Baseball Marathon Addendum

I took a few shots at Phillies fans over the last two days and a few times in this blog, as well as many times over the last few years to friends and what not.

I'm compelled to rescind every bad word I've ever said about them after this weekend, frankly.

It's my deepest wish that Nationals fans could ever find an iota of appreciation or pure love of their team that Phillies fans do of theirs. I always thought that the best bastion of fans in baseball were Red Sox fans, and I still do, but as their fanbase has grown so hip and diluded, the Phillies' base only seems stronger, even softer in a way.

One of my best friends, Khris Flack, was a die-hard who's drifted away at the mercy of his personal aspirations over the years. A few times we had spats on behalf of our clubs, and I held a quiet resentment towards that team for those.

This weekend however, the fans who game for the games were all nice people, respectable, never real fierce or vindictive; all this against the hometown fans' favor.  They knew the players and the game.  I wish this was the real requisite for being a fan, rather than the proxy of paying exorbitant prices and donning off-color regalia.

What really made this though, were the Phillies non-players staff.  These men and women could not have been nicer. I was right outside his room when Harry Kalas passed away, and I think it's fair to say that he left an imprint on the team that he lived for; every single Phillies fan that I met was egregarious and knowledged.  This isn't to take from our own staff, but rather to the staffs of too many visiting teams. It breaks the notion that arrogance follows victory.

The most memorable sight of all though was this afternoon, after the first game in the double-header, I saw one man of both ballclubs-one man, signing autographs.  Jamie Moyer stood out in the sun, while his teammates and opposition were all packed away in their clubhouses, and signed autographs for every single fan I saw out there. I've only seen two players on the Nats ever do that, Mike Bacsik and Chad Cordero, and I they're not even with Major League clubs right now. Talking to John Pratt on the phone, I told him that seeing that sight makes me even more depressed than if no one was out there signing autographs; the contrast is so stark.  The thing of it is that Moyer just fits right in, alongside the rest of that organization insofar as I can tell.

In the end, I respect the Phillies' organization immensely, and it's my great hope that the one I work for can grow in he respecting competitors rather than polar opposites.