PHILADELPHIA — EDITOR'S NOTE: Some recent columns by T.J. Simers have brought howls of protest from Philadelphians, some of whom suggested that Jim Murray would never bash a city in such a manner. How soon they forget. This column by the late Pulitzer Prize- winning columnist originally ran Oct. 5, 1978.
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"Foo-delphia," the natives call it. The town that isn't New York--but the climate's just as bad. A loser's town. Its heyday was the British occupation. Ben Franklin slept here. Its chief tourist attraction is a cracked bell. A generation of vaudevillians noted it was closed on weekends. And not very open the rest of the week.
They used to have great baseball teams here. But nobody in Philadelphia cared. Connie Mack had to sell them off. Philadelphia preferred teams that were like the rest of the town--second rate. They'd rather boo in Philadelphia. Excellence annoys them. Even competence bores them. They want somebody to blame, not praise.
The Phillies are a perfect team for them--not very good but good enough to get to where their incompetence shows up, and matters. Philadelphia loves the Phillies. Every strikeout, every two-base error. They come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The Phillies never disappoint them. They get in a World Series once every 50 years and lose it as fast as they can. Like Philadelphia, they are just something to hurry through.
For Philadelphia, this team was made in heaven. It was born to be yelled at. It couldn't win a pennant in any league that didn't have the Cubs. The team moves just faster than junk mail. Phillie fans love that. Gives them something to throw beer cans at.
The current manager, Danny Ozark, probably the most second-guessed creature this side of a man with two mothers-in-law, thinks the problem is over-education: "The fans know a lot about baseball, but they think they know more than they do. In fact, they think they know more than you do."
In 1964, the Phils had a seven-game lead at the end of September and just enough games left to blow that lead and then some. It was the biggest curtain-call pratfall in baseball history.
The Phils were overmatched against Cincinnati in the 1976 playoff series. But they took the first game from the Dodgers last year and had a 5-3 lead with two out and nobody on base in the ninth inning of the third game.
