A Glutton for Punishment

I live a cursed life. No, there is no tattoo that burns like a million suns on my backside during the Solstice, nor do people burst into flames once I get close to them (although I know a few who would volunteer for that instead of getting closer to me). You see, I am a sports fan. Not only that, but I am the most leprous of sports fans - I am a Philadelphia sports fan. A glutton for punishment.

For those not in the know, being a Philadelphia sports fan means a life of eternal sacrifice and self-immolation. In the Bible, Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. If a Philadelphia fan's significant other was turned into a pillar of salt, he or she would break out the margarita glasses. If the Greek titan, Prometheus, was a Philly sports fan, and ritualistically had his liver torn out of him every day by a giant, mutant bird of prey, he would say, "Yeah, yeah, just keep it down in the fourth quarter."

And now, a brief history lesson...

You do not have to be a sports fan to appreciate the suffering of the Philadelphia sports fan. You just have to be a person filled with a Herculean capacity for compassion - either that or a sadistic bastard. Not to bore you with statistics, but for a major four-sports (football, baseball, hockey and basketball) city, no one knows heartache and heartbreak like my fellow Philadelphia fans. No major championships in well over 20 years. You figure that, over a period that spanned close to 90 team championships, that your team would stumble onto at least ONE championship - even by accident. And don't give me that garbage about Red Sox and Cubs fans being the scions of sports suffering.

Bull.

Chances are, if you are a Red Sox fan, you are also a fan of the other team sports in that area. Let's see...hmm...how about the New England Patriots and their daisy chain of recent Super Bowl wins? What about the Boston Celtics and their habitual run of championships from the 1960s through the 1980s? Cubs fans? Two words (well, actually, five words): The Bears and the Bulls. More than animals in the stock market zoo, they have combined for seven championships in the last 20 years. Not bad for teams who share the same fan base as the Cubs. And besides, the White Sox have suffered just as long as the Cubs but you never hear their fans bitching. However, I do get a bit of satisfaction out of the fact that the White Sox are also from Chicago.

We Philadelphia fans live and die with our teams. We cheer the misfortune of visiting athletes, we start brawls in the stands when we see a fan wearing the jersey of another team, and yes, our mayor (and future governor) started a snowball hailstorm at Veteran's Stadium directed at the Dallas Cowboys as they retreated in horror to their locker room one cold winter day. But, just give us a damned championship and I am sure each and every one of us would atone for our sins towards other fans and sing "Rainbow Connection" while shoving a beer and burger into their hands in the parking lot. Sure, we booed Santa Claus over 30 years ago, but he was a poor tackler. Yeah, we threw batteries at various opposing outfielders, but at least they were Duracell. And hey, maybe we jumped the glass during the hockey game to get after Tie Domi in the penalty box, but it was only to strangle him a little bit - and who among us couldn't do with a little larynx massage?

We know agony. It's like a thick wooly blanket on a cold, blustery day. We suffer more than a Jewish woman whose son just opened a Red Lobster or an Italian mother whose daughter makes a better sauce than she does. It's a ritual, passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, like cufflinks and sepia-colored photos of immigrant relatives we have no emotional connection to whatsoever. A glimpse into an exchange in a South Philly row house:

Father: "Son, it's time we had a talk"

Son: "But Dad, I'm too young for the sex talk."

Father: "No, this is more important than that. You're what, four or five years old now?"

Son: "Eight"

Father: "Eight. Right. Listen, it's about time you became a man. You love football and baseball and hockey, don't you?"

Son: "Sure. They're a lot of fun."

Father: "Silence! They are NOT fun! They are not supposed to be fun! They are bitch goddesses of the season. They will rip out your heart, make you impotent and RUIN your life, but yet, you cannot look away. You must keep watching. You MUST tie your personal happiness to the success of your teams. In other words, you MUST be miserable for the rest of your life! Pack it in, kid! Fun's over!"

Son: "Sooooooo...Mom's not coming back, is she?"

It's grown from a slightly uncomfortable nuisance to a full-fledged apocalyptic locust storm. You could cover me in naked Playboy Playmate nymphomaniacs, and, until we get a championship, I'll still say, "Can we wait until halftime?" I care more about the balls and strikes on the lead-off batter than matching up my Lotto numbers. I'm more concerned about the Power Play than I am about paying my power bill.

Some day, when the planets realign, the messiah returns, and our insect masters force us into building their adobe pyramids, a Philadelphia sports team will accidentally win a championship. It might take the forfeiting of games by every other team in the league, a nationwide influenza epidemic or a cataclysmic cloud of indifference among other athletes, but, the odds just HAVE to eventually fall in our favor sometime.

Don't they?

And when they do, I can finally get this damned tattoo removed from my ass.