Dear Philadelphia Phillies (A Rockies Eulogy)

Wahhhhhhhhhh. Cry baby.

Really? The Phils might have a large payroll, one made up of quite a few “homegrown” players, but that is because they have earned it. Or better put, the fans have paid for, and earned it. So enough with your whining and complaining about our payroll and having Philly fans at your stadium. If you don’t want us there, then encourage your fellow fans to actually go to the games, and then maybe just maybe you too will be able to overpay for a full team and accomplish that which we all hope for, a championship.

Not to mention, cobble together a rotation? Halladay is the best pitcher in baseball, with Oswalt and Hamels easily in the top 20 in the NL. Don’t talk to me about pitching with the most overrated pitcher in the league on your staff.

I am impressed by the restraint with which Phillies fans have responded to this column. Hardly fits the stereotype in One Bummed Out Rockies Fan’s oxygen-starved brain.

Dear Rockies Fan:

Home BA: .301
Road BA: .227

Cheat much but still cant win?

$142M* worth of talent, and worth every penny

P.S. Phils payroll in the championship year of 2008 was 14th, two slots from where the Rockies are this year.

And don’t throw the city population statistic out there. Cause, you know:

1. New York
2. Los Angeles
3. Chicago

Yes, all those teams have big payrolls, but half of them aren’t sniffing the postseason this year.

4. Houston
5. Phoenix

Astros are a middle-payroll team. Arizona? Ha. One of the lowest.

6. Philadelphia

All emotion, barely little follow through. If you’re going to put your words out there for all to see, be smarter.

Seriously. Citizens Bank Park has sold out 100+ times and counting. These players know it and will press for larger contracts. I guess the Phillies should let them walk for the sake of morality? Get real, dope. You wanna blame someone for moneyball, blame the players. They’re just as guilty as the teams. Chicken or egg.

Complaining because our fans travel well? I think it’s a good thing, and it speaks to the loyalty of our fanbase. Trash the beligerent minority all you want, it just makes you look like a dolt for stereotyping all Philly fans.

BTW, your team has been around 17 seasons. Wait another 30 or so, THEN you’ll earn the right to cry in your beer over a losing season. What a mary.

Yeah that’s exactly why I go to baseball games, asshole. To pick fights with little kids? Are you serious? If I ever see the little shit on your shoulders at a game, he’s going to get curb stomped. You’re an imbacile.

It’s not our fault your stadium was half-full during the heat of a playoff race, and that most of the people who WERE there were Phillies fans. If you don’t like seeing so many red hats, maybe Rockies fans should actually come out and support their team.

Bummed,

I take issue with your generalization of Philly fans. I have been a lifelong Philly fan, and I do not at all fit your generalization of “Phillies fans are typically overweight alcoholics with anger-management issues who take out their aggressions on children.”

Have you ever been to Philadelphia? If you had, and I do hope you take the opportunity to visit the Bank, then you would find that the majority of Phillies fans are NOT overweight alcoholics, do NOT have anger-management issues, do NOT take out their aggression on others. Yes, we have our idiots, and sometimes those idiots do truly stupid things.

But that doesn’t mean we’re all like that; that’s a small percentage of the people you would meet at a Phillies home game. I’m sorry some of them wandered outside the city limits and disturbed your evening.

I can, however, understand how dismaying it can be to see a talented team, like the Rockies, comethisclose only to fall back. Or to come this far away and not even stand a chance. However, as many of these other commenters have pointed out, the Phils have had their faire share of disappointment; just look at that rather embarrasing ’94-’06 stretch for great examples of that.

I know what it feels like to see a front office be unable to keep their talent – Scott Rolen is a good example of that – but you can’t necessarily a larger population is primarily responsible for financial success. Fans didn’t show up until we had a) a new park and b) a damned lucky run in 2008.

Dear Rockies Fan,

You may want to look back at the Phillies’ history a bit before you start to call them bullies. They are the losingest franchise in the history of North American Recorded Sport.

The Phillies would need a winning streak of over 1,100 games to reach .500 all-time. Your team has been in existence for 18 seasons. The Phillies have finished last 28 times.

This is our time in the sun. Our new stadium allows the revenue to pay for top talent. Your team led the league in attendance in its 1st seven years. What happened to all that money? Maybe your gripe isn’t with the big, bad Phillies. Perhaps it’s with Jerry McMorris or the Monforts.

Your team has a ton of young talent, and for my money are the best team not currently holding a playoff spot. So chin up.

Sincerely,
A Phillies Fan Who’s Been There

PS: Ripping on our fans? Old.

I read this article once it was linked from a Philadelphia website. I’ve got to say, I had sympathy for Rockies fans, which is more than you could say for some Philadelphia fans (notice my use of some? we’ll revisit that).
After reading this article, my sympathy waned. You’ve claimed in many of your comments to be railing against the injustices of revenue-displacement in MLB, but you didn’t address that at all in your article. I should hope I don’t have to quote the article you yourself wrote, but all you do is state how your bullpen collapses under $142 million worth of talent. How your scrappy team met up against the Phils overpaid sluggers. You know full well that when you wrote this article, you had not a care in the world for the payroll numbers of any other MLB team other than the Phils. Why should you, the Phils were the ones who, yet again, dashed the hopes and dreams of your franchise. But don’t then, in the comments following your article, make it seem like this is a diatribe about MLB payroll discrepancies, because it’s not, at all. Some posters even pointed this out to you, and you ignored those posts (which is of course your right).
Finally, the main injustice was your quote at 11:47 AM. Surely I don’t have to reference the whole quote, because as a supposed journalist you’re already regretting the post, right? Phils fans are no more a majority of drunk, child-abusing agressors than Coloradoans are a majority of unhinged, child-stealing, gun-toting murderers. CO boasts the most beer production per capita than anywhere in the U.S., and houses the largest brewery in the entire world. But those facts lead to stereotypes, and stereotypes, while sometimes based in fact, have no basis in rational discussion, am I right? Reckless and obnoxious fans are found the world over, and I can atest to this, having attended sporting events in England and Spain, where a little drunken shouting would be beneficial to stabbings and riots. The point is, you’ve used a broad brush to paint not only Philly fans, but Philadelphians as part of the ‘unwashed masses,’ which, while certainly garnering page hits, unfortunately endears you to no one, your local citizens included.

I’m gonna have to agree that the general tone of this writing does come off as kind off whiny. The Rockies have a good young team and should be able to bounce back. The Phillies have spent a lot of money to keep their core intact to make another run at the WS.
The problem with the model that they have is that they are going to have to keep adding payroll to stay the same (See 2001-2008 Yankees). And with a division that outside of the Mets should be competitive for the next 5 years, that’s not gonna cut it unless they balloon payroll to a Yankee level. And if they don’t then the majority of the fans will stop showing up. Which will probably lead to a financial crisis for whoever owns them, and they will end up looking something like the Astros do now. If they can win the WS maybe it was worth it, but that’s far from a given imo.
I think the Rockies are a better run team then the Phillies and should probably be better than them by 2013.

From a Braves fan.

You relied entirely on the argumentative crutch that Philly fans are obnoxious, which has nothing to do with the quality of their baseball team. As a fellow Rockies fan who takes more pride in my team, this is a seriously pathetic article that makes the rest of us look bad. Derisive shots at currently superior teams aren’t going to put us in the playoffs.