By Ben Roderick
One Phillies fan comes to terms with his team's transformation.
While I’ve lived in the Philadelphia area for my entire life, I am by no means a lifelong Phillies fan. It wasn’t until 2007, when circumstances dictated I spend the entire summer on my living room couch, that I started to watch the Phillies in earnest. These were the days of actual Phils vs. Mets rivalry, when Jimmy Rollins was getting in hot water for saying the Phillies were the team to beat. In fact, the rivalry was such that another writer for Began in '96, Joe Schackman, an avid Mets fan, proposed a $50 bet at the beginning of the 2008 season, with the payoff occurring if either of our teams won the World Series. I didn’t take the bet then. Now I would in a heartbeat.
Fast forward to the present, when the Mets have been out of contention for the entire year, the Phils have a 12 game lead on the second place Braves and have been World Series favorites since April. So what gives? How did the Phillies go from being a good, competitive team in 2007 to a powerhouse in 2011? I’ll tell you what’s happened: the Phillies have become the Yankees of the National League.
Long before I became devoted to the Phils, I detested the Yankees. They buy championships! Their fans are frontrunners! These are the vitriolic statements with which I showered Yankees fans. My brother’s attendance of a 2009 World Series game at Yankees stadium only confirmed my suspicions: there was no energy, real fans couldn’t afford tickets to the ballpark, and the critiques go on. I’ve met a number of people wearing Yankees caps who don’t even know they’re a baseball team.
I’ve been defending (some may call it ignoring) the Phils’ recent spending spree, saying it doesn’t come close to the Yankees. But the truth is that, while the latter outspends the former by $30m, Phillies salaries top $170m. The Yankees and Phillies are the top two spenders in all of baseball. The second highest spender in the American League spend about $161m per year, 80% of the Yanks’ payroll, and average spending in the AL amounts to only 45% of the Yankees salaries. The second highest spender in the NL spends 72% as much as the Phillies, while the average payroll is 48% of their spending. While the NL has slightly more parity, the Yankees and Phillies vastly outspend the majority of their counterparts, with 7 teams in the AL spending less than half of the Yankees’ payroll and the Phillies more than doubling 8 NL teams’ total salaries. The teams have competed for a number of free agents, most recently Cliff Lee. Because of my demonization of the Yankees and their spending, these have been crushing realizations for me.
But while high salaries do entice free agents, stars come to Philadelphia for more than just a paycheck. Opposing teams hate to play at Citizen’s Bank because of the raucous atmosphere. Everywhere you go in the Philadelphia area, people are not only decked out in players’ gear, they’re happy to talk about last night’s game, discuss the batting order, or talk about how great an acquisition Pence has been. Tickets are impossible to come by, but that doesn’t stop fans from going to the ballpark to tailgate and support the team.
In fact, Cliff Lee chose to come to Philadelphia for less money than the Yankees offered him in large part because of the fans, and now he has his face plastered on billboards all over the area. Devotion to your team is like currency in this neck of the woods. The Phillies were the first franchise in sports history to top 10,000 losses, Philadelphia has never won a Super Bowl, and we have seen just two World Series championships in 128 seasons and yet the fans stuck around. Philadelphia supporters are fans in the truest sense of the word.
So I guess the question is, Why is this such an ugly comparison to me? In a city that has had a chip on its shoulder for as long as I can remember, it’s great to see the Phillies not just winning, but dominating; it’s great to have a Philadelphia team be perennial contenders; and it’s great to have real sports heroes in an area where Rocky has long been #1. Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that the owners and GM are willing to spend big money to entice talented free agents. All I know is that it’s great to finally feel like winners, and perhaps the Yankees may soon aspire to be the Phillies of the AL.
Ben Roderick is a guest contributor for Began in ‘96.
5 comments:
Essentially you're everything you hate: A fair weathered fan who became one when the Phillies finally made a post season run and a fan whose team spends more money than any other in the league.
Yankee Stadium may not have the same noise at it used to, but the roots of its fans are far stronger than this recent surge of Phillies fans.
However, entertaining and good article. Welcome to the blog.
Mr Anonymous: I think you underestimate the depth of the Philly fanbase. 90% of the baseball games I have seen in my life have been Phillies games, and most of the people I know have been die-hard Phillies fans as long as I can remember. Any team that is playing well will naturally attract fair-weather fans, but the foundation of the fanbase is dedicated and strong in the Philly area. And in 2008 we finally got paid back for 25 years of waiting.
I think what he is saying is that Ben is essentially a bandwagon fan. It may have been circumstantial but regardless. His first year as a phillies fan coincided with their rise to prominence.
Thanks for reading guys.
-Joe
I agree that the timing of my fandom does seem a bit hypocritical. I couldn't help the timing of my illness, but I'm not making an excuse. And you're correct to say the enthusiasm has sprung up at the same time as the wins, but I think it differs significantly from the Yankees in that people who wear Phillies gear can still talk about the team and there's a lot of energy filling the stadium and city. Also, Philadelphia is a huge sports city that has supported the teams through thick and thin.
In any case, I appreciate you reading the article and commenting. Hopefully you keep enjoying the blog.
As a Yankees fan, it's hard to me to accept the fact that Jeter, Posada, and Rivera are the last of the franchise that made me fall in love with baseball. They're getting old and aren't what they are used to be (as Joe so kindly pointed out in his article a while back). That said, it doesn't make me love the Yankees any less -- as the first Anonymous commenter said, Pinstripe fandom still runs deeply no matter who is on the field or managing the team.
I have no doubt that there are a boatload of bandwagon fans from both Philadelphia and New York -- that's the nature of the beast. But as a fan of one team, I don't think it's fair for anyone to say their team's enthusiasm is more prominent or is more deeply rooted than the other if you haven't experienced it from that side (bandwagon fan or otherwise).
As always, a great read. Awesome job, guys.
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