Phinally... We Are the Champions

I've been waiting several hours to try and have a coherent thought about this.

I don't. Which seem appropriate, considering the rallying cry for Phillies fans during this World Series was "Why Can't Us?"
Being a sports fan is one of the great pleasures in life. A team fanbase brings people together -- black and white, suburban and urban, Republican and Democrat -- and leaves their differences elsewhere. Everyone wears the same color and lives in the same family. Sure, there are members of the family chastising one another, and members of the family that embarass you by burping at the dinner table or throwing batteries at J.D. Drew. But overall, you love being a part of that community, because belonging to something like that is special.

Being a Philly sports fan? Well, all those things above apply. But being a Philly sports fan is also a test of faith. It's been 9,283 days since we woke up with a championship, woke up with the ability to say "We're #1!", woke up not wondering if we're the butt of a cosmic joke (we probably are, but now we don't care), woke up and felt good for a truly silly reason.

Because your team winning a sports title isn't so important in the grand scheme of things. It wion't fix the economy, or keep us from electing the wrong people to run the country, or save anyone's life, or educate a kid properly... the list is endless. But the reason it's not important is why it is important. Life ain't easy, and contrary to popular belief, there's no one who's going to make it easy for you. Easier, perhaps, but not easy. There are important things in our lives that bring us joy -- our families and friends and their happiness. But in the world we live in, we spend enough time concerned with important things that largely bring us stress, and stress only. Sports are a release and an escape, and one that brings people together. The greatest thing about being a sports fan is that, even though we sometimes treat it like life and death, it's not. When we lose, we come back again the next day, the next week, the next season, and try it once again, and we do it as a family. And when we win, it means a euphoria that you don't really get from the stressful crap, ever.

God willing, if I'm still around 50 or more years from now and making a list of the happiest days of my life, I won't remember much of anything I ever did at work (sorry, guys) until long after I list getting married, having kids, having (hopefully) grandkids, graduating, etc. Behind that stuff, there'll be a long list of stuff that is incredibly unimportant -- and last night will be near the top of that list.

Later this week, I'll get around to writing something that covers all the stuff about this team, this title, the Series, the extended game, Lidge and Utley, Ruiz and Burrell, Jenkins and Hamels, all of it. Today, I'm letting go of the frustration and pain. A few years ago, I wrote the following words, after Tampa Bay beat the Eagles for the NFC Title...

The city of Philadelphia hasn't celebrated a professional sports title since 1983. 1983!!!! Two decades, people. I mean John Travolta's revived his career at least three times in that span. Back in 1983, MTV still played videos, Bill Clinton was an oversexed country rube with pretensions of greatness, and the Berlin Wall still stood. I mean, we've witnessed the collapse of Communism in the last 20 years, but we haven't seen a Philly sports team win diddly squat. My little brother is now eighteen, has grown up in the Philadelphia suburbs, and has never seen the local sports teams bring home a championship. It's periods like that which lead young people down the path to New York Yankee fandom, or worse yet, Dallas Cowboy fandom, each of which guarantee everlasting torment in hell (fine, don't believe it, but I think it's a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the Bible).

... We believed, and all we got was a kick in the crotch, with a steel-toed boot propelled by a rocket. We wanted to cry, but most of us were too old and too cold. We cried as kids, but now we just accept it as it numbs our soul one more time. The pain hurts too much to cry. It needs to sink in and become a part of us, linking us to our sportsfan forefathers, the ones who watched the Sixers blow Game 7 in 1981, or the Phillies collapse in 1964 or the Eagles-Browns in 1950 and then bequeathed this curse to us -- the curse who makes us who we are and what we are -- Philadelphia sports fans, the ultimate losers, the ones who make all the other cities feel better about whatever piddling little problem their team faces.

F--- the pain. Hell hath frozen over, and this is one beautiful Winter Wonderland. Say it with me...

Our Philadelphia Phillies are the 2008 World Series Champions. Welcome to the Promised Land. Enjoy the celebration.