I Don’t Boo Us – Debut

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I Don’t Boo Us
By: Vance Chalmers (twitter:@VanceChalmers)

Like many of my brotherly love brothers and sisters, I have witnessed exactly one championship in my lifetime (I was born in year one of the 25-year championship drought). In that 24-year span, and in the time since, I’ve seen bad players and good players, hard-working players and lazy players, champion-level teams and bottom-feeder teams.  Most of all, I have seen a lot of losses and felt a lot of heartbreak.

But I won’t boo my own players.  In fact, never once in all of these mostly frustrating and forlorn years has that husky dissonance made its way out of my disapproving gut and into the surrounding South Philly air.  For many fans of these ne’er-win-it-all teams, a stadium full of boos is a badge of angst-filled honor; and considering just how few parades have marched down Broad Street, those fans have a point.  But the “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately” ambivalence we have towards our city’s players has always struck me as grumpy and annoyingly impetuous.

Before I get a barrage of death threats or, more appropriately, boos…let me say that I would sooner try to take away Howard Eskin’s mink coat than rob this city of this “proud” tradition.  After all, our pessimism is what gives Philadelphia fans distinction, and distinction is a sought after commodity for a city less than 100 miles from New York City; and one with 4 professional sports teams that can’t seem to win the big one.

So I get, in theory, why we boo our own players.  I get why we are cynical and impatient when a player shows a lack of either skill or passion or both. We are possessed by the ghosts of hundreds of championship-less seasons. But I remain exorcised.  I won’t do it.  What’s the point?  Why give national media outlets more fodder about Philly fans?  Why remind ourselves of the apparent futility of our search for ultimate sports supremacy?  I’d rather remain optimistic and be disappointed than be pessimistic and have to eat crow.

That said, God I hated Michael Martinez.  He was terrible.  All of the time.

So with that I introduce a new segment on BROadelphia: Reasons to Boo where I will deflect our self flagellating by scouring our dumb world in search of the inanities, inequities, and insufferable insolents that are more deserving of a good hearty BOOOOOOOOOOOO