If you’re a Philadelphia sports fan, you really don’t have time to be planning pumpkin patch trips or mull cider, because you’re too busy monitoring your blood pressure to be sure you don’t stroke out as a result of your teams and their near-catastrophic shenanigans.
The new month brings the combo of Philly sports fandom and its accompanying stress, and spare me the “worst fans in all of sports” horseshit— there’s a reason we wear shirts that say, “No one likes us, we don’t care,” and the reason is exactly that. We don’t care. Our passion makes people jealous, what can we say? I often trade barbs with Commanders or worse, Dallas fans in comments sections and am forced to remind them that I was in college in the early- 1990s the last time their teams went to a Super Bowl, so really, do they want a cheesesteak with all that whine?
I think one thing that annoys people about Philly fans in addition to their inability to understand that Rocky was a documentary is that we will hate our own teams and players as much as they will when they’re not playing well. The love-hate relationship will rollercoaster even within the same day, the same game. This week is a perfect example. The Phillies were tossed from the playoffs last night during the shortest possible Red October, the Flyers suffered the worst season opener shutout in their history 7-0 to Pittsburgh, and the Eagles lost their 2-0 streak when they crashed out 27-7 to the Bears in Monday Night Football. Our QB1 Jalen Hurts got blindsided in the head by a dirty Chicago hit so hard he was drinking coffee on the sidelines like he thought it was the next morning (he was furious about being sidelined during an interception, and fans finally got to see him lose it). LeBron appearing in a 76ers uniform for the first time was probably the only thing this week that kept Philly fans out of mental asylums.
I screamed about Bryce Harper being overpaid and sucking when he made an error in the field the other day that I thought would cost them the game just as loud as when I screamed that he came back on his next at-bat and clocked a crucial dinger, cinched by singers from Schwarber and Bohm to secure the last-minute playoff win before falling to the Braves last night. Philadelphia sports teams reaffirm the underdog Rocky narrative every time our teams nearly lose and then somehow pull wins out of their asses at the last minute, but that luck ran out this week for the Phils.
Luckily in the pop culture world it’s “spooky season” so we can comfort ourselves with gentle viewing like the Ryan Murphy Lizzie Borden biopic and his release of American Horror Story season 13. I’ve seen just about every season and couldn’t wait for the new show, and while I consume all things Jessica Lange, episode one had a lot going on and sent me dutifully marking up a screenshot of the episodes from past seasons to rewatch to get up to speed for S13. You must be a Philly fan if you have to calm your nervous system by watching serial killers and comfort yourself by watching apocalypse witch glamporn.
Go Birds.