend – no joke – the phillies needed a baserunner (bottom of the 8th down a run, or something close to it) and Dykstra was up. After seeing a few pitches he had apparently figured out some tell, broke towards the mound during the windup, laid down the drag bunt perfectly and beat it out for a single.

AI stories like that are a dime a dozen. I remember there was an awful snowstorm in the middle of the AI epoch – a blizzard had hit Philly that was bad enough that most players were late arriving, and the organization was threatening to postpone the game. Iverson finally arrived and ran into a Sixers exec on his way to the locker room. The exec stopped him and told him the game might not go on. AI couldn't understand, "we got four guys?" he asked confused, he was told yes, "then lets go!" He ran down the hall, they played the game, and won.

They were both fucking ballplayers, and even though they had obvious physical limitations they cared like we cared, we didn’t have to trust in winning because we trusted in them. It wasn’t that Dykstra didn’t believe what he said about drag bunting – he was always injured and it was a stupid risk – it was that he didn’t care, and because of that we loved them.

Our well known history of turning on players, however, creates a much longer list – Wilt, Sir Charles (who I drank with this weekend, solid guy), McNabb, Jaworski, Lindross, Rolen, even Schmidt could start it – and all those guys are/were legitimate superstars.

This team seems made up of guys out of the Dykstra/AI mold. When the ball is in play, Jimmy, Chase, Utley, Victorino … they don’t care about their careers, they care about making the play. This is a team made up of guys who try to run through a wall with their face for us, a team full of mockers, winners, clutch hitters and fun. If the increasingly less infamous Leyland/Uncle Cholly decision was being made today, Leyland would have a hard time finding ways to gut this team.

So maybe we have an long history of 1 championship in 124 years, and a short one of coming up just short, but AI never had Dykstra. This team may have both.

And if they don’t, I think Philly may understand if our Battle of Bannockburn waits one more year - a luxury McNoww doesn’t not.