High Hopes of a Recovering New Yorker

I’m going to come clean. I’ve been a recovering New Yorker for more years than I care to admit.

Let’s face it, the Big Apple is a tough act to follow. That’s the way it is when you grow up watching a home run race between two players on the same team (Yankees Mantle and Maris). Or root for a brash young quarterback (“Broadway” Joe) who announced the Jets were going to beat the heavily favored Colts in the Super Bowl, and then went out and did it.

I won’t even go into all the Super Bowls the Giants have won or the 1969 Miracle Mets, let alone the Knicks’ stirring victory over the Lakers for the NBA Championship in 1970 when Willis Reed limped out on the court for the final game with a torn leg muscle. Fuhgeddaboudit!

No doubt about it. It’s tough getting New York out of your system. Of course, I used to take plenty of good-natured kidding about it from my significant other Barbara’s father, Tony Colella, over Sunday dinners. One of the great Phillies fans of all time, Tony stood by his team through thick and thin. He and his wife Nancy were at the World Series way back in 1950 when the Phillies last played the Yankees in the Fall Classic. In recent years he taped every game that he wasn’t able to watch on TV. You couldn’t so much as hint at the final score until he watched the videotape.

While I never admitted it to Tony, over the years I’ve come to love Philadelphia as much and in some ways more than New York. (Yes, I’m living proof that you can love two cities at the same time.) Philly sports teams have played an important role in my rehabilitation. If you asked me my favorite team before last year, I’d have said the Eagles followed by the Sixers and Phillies. But last year when the Phillies got hot and played their way to the World Series Championship and into our hearts, all that changed for me. I began to understand what it really means to be a fan, something Tony had known all his life.

Last year our “boys of summer” did what no other Philly sports team had done in 25 years – they brought home the bacon instead of just talking about it. Now they have the Yankees in their crosshairs. Don’t get me wrong, another championship is hardly a done deal. The Bronx Bombers won’t be going quietly into that good night. A-Rod, Pettitte, Jeter, Sabathia and Rivera will see to that.

Lest I give the impression it’s all about winning, it isn’t. Nowhere is that more apparent than at home games when the ball park resounds with the voices of thousands of fans singing “High Hopes,” along with a recording of the gravely voice of the team’s beloved former broadcaster Harry Kalas. You see it’s all about believing. Where I once thought of the Philadelphia area as parochial, this recovering New Yorker now thinks of it as home.

The Phillies players for their part are an exuberant group whose winning spirit seems to have a kind of innocence to it that's refreshing in pro sports. You have to love the attitude and enthusiasm they have for the game. Take the comment Raul Ibanez made to the media for example: “It’s easy to say now, but these guys never quit. I remember the excitement even in a spring-training game, when we were coming back and there was this excitement and energy in the dugout like, ‘Let’s get after it.’ In spring training!”

Cole Hamels put it this way: “We won the World Series last year, that’s great. But you know what...next year, we’re going to try to win another one, too.” Now that’s the kind of talk that makes a fan’s pulse race. It’s also why I’ll take our Phillies over any other team, win or lose, because they’re a bunch of guys who love to play the game and who don't seem to have become jaded by success.

The Phillies have another big advantage over the Yankees - Charlie Manuel. If you think this unassuming man is just the manager, you haven’t been paying attention. Charlie is a master alchemist who has tweaked his lineup all season and made one adjustment after another in the pitching department to ensure the right combination of players is on the field in any given game. You also get the feeling that if he asked his players to run through a brick wall, they’d do it for him without flinching. Such is the stuff of which great managers are made.

As for the Phillies biggest fan, in his own way Tony Colella was very much one of the “boys of summer.” I’d like to think that he hasn’t missed any of the post-season action since he passed away in August 2008. I can just see him smiling down with that same big grin he used to flash when sitting down to a lobster dinner. He’s standing right next to Harry Kalas and the two of them are singing, “High hopes, he had high hopes, he had high apple pie in the sky hopes…”