By Phil Sheridan
There's a chance of proposing the Philadelphia-sports equivalent of the Edsel or New Coke, but we have 25 years' worth of reasons to take this risk. Call it a big civic experiment that maybe, just maybe, will help restart that championship drought clock at 0:00.
When the Phillies begin their playoff series here tomorrow, let's pack up all the built-up anxiety and unhappy history and put it on ice somewhere. Everything from 1964 to Black Friday to Joe Carter to Kaz Matsui gets tied in a sack, weighted down and thrown into the Schuylkill.
On Saturday evening, over the din of the clinching celebration, oracle and shortstop Jimmy Rollins said something that stuck.
"The fans here, they were expecting us to win," Rollins said, gesturing toward the still-giddy faithful cheering and smiling in the stands. "When you expect a team to win, believe me, that goes a long way."
Laugh if you want. Roll your cynical eyes. Show up for Game 1 just knowing in your shrunken, shriveled Grinch heart that Cole Hamels will get lit up and the offense will go missing and you will be doomed to another year of misery - but at least you'll get to tell all your friends you just knew it would happen.
Go ahead. Make my case for me.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Imagine a parade down Broad Street. It's easy if you try.
We can do this. We have nothing to lose except losing.
Rollins is right, by the way. There is an unprovable but absolutely real connection between the energy in the stands and the play on the field. We have seen it here over and over, almost always in a negative way.
If you were at the last ever Eagles game at the Vet, you know what it was like when Tampa Bay took the lead in that NFC championship game. And if you were at the first big games at the Linc, you know there was a carry-over, a pervading sense of dread that weighed down on the players as if they were wearing lead boots.
That's not hard to explain or understand, and it is up to the extremely well-compensated players to handle big-game pressure. All of that is true. But if Rollins is right, and he is, there is an equal and opposite reaction when the players sense the fans expect them to succeed.
It is encouraging that these Phillies are acknowledging what happened to them in the three-and-out loss to Colorado last October. They had done what a lot of teams do after breaking through to a higher level. They had arrived in the playoffs wide-eyed and just happy to be there and then gotten bulldozed by the looser, more confident Rockies.
One reason the Rockies were looser: They were here, where all the burden of fan expectation was on the Phillies. And if you were in the ballpark for either of those games, you know the joy of the pennant drive disappeared almost immediately.
Matsui's Game 2 grand slam was a crushing blow, but the Phillies hit .172 as a team in that series. They were tight. They were pressing. And they know it, which is the first step toward correcting it.
"We know that there's more than winning the division," Rollins said. "It doesn't bring you a ring, and it doesn't bring you glory. We won the division last year. Three games later, we were watching with everyone else. We don't want that to happen again."
Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Jamie Moyer all echoed the basic sentiment: The team didn't handle itself well last year, knows it and believes that experience will make a big difference this year.
The Eagles parallel holds. The 2000 team lost a wild-card game to the Giants. The 2001 team won the NFC East, won two playoff games and then lost the NFC championship game in St. Louis.
The progression stalled at the threshold to the Super Bowl. The Eagles lost two NFC championship games at home, games they should have won, before getting over the hump and making it to the Super Bowl.
The Phillies can do themselves and their fans a huge favor by seizing the moment this week and beating Milwaukee. The sooner they get over this next mental hurdle, the easier it will be to move on.
And isn't that what every wounded and disillusioned but still loyal Philadelphia sports fan wants, to end this ridiculous drought?
It isn't in our shared civic nature to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" and expect good things to happen. Maybe it's time to take a leap of faith and try.
After all, we've done it the other way for decades. How's that worked out?
No comments:
Post a Comment