Although Chase Utley is my boyfriend and I will marry him some day, Ryan Howard is my favorite Phillie of the moment. Last night, after putting the Phightin Phils ahead of the Braves with a 2-run homer in the 8th and subsequently returning the Phillies to the top of the NL East, Howard made a statement that proves he understands what it is to be a Philadelphia athlete:
"I'm just trying to do my job.''
Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. As anyone who watches sports with me will know, I have one simple request of my teams: Do Your Job. I think this sentiment is not understood by fans from other cities. They think we Philadelphians are mean, we run our athletes out of the city, we love them and then trash them and sometimes love them again. And I take these evaluations as compliments because it proves how much we care about our teams; we are educated enough to know what good playing looks like and what bad playing looks like. We hold high expectations of our athletes because we know what they are capable of. And we know better than anyone how much money we spend (not to mention time, energy, and tears) on these teams--on the merchandise, on tickets, on mlb.com packages. All we ask in return is that they do what each one of us does every single day: their jobs.
And even though the job of any professional athlete is to win, we will gladly except a good effort. That's why we loved Aaron Rowand last year (I was sad to see him go). That's why the Eagles loss on Monday didn't feel arguably all that terrible (it's never nice to lose to the Cowboys, but we looked great. We would have won were it not for that one fumble). And that's why Ryan Howard makes me so happy in this important last stretch. He may have struck out a lot over the season, but he has played every single game and he's really putting out his best effort when it really counts.
Keep it up Phils. You only have a few weeks to go. Don't let us down.
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