Hometown Pride

During the trip to Florida for my uncle's funeral I realized something, albeit for the second time: My family (for the most part) loves and is loyal to our hometown sports teams. My uncle had all kinds of Phillies and Eagles paraphernalia around his house. It made me feel all warm inside to know I was a part of this legacy of fans.


What's funny is that I'm not actually from Philly. So how did this happen? My dad was born in Chester. My mom's grandparents lived in a Philly suburb. We actually grew up in South Jersey, about 30 minutes outside of Philly.  Very few of us are left in the hometown vicinity anymore. So now there are Philadelphia fans in Florida, DC, Kentucky, California, Chicago, North Carolina and beyond.

I think we were forced to claim Philly because the Philadelphia area is so small and includes New Jersey and Delaware in it's radius. There are no sports teams in South Jersey and North Jersey (home of the Nets, Devils, Giants & Jets - yeah, I said it!) is just too far away to attend games regularly. They also don't show those games in our viewing area (proving that NJ is actually two different states in one).

I was a team hopper throughout middle and high school. I was a fan of the Bulls, Cowboys, Raiders, Dodgers, and White Sox at one point or another. It wasn't until the Eagles drafted Donovan McNabb that I became a fan of Philadelphia again. One of my friends went to Syracuse and played with McNabb so I felt that was good enough to get my attention. And it's been a ride-or-die relationship ever since. About that same time I decided I was going to support all Philly teams. Allen Iverson was just blowing up with the Sixers so it seemed perfect to me.

Philly teams take a lot of flack for sucking. The Phillies actually became the losingest team in sports history in 2007 by accumulating 10,000 losses. And yet, Philadelphia is the only North American city in which all of its teams (Eagles, Phillies, Flyers and 76ers) from the four major sports leagues have played for their respective championships in one year, 1980. Only the Phillies actually won, though. Thankfully, the Phillies won again in 2008 and returned in 2009 to try for the repeat. Both the Eagles and Sixers have flirted with the championship over the past 11 years.  Yet, no matter how often they get my hopes up, only to dash them in the playoffs, I will always bleed Eagle green.