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A City Over-run With Hope |
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There are no shortage of bad stories out there about Philadelphia sports fans, and don't get me wrong every city has their share of idiots. Philly's idiots and their stories will always end up on the front pages of Sports Sections and all over the ESPN's of the world. I promise you that this story will not be picked up by any newspaper or be talked about on ESPN, because it is a story that shows Philly fans in another light. The light I saw this very morning and have felt for as long as I have known how to feel anything.
So every Tuesday and Thursday I take my youngest to his pre-school. The strangest thing happened today on that trip to school. That trip that usually gets in the way of me writing my story, today wrote my morning story for me.
I am a crazy creature of habit, so I stop at three places every Tuesday and Thursday... His school, Starbucks, and WAWA (a convenience store). When I pulled into his school, the first thing I saw was a mom and her little girl walking across the parking lot wearing the bright orange shirts that the Flyers gave out on Tuesday. The shirts say, "WHY NOT US!" on them, the phrase spoken by Paul Holmgren earlier in the series when asked about the improbability of a team that finished dead last a year ago getting to a Stanley Cup Final. If anyone should be allowed to make that statement it is the man who proved that Rome CAN be built in a day, Paul Holmgren.
Anyway, back to the girl and her mom. When you work in hockey almost everyone around you associates you with the team, so when the mom saw me she yelled, "Go Flyers," and continued, "I told her (my daughter) that this shirt was too big to wear to school, but she told me, 'Mom if I don't wear it, the Flyers won't win the Cup so what could I say? So I put mine on too."
"Very cute," I said as I held the door for her and we walked in.
"There's the guy I want to see," an older man came over to me. "You tell them Flyers that I used to be one a few hundred people that watched that team play in that there Spectrum in the late 60's. I had tickets for ten years and it went from 'pick your seat' to a ten year waiting list for tickets in those ten years."
"But when I watched Bernie come in I knew it was something special, and when they got Marty Biron I said to my wife, 'Hey you can't go wrong with a French goalie!' Those Penguins are a damn good team that's for sure, but hey-we sucked last year and look at us now. I told my wife, 'We don't got to win 4 games in a row. We got to win 8. We are too close to quit! Way too close!"
I laughed with him as his wife came over to me. She had just dropped their grandchild off.
"Go Flyers!," she said, "Yeh, this is nothing for us Philadelphians. We are always counted out. Just another day at work for us!
'We don't need to win eight, we need to start hitting them through the boards."
"I love your attitude," I said.
"Hey what are we gonna do? Feel sorry for ourselves for being in the semi-finals?" He said, "Hell no."
At that point I knew I would write this blog, and I hopped in the car to start working on it as I headed to Starbucks. In Starbucks, the guy behind the counter had a Flyers hat on, and a big homemade Stanley Cup sat on the counter.
"Hey it's you," he said. "I am so pumped. My girlfriend and I stayed up late making this Cup. She got me tickets last week on ebay for like more than I make here in a WEEK!, but still, she was all over me last night for making the Cup."
"They are down three nothing!" she said, "Don't make a Cup."
I said to her, "you don't understand. If I don't make the Cup, they won't win. I made a Cup with my mom in 1987 when I was a kid. We went to Game 6 of the Cup Finals. You know when the Flyers were down and out to Gretzky and those guys? And then Propper and JJ DAIGNEAULT! People were drinking beer out of my Cup in the parking lot. I was like 8! If those Flyers could beat those Oilers in that game. These sure can beat these Penguins!"
After I told her that she looked at me at 1 am and said, "FINE! I will help you. We stayed up until 3 am and drank beer out of this Cup last night to celebrate. Best time we ever had together. I slept like 3 hours last night. SO pumped. We are so winning tonight and coming back."
This woman waiting for her Latte chimed in. "You sound like my family. My parents were so nuts that we traveled to five cities during the 35 game un-beaten streak way-back-when. We drove through the night to get to Boston to see them break it. My dad always called it "Flyers Power," and he would yell it to us whenever we played sports and were down and out. It meant "never give up. It aint over until it's over."
"Are you going tonight?" I asked.
"No, but only because when I go they lose! So my husband is taking a friend. It is killing me, but those players have worked too hard."
"So you will deprive yourself because you are superstitious?"
"Oh no. It's not superstition. It's fact"
"BUT YOU ARE THE ONE WHO WENT TO ALL THE STREAK GAMES WHEN THEY NEVER LOST?"
"I know," she said, "I know. but I lost the touch. They are 3-0 without me these playoffs. 0-2 with me! I can't live with that guilt."
As I drove away towards my house I realized what an unbelievable experience it was talking to these Flyers fans. A friend of mine called me just then desperately looking for tickets.
"I woke up this morning and something told me I had to go tonight. That something awesome was going to happen."
So, I called a friend of mine who usually has tickets to sell and he talked to me and told me that he was amazed how the tickets were selling today for tonight's game.
"It's not like the Eagles. When they are down and out NO ONE wants tickets. But Flyers fans, they just don't believe in Quit and for some odd reason they NEVER stop believing."
As I hung up, I realized something about Flyers fans. They don't give up. They don't turn away. They fight. They fight for all the teams that have come before. It is in their blood.
Last night I met some friends in the Old City section of Philly for dinner. I walked right past Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Both are HUGE symbols of all that is great in this country and all that is great in Philadelphia.
Both were sitting confidently in the silence last night, illuminated by spotlights dug deep into the ground. Silent Monuments. But of course, silent now did not mean silent ALWAYS.
It was almost 230 plus years ago that that they were far from silent. When a group of hodge podge Americans stood up to a seemingly unbeatable empire and simply said, "Enough is enough. This is our land, not yours. We have worked it and made it into what it is today and we feel we own it because we have earned it. You may be a Giant Empire, but this is our home. This is our land and if you don't agree with us you know where to find us. So big and mighty England...come and get it."
And of course, as you know, we won THAT series.
It is fitting the "God Bless America" has become such a huge part of Flyers hockey. An Anthem to the land we love, not the flag we fly.
That was the beginnings of not just a great country, but a great city, and somehow that feeling still exists here.
That feeling that no matter what and no matter how, ANYTHING is possible.
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Just as I was about to post this Ladynic contacted me. She is an amazing Flyers fan. She put up a Flickr site called "We Believe in the Flyers" for people to post pictures showing their faith. It can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neat1325/2493932398/in/set-72157604127875989/
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