Overzealous Philadelphia Sports Fan Story no. 427

As has been previously addressed in this forum, I am from the suburbs of brotherly shove.  I take my sports seriously, both played and watched.  I don’t know from whence my extreme competitive nature originates, as neither of my parents are more than casual fans of the teams representing the city where they were born and raised and started their own family, the city with the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Veterans Stadium, the Spectrum, Pat’s, Gino’s, Jim’s, and the 9th Street Italian Market.  Neither of my parents can catch a ball, or throw a spiral, or shoot a puck, either, so I was certainly not coached into being an evil bastard on the ice or in the bar that happened to be showing one of my team’s games.  So where do I get it?  I have nary a clue, but I’ve got it, and it’s part of me, and I have resigned myself to being a rider on the emotional roller coaster that is the life of the Philadelphia sports fan.  I thank the 2008 Phillies for making my existence just a little bit easier, and I wish that my fucking Michael Vick jersey would hurry up and get here so I could piss off some local hippie dog lovers while screaming obscenities at the television.

It’s been a good week thus far.  On Sunday, I got to see the Eagles beat the hated Cowgirls in a close contest played on the road.  Our defense is not playing up to par, and certainly not well enough for a unit that traditionally prides itself on being a blitzing, sacking, suffocating, hard working, blue collar group befitting of the city it represents.  Michael Vick was also fairly human, as well, getting hit hard all night and throwing 2 interceptions (at least one of which was not his fault), but he and the Seans (LeSean and DeSean) played well enough to survive the evening and come away with a win before hitting up some of the many fine, upscale bars of ill repute available to high profile professional athletes in the silicone hills of Dallass, Texass.

The Eagles aren’t the only Philly team racking up the wins lately.  The Flyers are also on a tear, and when I learned that they would be playing the Penguins of Pittsburgh on Tuesday night, with the winner emerging in sole possession of first place in the Patrick Division, I knew what my pre hump-day plans were to be.  Even better, there’s a bar on the mountain, right next to the base area, a bar with tvs that like to broadcast contests of sport, this bar being owned by a friend of mine who shall heretofore be known as Dego Mike.  Dego Mike is a die hard Pittsburgh fan.    He’s got three kids, all boys, and you can usually tell who they are because they all wear Steelers jerseys every day of the week.  Actually, I think that one of them has taken to wearing a Broncos jersey, and how this passes as acceptable in Dego Mike’s house is beyond me.  Since when are children permitted to determine their own city of sports affiliation, their own home team?  Next thing you know they’ll be moving wherever they want to live and picking their own career paths.  Ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, Dego Mike is a Pittsburgh fan, and a fellow Pennsylvania paisano, so I figured I had to watch the Flyers-Pens game at his place.  As it turns out, Mike was out of town, and I had to call ahead to give his all-female staff (good paisano) a few hours to figure out how to get Versus (the obscure hockey network) on the ol’ satellite tv.  I did this from the chair lift, as I like to be as productive as possible with these 5-10 minute chunks of my day.  Sometimes I stretch.  Sometimes I make important calls.  Occasionally I send creditors to voicemail.  On this particular ride, I explained to a staff of women how to find out if they got the hockey channel.  I had to hang up on them at the top of the lift, as they were still blabbering about not getting all the hockey games, but I figured that they had enough information to get the job done.

After riding, we hit some base area bars for a few beers and cheap (read: shitty) pizza before venturing over to Dego Mike’s at about 4:00, one hour before game time.  I arrived in my Flyers jersey, which I had worn on the hill, as I believe in wearing my colors on game day.  There were a number of people there, as Mike has been trying to lure people in with the prospect of free food and cheap drinks, a formula that rarely fails.  As is turns out, the Tuesday special was, you guessed it, free (read: shitty) pizza.  Now, we all know that pizza is like sex, as when it’s great, it’s fucking stupendous and otherworldly, and when it’s shitty, it’s still pretty good, so I’m not trying to bag on Mike’s free pies.  I won’t look that gift horse in the mouth, because in the world of the ski bum, free food is nothing to scoff at.  I’m just sayin’, using the aforementioned pizza-sex comparison, the pizza consumed at both establishments on this afternoon was akin to the girl that’s a 2 at 10:00 and a 10 at 2:00.  When you’re hungry after a day of surfing the white wave, it’s pretty fuckin’ good, but you’re not going to write home to your Italian relatives and tell them how much you ate.

As soon as I walked in, the girl behind the bar handed me the remote and said, “Channel 603.”  I suppose my reputation precedes me, but I was happy and proud that they had navigated the vast sea of satellite television channels and found the island which I sought.  I took the best seat at the best table as far as television viewing was concerned, and proceeded to watch the full 60 minutes of Arkansas dirt track racing featured on the motorsports hour immediately preceding the hockey game.  I didn’t mind, because racing and drinking go hand in hand (just ask Dale Jr. or Rusty Wallace or whoever drove that Jack Daniels 07 car), so I occupied the hour leading up to faceoff with some cold Kerrs Lahts.

At about 4:30, I learned that there was to be live musical entertainment that evening.  I shouldn’t have been surprised, because on free food Fridays, there is also live musical entertainment in the form of an annoying Beatles cover band comprised entirely of hippies using music stands.  The cool thing about that situation, though, is this: the free food on Fridays goes from 4:00 to 6:00.  I usually show up at about 4:15, just as the Beatle hippies are finishing up their first set.  Keep in mind that the place is just about packed during these two hours, with hungry ski bums as well as 9-5ers getting a head start on their weekends.  So what does the band do?  They take an extended, one hour plus set break, during which time their hippie girl drummer moves her kit in (the first set is sans percussion), presumably because she doesn’t get out of massage school until 4:30 on Fridays.  Then, at about 5:45, just when everyone is stuffed and buzzed up and starting to head out, as the food and drink is about to get a lot more expensive, they start playing again.  This is invariably my cue to pay my tab and leave.  The band successfully misses the entire peak of the happy hour crowd, which makes me want to say something to them in an effort to cure them of their collective stupidity, but then I would be forced to listen to irritating hippie Beatles covers while I’m stuffing my face with free pulled pork sliders (delicious, by the way) and ONE DOLLAR pints of beer (yes, $1 pints), when I would much rather consume and imbibe said feast WITHOUT the previously described patchouli cacophony.  It all works itself out perfectly, and for this I am grateful.

Back to game day.  On free food Tuesdays, there is apparently also live music.  This evening, it was a solo singer/guitarist who was about as exciting as melba toast.  Not horrible, mind you, but not the least bit enthusiastic, and not uber-hippie like the Beatles band, but still wearing a bad plaid shirt and sporting a beard, so hippie enough.  Being a musician, I try to support my kind, and I clapped loudly after each of his numbers while the Arkansas dirt shuffle was still playing on the tele.  This made other people clap, and I was pleased with my work.  At about 15 mintues to game time, I changed this between song strategy to yelling, “LET’S GO FLYERS!” (BANG, BANG, BANG BANG BANG), the BANGS being played out, forcefully enough to make my cell phone jump and my beer almost tip over, on my table with my palms.  There were some girls sitting with me, as I am suave and charming in a psycho killer sort of way, but after the Flyers chants started, they all vacated fairly quickly to other locations within the bar, taking their stools with them.

By the time the puck dropped, it became apparent that I was the only one in the bar that cared about the game, and there were no other fans of either team present.  I did not let that dissuade my enthusiasm, and continued cheering and providing voluminous color commentary.  It was at this time that the hippie guitarist/singer decided that this would be a good point for a set break.  I was thankful for this, as the soothing sounds of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young just do not provide the perfect, complementary soundtrack to vocal outbursts along the lines of, “PUT HIS FUCKING FACE IN THE GLASS!”

Here is where the golden throated guitarist might should have taken a page out of the Beatles hippies’ songbook, as he did not opt for the period long setbreak, instead resuming his strumming and crooning at about halfway through the first period.  I was not pleased, but I was so focused on the game that I really didn’t hear much of the melodies emanating a mere 10 feet behind me.  He kept playing, and I kept watching, and cheering, but not really letting fly with anything terribly offensive or over the top.

Then it happened.  Danny Briere gained control of the puck along the right boards and curled out to the top of the circle, dropping a pass back to Chris Pronger at the point.  Pronger wristed one through traffic, on goal, and their goalie made the save, but the rebound bounced out to the left of the goal, onto the stick of Claude Giroux, who was completely uncovered.  He easily wristed it into the left side of the half empty net, and I lost my shit.  “SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRREEE!!!!!  YYYYYEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!  WWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! LET’S GO FLYERS!!!  LET’S GO FLYERS!!!”  This was all accompanied, of course, with as much table banging as I could get without flipping my beer over, or jumping my phone off the table, or flipping the beer onto my phone.  It was quite the delicate science, masterfully executed, yet utterly disguised by completely overzealous fanaticism.

It was then that I realized something truly special, something so amazing that it had never happened to me before.  The musical guest had STOPPED PLAYING.  MID SONG.  My reaction to the Flyers scoring a goal was apparently so shocking and overwhelming that it had the same effect as would someone choking on a chicken bone that was going to be in need of a well executed Heimlich maneuver.  To be honest, as sports freak outs go, this was really nothing special.  I react the same way when the Eagles score a touchdown.  I scream and yell and cheer, I hoot and holler until I just about pass out, I jump up and down, I bang on the bar or the table or whatever solid surface is within arms reach, and I high five any of my Philadelphia cohorts, none of whom were present on this particular evening.  But never before has my celebration stopped a musical act MID SONG.  I guess the whole bar pretty much stopped what they were doing to observe my reaction, but the paid entertainment?  I guess he felt that I had superseded him in entertainment value, and he could no longer compete.  I have seen a lot of crazy shit happen when I’ve been onstage, including people getting thrown into the drum kit, plenty of blood flow, and my lead singer falling backwards over his amp and landing flat on his back, but never have we stopped a song.  That’s just not how rock and roll works.  Save for gunfire, I can’t really think of a viable excuse to stop playing in the middle of a number.

After the goal, which was scored towards the end of the first period, the hippie resumed his playing, and he played through the first intermission, but I know he was watching that tv.  Because as soon as the puck dropped to start the second period, he stopped playing, packed up his guitar, and was done for the night.  I’d be willing to bet that his contract did not state that he would be done at the start of the second period of the Flyers-Penguins game.  In his defense, that poor, gentle, sweet voiced tree hugger had no idea what he was getting himself into.  Welcome to Philadelphia sports, buddy.  We do it a little different back there.  We put our emotions out front and center.  When we’re happy, you’ll know it.  Same goes if we’re pissed off.  And we live and die for our teams.  I’m proud to say that I made a musical act cease and desist with my goal celebration.  That would get me no small number of beers and shots back home.  Some grandmother would most assuredly toast me after hearing that story and say, “Fuck him if he doesn’t get it!”  That’s not exaggeration.  That’s just how we are.  And I’m proud to be more colorful than melba toast.

I bet he’ll think twice about playing another gig when there’s a hockey game on.  I bet he has an unforgettable flashback whenever he sees the flying P crest of the Philadelphia Flyers.  And I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing that guy on the ice any time soon, eh?