Boo Me, Maybe?

To boo, or not to boo. It appears that, in Philadelphia, that is not a question.

When the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals came to Philadelphia and brought Scott Rolen and Jayson Werth, the boos rained down for a solid week in Citizens Bank Park.  These two are, as most will tell you, public enemies #2 and #3 to Phillies fans (I surmise J.D. Drew remains #1, even though he played his last game almost a year ago).  Not surprisingly, lacking a legitimate “will the Phillies make the playoffs?” storyline, much of the media coverage – and Twitter talk – focused on the treatment Rolen and Werth received from fans and whether or not it was deserved.

Just to be clear: I do not boo. I choose not to boo.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t think others have a right to boo.  Players may not like to hear it.  Even members of the media may not like to hear it.  But when it costs a small fortune to take the family to a game (counting tickets, parking, refreshments, and maybe even a souvenir if there's any money left over), I’m okay with fans who vent their frustration over poor performance, lack of hustle, or – in the case of Rolen and Werth – a couple of guys who just didn't want to play in Philly anymore.

However, there is a line that should not be crossed.  Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, I’ve seen it happen.  “I have kids, I’ve got a wife, I’ve got a mom and dad,” Jimmy Rollins said in 2008.  “Before I was a ballplayer, I was a person and I am a person, the same way you are. So you say something [to me] as a person – forget the uniform – as a person, I could say something back.  But because of the uniform, [the fans] can say anything [they] want and [the uniform should be] my armor, my shield.”

Rollins took a lot of flak for his comments in 2008 about Phillies fans being “front-runners.”  He also failed miserably when he tried to adequately explain exactly what he meant.  Nevertheless, in this specific instance, he’s right.  Fans shouldn’t say anything they want.  There should be some boundaries.  But right now, there aren’t.  Which is why, during their brief rivalry in 2008, I didn’t take my daughter to Mets games.  I didn’t want to expose her to all the nonsense – often profane – coming from fans of both teams in our section.

The bottom line is, if people want to boo, I say let them.  Given Rollins’ lack of hustle recently, and Charlie Manual’s reaction to it, Jimmy should expect to hear some the rest of the year.  We can only hope the booing doesn't turn into outright abuse because, sadly, there are fans who abuse players unfairly and take it entirely too far.  It’s a shame really, because I’m tired of my daughter asking me, “Daddy, why is that man so angry?”

Perhaps when she’s older I can tell her it’s because he is a sad, pathetic, drunk, frustrated ex-high school athlete who thinks he was just one bad break away from a professional baseball career, so he blames the current players for his sorry lot in life.  But for now I just say, “I’m not sure honey, but we both know we shouldn’t talk to people like that, right?”  Then she smiles, nods her head, and goes back to eating her ice cream.

How could anyone boo that?

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Without Question

My brother looked at me like I was crazy. "Seriously, I'd like to leave now," I told him again. "I need to go to work tomorrow."

It was October 21, 2009. The Phillies were just beginning to celebrate their second straight National League Championship. Preparations were being made on the infield for postgame interviews and presentations. And there we were, in a standing room only area right behind home plate, facing each other in silence as Citizen's Bank Park rocked around us.

After a moment, he relented. But even as we made our way to the exit, he kept one eye on the field, desperately trying to drink in every last drop of the event as best he could. Would that I had decided to do the same. I suppose I could blame it on the fact that I was physically and emotionally exhausted from Game Four (which I was fortunate enough to attend).  I could even blame my brother for not putting up more of a fight to stay. But if I'm being honest, in the end, I blame myself.

Yes, we Phillies fans are a strange breed and our eccentricities manifest in different ways. For me, that one world championship after more than a quarter century of futility somehow made me numb to what I was witnessing.  It was as if - gasp! - I expected them to win. So what if I didn't stay and watch the NLCS celebration. There was a World Series parade still to come and I was saving my energy for that.

Only it didn't come this time.  Or the next.

And all the while I stood idly by offering neither intelligent commentary nor unbridled snark. Clearly the passionate ridicule I provided in 2008 was vital to the team's success. Plus, with FJM gone, those poorly written articles weren't going to make fun of themselves (although some come close, albeit unintentionally). So last week, as autumn and winter battled it out for control of the final week of November, I finally decided it was time I started contributing again - both to this blog and the success of the Phillies.

I was certain my brother would agree, which is why I explained all this to him when we saw each other over the Thanksgiving holiday. Instead, he simply looked at me like I was crazy.

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Socrates and Baseball

Okay. So 2009 was not as successful as 2008 - for the Phillies or for the blog. Yet, with the 2010 season a week away, I'm willing to take another shot at this. Unfortunately, if it's possible, I am even more busy this year than I was last year. But I'll see what I can do.

Leading off, I just thought it might be fun to take a brief tour inside my head, which simultaneously holds tremendous respect for both baseball and philosophy. Relax. As the two or three folks who read the other blog can attest, very few of my posts are like this. Nevertheless, the following paraphrased excerpt (from here) does a pretty good job of describing what I see as an important link between the two seemingly unrelated subjects:

Baseball asks questions about balls and strikes that encourage both player and fan to reflect on bigger questions about life. To stand in that batter's box and stare down the pitcher on the mound is to ask a question of oneself. Not just the baseball quesion, "Can I hit this ball?" but the character question of, "Am I up to the challenge?"

Billy Beane admitted to facing the possibility that he wasn't up to the challenge, unlike his roommate Lenny Dykstra. "Lenny was so perfectly designed, emotionally, to play the game of baseball," he said. "He was able to instantly forget any failure and draw strength from every success. He had no concept of failure. I was the opposite."

Winning a baseball game may be meaningless in and of itself, because what players and fans really desire is to be the kind of person who can achieve that goal. We want to be able to face up to the challenges presented by the game, because hitting a ball with the stick demands virtues that can be applied to life's more meaningful challenges.

Ultimately, to answer baseball's questions about success, a player must stand in that batter's box and risk the possibility of failure. Likewise philosophical questions require us to risk being wrong. Embodied in the sincere asking of any question is the allowance on the part of the questioner that he or she does not know the answer. This admission of fallibility, so familiar to athletes, engenders a kind of humility in a man like Socrates.

One story goes that Apollo's divine oracle at Delphi once declared that no one was wiser than Socrates. But rather than gratifying the philosopher, this threw him for a loop. He knew that what the oracle said must be true, but he knew just as surely that he wasn't wise at all. "Whatever does this god mean?" he thought, "What is this riddle?"

Eventually he solved the puzzle by understanding that wisdom is the admission of ignorance. The oracle, he concluded, was using him as an example, as if to say, the wisest among you understands that his wisdom is worthless.

Just something to keep in mind. You never know when it might come in handy - especially at this blog.

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Five months on

It's hard to wrap my head around everything that happened during the 2008 Phillies season and in the five months since Citizen's Bank Park erupted and the Phillies played dogpile on Brad Lidge - so I'm not going to try.

Instead I'm going to gently wrap those memories in tissue paper and pack them safely away. It's a new year, it's a new season, and this is a new blog. It's time to turn the page and I'm hoping you'll come along.

If you're looking for baseball discussion that is sometimes logical, sometimes mystical, and always passionate, then you've come to the right place. So relax, pour yourself an adult beverage, and smoke 'em if you got 'em because the defending World Series Champion Philadlephia Phillies are one week from taking the field.

Admittedly, I'm off to a late start, but I'll try to make up ground quickly.

Play ball!

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