|
|
|
NLDS Game 3: We are the overdogs enemy
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
NLDS Game 3: We are the overdogs enemy
 |
 |
Editor's note: This is the time of year that CP sports columnist E. James Beale lives for. He'll be posting maniacally on the Clog about the Phils' World Series run from now until the parade. Enjoy.
Growing up, the Beale nuclear family consisted of my mother, my father, my sister, and me. Two of us — my dad and I â were 25-games-a-year baseball fans, die-hards who could tell you the Colorado Rockies farm system before it existed (side note: Derrick Gibson was going to be NICE). Two of us — my sister and my mom — were not.
For me, the main difference between the Philadelphia Phillies regular- and postseason campaigns is the type of questions non-fans ask me about the team. During the season, my sister may check-in to verify/chime in on something she read in the style section (âWhy is Cole adopting an African baby?! He needs to get out now — tell him not be a Brad!â) and my mother may worry about their well-being (âJimmy looks tired: Tell him to sleep more. We kind-of-know his wife, you know.â) but more or less, when the conversation turns to the Home Team, they shrug and move on. In the postseason, though? Different story. They're superfans. Both of them.
Which means that right about now, for me as a commentator, they're my most valuable assets. This time of year, if I want to talk Phils with someone who knows what they're looking at, I'm having a 45 minute conversation about the merits of Ross Gload vs. Mike Sweeney pinch hitting in the 7th, or where Cholly should place Jimmy Rollins in the lineup. It's the type of stuff that fascinates me — your classic insider baseball — but doesn't exactly resonate with the cocktail-party set. The stuff from the fam? That can be gold. Case in point, an e-mail from the mother:
⦠also, I skimmed the morning sports. In my first wave of paying semi-attention, I found out that the Reds were the Big Red Machine (did I get that right?) — [and that in the 1970s] they were definitely the overdogs. Do people in other cities see the Phillies that way? Can Philadelphians ever?
A lifelong Philadelphian, my mother simply couldn't conceive that someone might believe the Phillies were actually good. It's absolutely true — for years, the psyche of an entire city of sports fans was built on the premise that they were going to lose, a pendulum that has now swung — but nothing someone in the thick of following a team could ever see.
Fans have been so focused on the lineup changes and the merits of Charlie Manuel's bullpen strategy that we've all missed the tree farm for the pine needles: Philadelphia is a powerhouse, the type of team that Queens can only dream of having, and who both of Atlanta's fans hate from afar. After years of imaging themselves lovable, Phillies fans may need to embrace a whole new identity — the enemy.
The 81 Percent Theory
Back in the early 1990s, Jimmy Frazier and Eldon Synder published a paper entitled "The Underdog Concept in Sport." The crux of the paper was a simple hypothetical they posed to college students: Two teams, A and B, were meeting in a best-of-seven playoff series, and team A is âhighly favored.â Who are you pulling for? 81% took the dog.
While I don't have any hard numbers on the general public's rooting interest in the Phils' now-complete NLDS sweep over the Cincinnati Reds and their formally fearsome offense, I imagine that it wasn't exactly favorable to our Home Team. Next round, when the Phillies casually dispatch the Giants/Braves winner, it'll probably be the same. It makes sense — armed with Roy, Roy and ColeRoy, the NLDS-record 11 hits allowed was hardly a fluke — but it still comes as a shock: The Phillies, literally the losingest franchise in the history of professional sports, are, in fact, âthe overdog.â People see the Phils as the bad guys â— not just because their fans are famous assholes who openly threaten to pour beer on your children for the sin of wearing the wrong colors, but now also because our city is actually nice at sports.
It's a new world, sports fans, get used to it.
Couple more notes
There is a second side to this âheavy favorite' angle, and I'm backing this one up with a study too. Back in January of this year two separate researchers — Nathan Pettit and Robert Lount — asked a separate group of undergrads a simple cognitive question: How many uses can you think of for a knife? Pettit and Lount told half their students that the scores would be compared with those of a more prestigious university, and the other were told they'd be compared to one generally considered worse. The first half outperformed the second, and the results weren't particularly close. If the students thought they were smarter, then functionally, they were — and the exact same effect happened in reverse. If you're a fan of a team that everyone in the world believes in, this would be good news.
Turned on WIP this morning, thinking that the Phils might finally have won the station's and its callers' hearts. Nope — they were bashing the Birds for not beating San Franciso badly enough. Oh, WIP.
Now that I'm done bashing WIP let me praise one of their employees I'm a fan of: Before Game 2 I was talking with Paul Jolovitz about the Phils' aces, and he brought up a good point: There isn't going to be one game this postseason where the Phils are expected to lose, save maybe a Lincecum game in San Fran (and if he's facing Halladay I have a hard time not believing that is a push). Does that guarantee them a championship? Of course not; baseball's short series lend themselves to bizarre outcomes, but lest we get it confused, this Phillies team is the favorite. (FWIW, the gambling odds bear this one out. According to Sportsbook the Phillies are currently even money to win the chip, and those odds were up before last night's win.)
I know all things Hamels are going to be beat to submission by the dailies today, so I'll just say this: When he's on and effective, he's really fun to watch. Not bad either.
the use of the phrase "roy, roy, and coleroy" elicited a louder chuckle than "overdogs". great piece.
Speaking of Mike Sweeney (that was the key point here, right?) He WILL strike a big blow in this post season. He will climb to the status of folk here in this town - just 2 tiers down from Matt Stairs. Book it. Speaking of Derrick Gibson (that is the sub-plot here, right?) He DID bat .429 in 1998. Shocking that he never stole a big league base ... Speaking of your sister & your mom - they ARE cuties
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
