Championships don't come to Philly, do they?

Correction appended

 

I’ve been a lifelong fan of Philadelphia sports teams despite not growing up in the area. In fact, I live in enemy territory: Northern New Jersey. But my dad, a lifelong Philadelphia fan, instilled in me a love for the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers and Sixers.

He also taught me how difficult it is to be a fan of Philly sports. I don’t want to hear about the Chicago Cubs’ 100-year title drought or the Curse of the Bambino. Last I checked, the Celtics have won 17 championships, and the Bulls had a little-known player named Michael Jordan. Need I mention the Patriots or the Bears?

No, Philly is the true town of sports frustration. In their 126-year history, the Phillies have had 10,000 losses and now two World Series titles. I will repeat that again: 10,000 losses. The Eagles have never won a Super Bowl and were last champions of the NFL in 1960. The Flyers last won in 1975 and the Sixers in 1983. No other city has had such a long streak of futility in all four major sports: Before the Phillies won this year, 25 years and 100 seasons passed.

I learned at a young age about Philly teams’ tendency to lose in the most heartbreaking way possible. One of the first sports memories I have is watching Game 7 of the 2000 NHL playoff series between the Flyers and the New Jersey Devils, back when the Flyers still had Eric Lindros. When a potential game-tying shot went off the post, my dad simply said, “This could only happen to the Flyers.”

I had truly bought into that Flyers team, and it had let me down. What made it even worse was going to school the next day, where my fifth-grade teacher, a die-hard Devils fan, rubbed it in my 11-year-old face.

Last year, however, things started to turn around. Seeing the standings in early September 2007, with the Phillies seven games back with 17 games to play, I resigned myself to another disappointing season. When the famous comeback started, I couldn’t believe it: It was like the Mets had become a Philly team. The day the Phillies won the division, I was ecstatic.

Of course we all know how that ended: The team was so excited it forgot to show up for the playoffs and was swept by the Colorado Rockies. A year wiser, the 2008 Phillies turned it on and didn’t switch it off until they had won the World Series.

On a whim, I entered my name into a drawing for the team’s playoff tickets. But because I had entered my name so late, the only series for which I had a slim chance to get tickets was the World Series. The chance of the Phillies going that far seemed equally improbable.

Philadelphia took out the Milwaukee Brewers in the Divisional Series and, while the Phillies clashed with the Dodgers for the National League pennant, something remarkable happened. I got an e-mail the day of NLCS Game 5 telling me that I had the opportunity to buy tickets for the World Series. I jumped at the chance and bought three standing-room-only tickets for Game 4.

The next thing I knew, I was headed to Citizens Bank Park over Fall Break with my dad. I was hoping to break a long personal losing streak: The Phillies have only won two of the roughly 15 games I have attended. The atmosphere was amazing. We stood right above the Rays’ bullpen, so the fans around us were heckling them in true Philly fashion.

As soon as the Phillies started hitting home runs, everyone went crazy. Ryan Howard’s long bomb got the whole place rocking, and Joe Blanton’s homer was ridiculous. Later, Howard added another bomb that made the score 10-2. As the game ended, the stadium exploded, and I must have high-fived about 20 people on the way back to the car. This was when I, and I’m sure many other fans, really began to believe the Phillies would win.

I was in disbelief when Brad Lidge closed the second half of Game 5 to clinch the World Series. My parents and brother were watching the game with me at home, and we were all cheering after the game, but it still had not sunk in. One of my teams had finally won. It took about a week for me to fully grasp this.

World Champion Philadelphia Phillies has a good ring to it, don’t you think?

Correction:

The original version of this column stated that the Philadelphia Eagles last won an NFL championship in 1950. In fact, they last won one in 1960.