Congratulations Philadelphia!

Shame on me for not writing a single thing in this blog in 2017. This year that will not happen.

I didn’t want to start up again on January 1^st. That is just too cliché. This is, however, part of an overall restructure of the way I take on life based on as honest of an assessment of it as possible and how it ended up at the end of 2017.

Ah, where to restart? Let’s just stick with sports and the fact that the Philadelphia Eagles finally won their Super Bowl ring. We’ve heard pretty much every year for 52 years that THIS will be the year they win and, by God, their fans were right, just like they predicted.

I root for New York sports teams, except now for the NY Jets, whom the Eagles finally tied with Super Bowl rings with one. I don’t root for the Jets anymore since they signed Michael Vick a few years ago and will never forgive them for that. So I’ve been able to experience the feeling of rooting for a winning team 4 times with the NY Giants.

I can’t stand any Philadelphia sports team and its because of what happened when I moved here to Delaware for good in 1986 and the NY Mets were in the World Series. Everywhere I went to watch the World Series against the Red Sox, Philadelphia fans were booing the Mets. I couldn’t understand it because we didn’t feel the same way about the Phillies back then. We hated the Pirates and the Cardinals. 

So I vowed those 31 years ago to always root against all Philadelphia sports teams and that extends all the way down to middle school level.

However, I don’t root against my friends. I want my friends to experience the positive things in life because…they are my friends. While my distaste for Philly sports teams and my reveling in any loss they might take is basically good-natured, as a compassionate human being I have to rejoice for my friends when they get a chance to celebrate, especially when its so very, very, very, very infrequently that they get to do so.

For those who don’t fully understand why emotions run so high with people who are fans of sports, consider what follows. First, in the US, I think that Football and Baseball are the 2 sports to which this pertains the most. But let’s take football.

For 16-20 Sundays of the year (and now some Saturdays, Thursdays and Monday nights) during the Fall and Winter months, football fans sit in front of a TV and watch a game. It’s a social occasion where fans relax, get entertained, eat food, have some drinks, and watch a game that many of them tried to play when they were kids.

Playing the game helps relate people more to the game since they understand how it is played and how hard it is to reach the professional level. People admire the skills and hard work it takes.

They become attached to the teams that they are able to see locally on TV and even see in person over the course of time. If an organization does things right, the players stick around for a while and fans become attached to the players and admire what they are able to achieve. 

The associated social activities, the changing seasons and the feelings associated with great Fall weather and Holiday festivities are all positive feelings that further endear fans to sports teams. For instance, when I think of Football season I think of changing leaves, crisp cool air, maybe apple cider, turkey on Thanksgiving, playing in the snow when I was a kid, beer….lots of it when I drank, pizza, and wings.

Fans become parents and their kids end up watching games and their parents and watching football is a bonding experience where kids begin to pile up some of the same memories I had, perhaps.

Then at the end of the season one team wins a championship. With football 31 of 32 teams and millions of people then get to watch the fans of the team that wins it all celebrate victory. Moms and Dads are hugging, kids and parents are hugging, dogs are barking excitedly while wearing their teams colors even though they have no clue why. 

And we want to experience that same feeling with our own families and kids. Everyone wants to be happy. We want positive closure to a season full of ups and down. Everyone wants to end on a high note like that.

Year after year after year we wait to have that happen for us. There are plenty of those ups and down throughout the year so we do get to have plenty of good times along the way and things to talk about…we sign a great new player, we win big games against rivals, we taunt each other’s teams fans, we strategize, hope, eat pizza, drink beer, gather with friends, cheer, and have fun. 

Then, most of the time, we end up saying, “wait til next year!” We recover from losses quickly because of the way our minds work and we recall all of the positive things, as listed above, that happened throughout the year. Mainly, we remember the great times we had with friends and family.

In probably every single family, or group of friends, the following has probably been heard, “I just want to see my team win ONE time before I die.” 

There are people that never have that wish come true. It’s very sad that there are friends you have right now who wanted to celebrate a big win with their father or mother or uncle or aunt or grandparent or friend and never had that chance to do so. 

How much does that really mean to some of those people who are on the living side of that equation? Go through your social media feed and take a look at some of the pictures of your friends who are sports fans. I saw two in particular which I will mention. One, was of a man kissing his father’s urn of ashes and saying that “we finally did it, Dad. I wish you were here to see it.” Another was of a friend who had gone to his father’s grave, decorated it with Eagles merchandise, and saying basically the same thing. Those are very moving and powerful statements about life there.

For all of my friends I wish that you get the opportunity to experience the feeling of winning like that. I hope that you get to experience that with your kids also and your grand kids too. That’s just winning in life though; its not so much about a sports team particularly. They are just a piece of the puzzle…a conduit to what is incredible about life. Its why sports galvanizes families and, indeed, entire communities. 

Have fun at your parade in Philadelphia on Thursday, my friends.