November 2009 Archives

In this our city of brotherly love (this is going to sound like a guy thing) cousins are a dime a dozen. And God love 'em because God made 'em but how did there get to be so many of them? Cousins that is. I've got cousins coming out the kazoo, and I mean that in a good way. Anyone who grew up in Philadelphia when I did has cousins out the kazoo. Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, black, white, blue collar, white collar, didn't matter what kind of family. Cousins were everywhere in my childhood. Good cousins, bad cousins, boy cousins, girl cousins, boring cousins, scary cousins, cousins you only saw once, cousins who weren't really cousins. And at the top of the list were first cousins, the cousins you saw all the time. First cousins were like brothers and sisters only nicer.

Of course, when I was growing up, there were lots more brothers and sisters in each family. And as we all know from high school biology class, brothers and sisters are a leading cause of cousins. These cousins grow up to be aunts and uncles, who are the moms and dads of the infinite universe of cousins yet to come. I grew up during the great Cousin Pandemic of the 50's and 60's when even washing your hands carefully couldn't prevent an outbreak of blood relatives. It's no accident that Philadelphia's population peaked during the post-World War II Baby Boom at just over two million people, most of whom were somebody's cousin. And if my mom were still with us, she'd be able to tell you how each of those two million people were related to each other.

My first cousin -- my mom's sister's youngest son -- Peter Fitzpatrick (not his real name) was born four days before I was at what they used to call Lying In Hospital at Eighth and Spruce. I used to resent him for those four days seniority but in recent decades I've taken to calling him my older cousin Pete. We celebrated a birthday this past week, Pete and I, no biggee, twice thirty (there I've said it) and we had a great party Saturday night where we were swarmed by cousins. They buzzed in from California and Virginia and Rhode Island and up the street and around the corner. It was awesome. Old Pete looked great and I advertised my four-days younger status like it had been notorized. Then one of our girl cousins asked us, "What happened nine months earlier?" Neither Peter nor I had ever done this calculation in our lives. Let's see, mid-November minus nine months is mid-February. No way, we said. We're Valentine's Day babies! Life really is like a box of chocolates. You never know what cousins you'll get.

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 That's my mom in the photo above and that's the loving look on her face that I remember looking at me as a child.  Those are just a few of the DeLeon and Fitzpatrick cousins in a family photo taken in 1951.  Pete and I are in the photo (hint: I'm not the one picking his nose.)

I was shooting pool in this VFW Post in Southwest Philadelphia last night and this is what the walls looked like inside. Proud men and headlines about a war well won. It was thrilling to see these headlines framed forever from a time when newspapers broke the news with headlines bigger than your head. It was my father's war, World War II, and I imagined my dad as part of the heroic American army celebrated by these headlines.

But my dad's war ended in a weird way, for me at least. He was on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the invasion when we dropped the atomic bombs that saved his life and my life and my children and his grandchildren and my grandchildren and before you know it, God's involved.

I had never taken the atomic bomb personally until I realized that my father's life was. or may have been, saved by the decision to use it. I would never have been born, yadda-yadda-yadda, the usual philosophical discussion that ends with the question, "Would I rather have lived or not." Count me in on that one.

Last night the few remaining veterans from more recent wars, but as gray and grizzled as we imagine our fathers generation, celebrated the Marine Corps birthday with a shout, "Ten November 1775. Tun Tavern. Philadelphia. Ooo-Rah." Because even today every Marine was born the same day as the Corps. November tenth. Seventeen-seventy-five. In a bar called Tun Tavern. In a city called Philadelphia. Ooo-RAH!

Today is Veterans Day and I'm getting all verklemft. From Gettysburg to Fort Hood it seems like such a waste of us. I know we must and why. But it seems so personal when I accept the connection between my father's survival and my own. I tend to get gooey on this subject but it's more an intellectual recognition than an emotional discovery.

In my mind it goes like this: If we hadn't dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my granddaughter Lucy wouldn't be alive today. This is inconceiveable! (a video I can't wait to watch with Lucy just so I can play Mandy Potamkin: "My name is Iniego Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.")

No biggee. Just dad.

Isn't this a pickle, Mr. Pink? When last we left the contract negotiations between SEPTA union leaders, SEPTA management and city, state and congressional elected officials trying to broker a deal to end the week-long public transportation workers strike, the various parties looked about as willing to settle this as the double crossing bad guys in the final scene of Reservoir Dogs. As you'll recall, that debut Quentin Tarantino bloodbath ended badly for everyone. That's what happens when everybody has a gun pointed at each other's heads. Right, Mr. Brown?

That would be Mr. Willie Brown, president of the striking Transport Workers Union, who has been cast as the heavy in this suicidal gunfight because he seems responsive only to internal hardliner union voices while tone deaf to the rising chorus of anger and disgust from a riding public as unsympathetic to the union's rejection of the offered contract as they are to executive bonuses for taxpayer-bailed-out mortgage companies. Whatever valid reasons the union brass may have had for calling this strike, they're lost on a public unable to get from home to work to their second job and back home again. Mr. Brown, meet Mr. Ten. He's the new unemployment rate in America. He's also the friend and next door neighbor to your rank and file, and believe me, Mr. Ten is giving your membership an earful. That's why you can't take up Mr. Bald's challenge.

And that would be Gov. Ed Rendell, who used his long-receding hairline -- "I'll be combing my hair in a pompadour" -- to describe the likelihood of a union demand being accepted. Rendell challenged Brown and the TWU executive committee union to put the contract to a vote by the entire union membership by no later than the end of business today. A challenge that stands a pomodour's chance in a wind storm of happening.

  Rendell, who usually acts the adult in a room full of nitwits, showed his frustration in a Saturday night news conference where he threatened to take his $7 million state money football home to Harrisburg unless. . .To me this sounded very much like Mr. Bald pointing a gun at Mr. Brown's head with everyone from Mr. Brown's union watching.

 Whatever do you think Mr. Brown will do? (Spoiler alert). Mr. Public meet Mr. Bullet.

So what? We lost again. Is there any Philadelphian who doesn't know that feeling? Not the losing so much as the intuitive and fatalistic process of preparing to accept defeat. The numbness before the inevitable. The certainty before the final out. I felt this eerie calmness as early as the second inning of Game Six. Not a sense of doom or even disappointment. Just an odd familiar mental clarity, a serenity amidst a floodtide of emotions. I never lost faith. I never stopped believing. But my brain knew what my heart refused to acknowledge. It isn't our night.

I felt the same way in 1993 during Game Six in Toronto and I reacted the same way. I needed to be alone, away from the shouts and groans and curses of others, not friends, not family, not strangers. I needed private time by myself to mourn the passing of a dream. Just me and the TV and what might have been. When Joe Carter hit that three-run homer in the ninth inning against Mitch Williams I was sitting alone in a darkened room except for the unforgiving glow of a black and white television screen.

Last night I managed to keep the lights on and refused to assume the fetal position. I also refused to look at the TV. I didn't want to give reality the pleasure of my attention. It isn't denial if you refuse to participate in the ceremony.

My seven stages of grief bypassed shock, disbelief, bargaining, guilt and anger, while pole vaulting over depression and landing safely in acceptance -- all in the span of a Budweiser commercial. This is a self protective speed response learned from surviving bitter years of dashed hopes. Imagine being a 14-year-old boy in 1964 when the first place Phillies blew it dramatically and unforgettably, losing 10 of their last 12 games in diabolically ingenious ways. I was that boy.

That two weeks of agony in September of '64 was spiritual death in slow motion, almost like being a Mets fan today. And my faith, my confidence, my Philadelphia sports pride was in hospice care for years. I barely paid attention to the epic '67 Sixers championship. It took twin Stanley Cup titles by the Flyers in the mid-70's to rekindle the passion. And it took World Series victories in 1980 and 2008 to convince me that the monkey on the Phillies back was not just dead, but truly and sincerely dead.

So congratulations to the New York Yankees. They were the better team, not to mention the best team money could buy. They represent everything we have come to expect from the perennial American League champions of the national pasttime -- including a most valuable player who can't speak English after six years and tens of millions of dollars earned while playing baseball in America. It required a translator for MVP Hideki Matsui to say nothing in Japanese that he couldn't have learned to say in English off a placemat at Friendly's.

And of course that awkward post-game interview came after Game Four hero Johnny Damon mentioned that he was in the final year of his Yankee contract while expressing his joy about winning a second World Series ring. Somehow I can't imagine anyone in a Phillies uniform saying such a thing at a time like that.

Tonight: Game Six of the 2009 MLB World Series.

Phillies @ Yankees.

 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania versus New York, New York.

The world fuckin' champions with their backs to the wall as greedy Gotham gloats. The wisest minds in the universe of baseball expect the coronation of a new emperor tonight, a title seen as inevitable as a birthright, like a Charlamagne succeeding the occasional Pippen.

The odds are long and the venue is hostile and the smart money is on the most monied team on earth. As my Bronx born born pal Al tried to comfort me before the series even started, "There's no shame in losing to the Yankees." So what else can we do now, Phillies fans. . .except ROLL DOWN THE WINDOWS AND LET THE WIND BLOW BACK OUR HAIR!

  The night's bustin' open and these nine innings can take us anywhere. We got one last chance to make it real. . .

And after we do that, then there's Game Seven.

We've never been there, you know, not as a team or as fans. The Phillies have never reached a Game Seven in the World Series. They've lost in four. They've won and lost in five.. They've won and lost in six. But a Game Seven is an uncharted continent in the Phillies playoff cartography, a submerged Atlantis of possibilities and myth making. We must visit Game Seven. It's only right.

I harbor no ill will towards Yankees fans, other than hating the air they breath, and the earth beneath their feet. This puts me, I would say, in the middle of the pack in terms of Philadelphia fan animosity toward the Yankees as an idea as much as a team. Not only are they the highest paid players in baseball, one Yankees player makes more in a year than all the players on the Pittsburgh Pirates combined.

  If that's not reason enough to hate the Yankees, then consider this: They're also good. They play the game the way it's supposed to be played and they know what it takes to win.

Take the ninth inning in Game Four. . . please. Take Johnny Damon's at bat as an example of Yankees pride and resolve. Fight, fight, fight off two-strike, third-out pitches, until a soft loop single over the infield gets him on first base. Then he steals second briefly while sprinting toward third like a WalMart shopper spotting a fresh cashier with noone in line yet. Damon put on a clinic of good gritty baseball that night. He was Pete Rose-ish, a relentless competitor who wrings the most out of a solid but inelegant body. Johnny Fuckin' Damon. I honor and pray for his soul as it burns in hell, as it should, for all eternity.

I was telling my English and Journalism students yesterday. You guys may never live to see another World Series like this, with the Phillies as defending champions and the Yankees as American League challengers. It's been my experience that such a major league baseball coincidence takes place once ever 125-years or so. Which is not saying it couldn't happen next year, and if it did, wouldn't that be something?

All I'm saying is that this is special and rare and savoring it as it happens is our duty as Phillies fans. This is wonderful and scary and stupidly important to all of us in triple dog dare ways. All we need to do is walk into Yankee Stadium and win tonight. Game Seven will take care of itself. And imagine, just imagine, if the Phillies win. Beat the Yankees twice more in Yankee Stadium after which we will drive home on the Jersey Turnpike with Bruce singing our goodbye to New York -- "So Mary climb in. It's a town full of losers. We're pulling out of here to win." -- on our way to a parade on Broad Street.

A man can dream can't he? I believe in a place called hope.

Where were you Halloween night? If you were like me you were all Halloweened out in some outrageous costume at some stokin' party with the scent of sex all over everything and you completely forgot about the Phiilies. Mea culpa. I am one of those people. I didn't forget about the Phillies so much as I took them for granted.

   It was 3-zip Phillies when I arrived at the parking garage across from the Sheraton at 16th and Race where jewler homeboy bon vivant Henri David unleashed this year's annual late October indoor Mummer's Parade. To call Henri David's Halloween Ball gay would be, like, "Hello?!" It begins with gay and then it gets all goofy and sincere and ends up almost wholesome. What kind of an event is this to watch the World Series..

In the sixth inning in the northeast corner of the hotel lobby a group of slicks, freaks and Cleopatras gathered around a TV set and glumly watched the Phillies bat, now trailing by two. I suppose I could have stayed and watched the rest of the game. I knew that by walking away and having a good time instead of remaining to watch the entire Phillies game I had doomed my team. It's so easy to see that now. My bad.

By the time you read this the Yankees-Phillies World Series will either be tied at two or unthinkable. Unthinkable being losing last night and trailing 3-1 going into tonight's Game Five. Either way I feel guilty like a Catholic schoolboy. I enjoyed myself. I didn't suffer with my team. I chose to look at bare breasts, occasionally on women. I am so going to hell for this. Unless. . .the Phillies save me. Of course they will. This story ain't over.