I’m throttling towards Paris at 187mph via Eurostar en route to a two day working session, but my mind is elsewhere. Wandering around outside King’s Cross station this morning – the fat taxis farting gray fumes into the brisk London morning – I couldn’t help but realize that my journey would be pushing me even further away (thousands of miles and a full 6-hour time zone lapse) form what’s undoubtedly going to be a huge day for Philadelphians.
Through the train window the French countryside blinks by in a smattering of green and brown like some rapid-fire presentation of psychotic watercolours. The aesthetic is completely lost on me, at least for today. I’m looking for something I won’t find in France – the ceremonial pomp and fanfare of the MLB playoffs, specifically the Philadelphia version. But none of these people are wearing Ryan Howard jerseys or old-school Phillies caps or “Why Can’t Us?” shirts. There aren’t any tacky Phillies flags waving in the wind outside of these picturesque French cottages. And why would there be? They live in France, where Soccer (pronounced “Football”) is king and cycling is queen. Baseball is about as interesting to a Parisian as Cricket is to a New Yorker, and even if they were fans – they wouldn’t be Phillies fans, would they? No. So the question is, why am I so pissed off?
By all accounts I should be soaking up this international opportunity for all that it’s worth, because, yes, I understand it’s a privilege to work abroad. It truly is a phenomenal, life enriching experience for my wife and I, yadda yadda yadda. . .but all that said. . . missing one baseball game makes me want to kick and scream and throw punches at the bald, moustached man sitting next to me (also, he apparently, doesn’t have the stomach to handle the traditional lamb moussaka that the Eurostar staff provided us – he’s covered in sweat and smells like hot air hissing out of a popped bicycle tire.) Logic tells me, “It’s just one game in a best of five series, Mike”, but logic makes too much sense – standing all cool and disinterested in the face of my emotional hysteria. Logic says, “It’s just a game”, and that’s when Emotion kicks Logic in the teeth.
Just a game? C’mon. It’s never just a game. Epecially not in the playoffs. Epecially not when you’re facing a team that SWEPT you in the exact same series two years ago. Especially not when you’re sending a playoff virgin out to the mound, carrying with him all the hopes and expectations of Philadelphia’s famously insatiable and manically depressed fans. Especially not when your closer – who you love – is suffering some kind of year-long confidence crisis. And especially not when your wife is secretly rooting for the other team. No, it’s never just a game. So what’s happening to me? Why are sports – correction, Philadelphia sports - so damn important to me? When did they shift from enjoyable pastime to psychosis inducing obsession? Theoretically I should be outgrowing sports, leaving childish things to the children. And, yeah, it’s really odd when I have to admit that I still have heroes – and even more odd when I acknowledge that many of those heroes are younger than me. But it’s the truth, I’m growing increasingly more attached to Philadelphia sports as I grow older, and, perhaps more interestingly, as I move farther and farther away from the city itself.
The natural response would be to suggest that clinging to the Phillies, Eagles, Sixers and Flyers allows me to stay connected to the city that reared me. But this is problematic – what level of connection is appropriate? Surely it’s okay to read the beat writers on Philly.com, listen to 610 WIP broadcasts over the internet, and watch highlights on each team’s respective website. But what about paying $500 for an NFL.com season pass and then staying up until 4am to watch Monday Night Football in London? Blogging (remotely) on teams I’m unarguably ill-suited to comment on? Or, more specifically, scheming up ways to ditch my work commitments in Paris just so I can sneak off in hopes of discovering (unlikely as it may be) an American sports bar that’s televising Cliff Lee and the Phightins on a 60-inch HDTV?
If anything, I should be sneaking off to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, or maybe to the Trocadero for some crepes and a view of the Eiffel Tower at sunset. But no, my heart (and mind) are displaced – residing somewhere near Broad and Pattison in South Philadelphia (which, I hate to say, is a cultural desert compared to Paris). Admitting this reminds me that I’m a walking contradtiction – that I’m thinking exactly like the stupid, uno-lingual, meathead American that I constantly condemn when surrounded by my more cospmolitan ex-patriot counterparts in the UK.
The way it was explained to me was that Americans living in the UK need to abandon (for the most part) the lives they built before moving abroad – otherwise you’ve got one foot in both worlds, and you can’t move forward with your life when you’re straddling the Atlantic. It’s that whole Orpheous and Hades thing – look over your shoulder and you’ll kill the thing you’ve come for. So...Give up old pastimes for new pastimes. Quit reading American novelists and start reading English ones. Stop watching 30 Rock and start watching East Enders. Stop obsessing about the Phillies and start rooting for Arsenal or Chelsea or Manchester United. Then, and only then, will you feel fully immersed in your new life. Without full immersion, your move abroad was pointless. You should have just gone on a long vacation, taken some photos of Big Ben, eaten some fish and chips and gone the hell home. Why bother disrupting your life if you’re not ready to commit to the changes?
It sounds simple enough in theory, but applying it to one’s real life is more complicated than it seems. First of all, I hate East Enders. Secondly, I simply can’t switch off my Philly fandom and start rooting for another team, much less a whole new sport. When I lived in Chicago, I caught a lot of grief from my friends who were all one of two combinations – Cubs/Bears fans or Sox/Bears fans. These two groups could agree on two things: 1. ) The Bears, and 2.) making fun of Philadelphia sports. I lived in the Windy City for over five years and these guys kept harassing me, citing the example of the Rocky statue as a symbol of our city’s failure to produce to real superstars along the lines of Michael Jordan and Walter Payton. I offered up Dr. J and Mike Schmidt, but apparently they weren’t impressive enough.
More than anything, these guys wanted me to abandon Philly and adopt Chicago, thereby confirming their notion that their teams are superior and that I’m just the sorry victim of growing up in a place where teams always lose and never win. Teams that go the distance, but don’t succeed. These guys were smoking their own drugs and were completely overlooking the fact the Sox were only the team who had won anything of note in the 2000’s. Otherwise, the Cubs, Bears, and Hawks were – if anything – less successful than our Big 4. But this isn’t a Chicago vs Philly blog, this is a “You can’t adopt new teams willy nilly” blog.
The result of all their harassment was that I became even more adamant in my support of Philly sports. Each insult made me look more deeply into our history for stats, players and crazy stories that could defend Philadelphia as the greatest sports town in the United States. Perhaps I convinced myself too much, but whatever the story may be – I’m hooked. Thus this long rambling blog which now has to come to an end. We’re pulling into Gar du Nord. This helped me cope a little bit with the fact I won’t be seeing the game – but I’ll be checking the score on my phone (thank you ESPN mobile). I hope we win. And by the time I get back and actually post this, I’ll already know the result.
***
Back in London now. . The the Phillies won on Wendesday. I celebrated by excusing myself, stepping outside and slapping high-five with a very confused French taxi driver.
Thursday I got back to London at 7:30 and bolted to The Sports Cafe, where they were broadcasting the game live on huge TVs. There were about 50 Phillies fans there, and 10 Rockies fans. It was "Wings Night", but they were out of wings. The Phillies lost. I rode the tube home in an awkward silence - saddened by the loss, but somehow happy that I'd been able to see the game, the fans and the city I regularly admire from afar.
