My ten-year-old knows the deal. Instead of forcing my teams on him at an early age,1 I told him he could like whatever teams he wanted as long as they were not the Mets, Cowboys, or Celtics. He knows those teams are simply evil. Recently though, he asked me who I hated more (fun convos around the PFO house). I told him it was complicated. Here’s why.
Thursday, June 18 at 6:40p – Aaron Nola vs Sean Manaea (L)
Citizen’s Bank Park – Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, June 20 at 7:15p – Cristopher Sanchez vs Freddy Peralta (R)
Sunday, June 21 at 7:20p – Zack Wheeler vs TBA
First let’s get the Celtics out of the way. I loathe their fans, hate their luck, and genuinely despise everything Boston and their basketball team more than anything else. If I were to pick one team that I really do from the bottom of my heart have zero sympathy for, it’s them. The big problem is that they have kicked our ass so much in my lifetime (this year excluded!) that investing too much hate in them is just a waste of time. With all the championships and head to head defeats, what am I holding on to? A one-sided winning percentage and hatred does not a rivalry make. There is simply nothing fun about Celtics-Sixers in the least. While I would love to hate them more, there’s just nothing we have going for us in this one. It is what it is.
It’s the Mets and Cowboys of it that is the real problem. While the Phillies are closer to the Mets in terms of location than the Eagles and Cowboys, the national presence of the Dallas brand levels that playing field. We play the Mets at least 12 times per season and the Cowboys twice but percentage wise, Dallas week is more prevalent. This is all a push and misses the point of the fandom and the rivalries. It’s supposed to be Us vs Them. That’s completely true with the Cowboys, not so much with the Mets.
Over the last 30 years, the Eagles have built themselves into one of the premier teams in the NFL. This isn’t opinion. The Jeff Lurie era has defined itself with class, stability, sound decision making, and most importantly, success. The team knows how to take risks and knows how to deal with them when they don’t work out. Then there’s the two Super Bowl championships in 4 appearances. It’s been the complete opposite for the Cowboys. None of the success, all of the drama, and poor decisions.
The roles have changed. Eagles fans used to have a little brother complex where beating the Giants and Cowboys was out Super Bowl. Sure, we wanted to win it all, but because it hadn’t been done in our generation, that wasn’t a tangible outcome. Getting one over on our rivals was what we could legitimately aim for. Sound familiar Cowboys fans? “This is our year” has become funny at this point. The last time Dallas saw any postseason success was before this Eagles run started. Their Super Bowl is beating us because the real Super Bowl is no longer realistic to the average fan. The reason you see so many Dak Prescott fans praise him over Hurts in social media is because his stats are all they have. They had to move the goal posts in because they can’t reach. The average Eagles fan still hates the Cowboys, but we have bigger goals. Losing to Dallas stinks, but unless it’s in January, we move on to the next one. It’s not the end of the world.
So, the Mets. Losing to the Mets absolutely burns me up inside. If you gave me a box score from any date in the last 30 years, chances are I could tell you what happened in any defeat. It sticks with me. Why? Because they are us and we are them.
There are obviously inherent differences between fans from New York and fans from Philadelphia, but as second-class citizens in their own city, those differences are reasonably neutralized. Yes, we are all mostly born into this fanhood, but Mets fans have a choice. As children, they see everyone wearing the dark blue hats, they hear stories about the legendary names, and they know about the 27 World Series titles. Yet with all that propaganda, Mets fans say no. I respect that.
They have almost no history at all,2 except for two completely unexpected World Series titles that have fed multiple generations of fans. They have two and the Phillies have two (albeit in a much longer time period). What else do we have? A whole lot of misery. Both teams share so much misfortune that the other shoe dropping is expected, not a fear. The only positive is that the other team knows that the bell will toll for the rival too. I knew we were going to get steamrolled by the Mets in the playoffs in 2024, but I also knew they were the Mets. All the magic they had going for them that year should have led to a World Series. Nope. Sound familiar Phillies fans? In 2022 the Mets led the division all year but collapsed in the end. Surely the upstart Phillies with everything going for them in our own magical playoff run would win it all, right? That baseball story wins the World Series 9 out of 10, instead we were no-hit and lost. No magic for either of us.
Both teams run enormous payrolls, but something will always happen. Bo Bichette picks them over us and it was devastating. Now it looks like we avoided a landmine. We sign Taijuan Walker away from them and he became a payroll blackhole. Both teams have years of lost prospects like Lastings Milledge and Domonic Brown. The Mets should have had a dynasty with Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry but only won once. Same with the Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins Phillies. We are the same.
If I see a gaggle of Mets fans, it makes me cringe inside. We can have a conversation though. Neither side wants you to know it at first, but pretty quickly both sides will be telling you how ready they are to burn their team down when the time comes. When we lose, no matter the amount of heckling, you can’t make either of us feel any worse. We are both already there. That’s not true for Cowboys fans. They are still living in a world of exceptionalism that they thought would continue on from the early 90s. There’s no arguing with them about Dak Prescott despite what always happens in the playoffs and they will ignore the poor decision making of Jerry Jones. That’s not reality. As much as I hate the Mets, they are real people. You can’t say that about Cowboys fans. In the end, the Mets are our biggest rival because they are the most like us.
- This is nowhere near the whole story. I tried DESPERATELY to force my teams on him at an early age but because he lives in Miami and he used to think it was funny to cheer against his dad, I eventually stopped my promotion and let him be ↩︎
- Who is the best Mets hitter of all time? Is there one? I’m not trying to be (too much of) an ass, but it’s between David Wright and Darryl Strawberry and neither are going to the Hall of Fame. ↩︎
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