MOST PERFECT UNION

Who has the most forlorn fans in all of sports? Why, Philly of course.

What is it with Philadelphia? Whatever the game, fans from everywhere else in this great country—who can't agree on which Rocky movie is best—are unanimous in the conviction that the worst (ugliest, meanest, most cynical) sports fans in America hail from the City of Brotherly Love. Pick a pejorative, and it's been used to describe Philly fans—probably in the past week.

The stories are legendary. How they cheered a stretcher-bound Michael Irvin at one Eagles game—and booed a stunned Santa Claus at another. How one mope thought picking a fight with Tie Domi this year was a good idea—and how more than one mope thought calling Tyronn Lue's hotel room in the middle of the night during the NBA Finals was a better one. How they egged Mitch Williams' house after he blew the '93 World Series—and booed Matt Geiger even after Sixers coach Larry Brown said the center was distraught over his sick twin brother. "Philadelphia is the only city where they berate you for picking their team first," says Baseball Weekly senior writer Paul White, who received angry mail from local denizens when he predicted the Phillies would win the NL East this year.

Maybe they thought he was mocking them. Spring 2001—with the Flyers, Phils, Eagles and Sixers all at various stages of actually mattering again—was the first time in two decades that Philly fans had reason not to scowl. Since 1980 (when all four of Philly's pro teams reached their championships, and the Phils won), no city with at least four major sports franchises has had a worse showing in the spotlight: Philly teams are 1-7 in championship rounds during that period.

But Philly's rep as a nice-place-to-visit-just-don't-boot-a-grounder-there kind of town is a lot older than the city's recent sports futility. In 1909, when the Philadelphia Athletics hosted the Tigers at Shibe Park during the AL pennant race, the cops lined the outfield during the game after Ty Cobb received death threats. After another game in 1912, Cobb had to hurriedly hop a trolley to flee an angry mob. "By the end of the decade," writes Penn history prof Bruce Kuklick, author of To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia 1909-1976, "the mean-spiritedness of the city's rooters was such a part of the baseball scene that The Sporting News went out of its way to note that one should not blame unruly baseball behavior on foreigners, since it was common in Philadelphia & "

To be fair, it's not entirely the fault of the city's fans. Philadelphia has a long tradition of losing—beyond sports. This, after all, is the town that was, then wasn't, the nation's capital; that saw its police commissioner firebomb an entire block on TV; that nearly went bankrupt in the '90s; that considers scrapple a delicacy; that has been called, by he-should-know director David Lynch, "the sickest, most corrupt, decaying city filled with fear I ever set foot in in my life."

And then there's the history of the athletic pathetic, lowlighted by the '64 baseball season—otherwise known as the greatest-ever collapse in team sports—when the Phils blew a 6¬-game lead with two weeks left. "It was unbelievable," recalls former mayor Ed Rendell. "The town went through a slow death." The lesson? That in a town where the Liberty is cracked and Shawn Bradley once seemed like a good idea, nothing comes easy.

Yet, despite this reality, Philly fans are also the most invested, which is why—believe it or not—we come not to bury the city and its supporters, but to praise them. "We are fans through thick and thin, and we've had a lot of thin," says Jim Cassidy, a steamfitter for Local 420, enjoying a light lunch (wings, fries, cheese sticks) at Billy Cunningham's Court. "This is not L.A., where seeing a game is a night on the town. Here it's part of the culture."

Many jocks who have played in the City of Your Mother-ly Love believe this culture is a not-so-quiet blessing. "Their passion really helps," says Flyers right wing Rick Tocchet, who's back in Philly after stints in Pittsburgh, L.A., Boston, Washington and Phoenix. "I know athletes who were staggering, and coming here invigorated their careers." Adds Eagles QB Donovan McNabb, whose draft selection two years ago was booed lustily: "Philly fans and players both want the same thing—to win. Sometimes the fans just have a funny way of showing it."

Funny, indeed.

FAMILIES THAT GRAZE TOGETHER …
The Chief is nervous. It's the second quarter of Game 6 of the Sixers-Raptors second-round playoff series, and the Sixers are playing junkball in Canada. Flip the clicker, and the Phillies are trying to blow a 5-0 lead to the Cards.

The Chief (a.k.a. Jack) is the paterfamilias of a peculiar Philly phenomenon: the multigenerational sports clan. It's not just that Philly is an old sports town with a long tradition. It's that around here, no one ever seems to leave. "In other cities, you've got a core fan base from ages 18 to 50. Philly fans go from 2 to 90," says Tocchet. "They're born into the tradition."

The Callahans have suffered Philly's teams forever. In 1948, The Chief took his girlfriend, Ol (once Eileen), to a Browns-Eagles game on their first date. The Browns won big, but the couple married anyway. They raised four sons—Tom, Jack, Pat and Michael—in a two-story brick twin in the working-class Northeast neighborhood where they still live. At the Callahans', says Pat, "There might be six of us for the 1 o'clock game. By the 4 o'clock game, there are 15." They eat Ol's roast beef and meatballs and help themselves to the pot of hot dogs and kraut on the stove. On Sundays, a Callahan doesn't make other plans. "People ask how I got to be such a Philly fanatic," says Michael, 38, the youngest (and the only son to leave town). "But how could you help it?"
The Callahan boys were reared on Dick Vermeil's Eagles, a hardscrabble team led by the quintessential Philly player, Ron Jaworski. "Like the guy who lives next door," says Ol. "Always showed up, always played with everything he had."

Temple sports psychologist Michael Sachs calls that attitude the Sports Ethic. It's Eric Snow shooting 7-for-9 on a bum ankle; it's Allen Iverson, after Ray Allen knocked his tooth loose, saying, "I just kept my mouth closed and swallowed the blood." Radio talk-show host Anthony Gargano explains it this way: "Iverson was slow to hit here because fans didn't embrace him until he began to embrace team concepts." Live the Ethic or you're toast. Just ask a certain Flyers center. ("Lindros was never a good match," observes Chief's grandson Tommy, 14.)

"They push you, they prod you, they make you play better," says Phillies manager and former shortstop Larry Bowa. "But you better be mentally tough. They will eat you up in a second—and they'll crack you. They will crack you."

MAN OF THE PEOPLE
"Pat! Can I have a hug?" says the middle-aged black woman.

"Pat! You have a beautiful smile," purrs the hottie in blue eye shadow.

"Pat! These are my three boys you sent tickets to last year," says the backslapping dad.

"Pat! My little girl had the courage to play softball after you wrote her that letter when she got sick," says the man with the daughter.

"Paaaaaat!" screams the gaggle of teenage girls.

History will recall the spring of '01 as one of those rare moments when it was great to be a Philadelphia fan. The Phillies were in first. Andy Reid was the next great football genius. Even those dysfunctional Flyers made the playoffs. And the Sixers? America's Team. (Go figure.)

So it's no wonder that as Pat Croce, president and part owner of the 76ers, glides through the concourse of First Union Center before a game, everyone wants a piece of him. And he wants a piece of everyone. "Pat could be mayor," says Gene Gilbert, a local businessman who was invited to Croce's skybox this night in May. "He gets what this city is about."

With a few bikers, his college roommate, his wife and mother-in-law and a couple of nuns, it's a typical scene in the suite of the city's first fan. "His box is like a neighborhood," says biker pal Steve O'Kura. Yeah, a neighborhood of steamfitters and shipbuilders. "I know I'm no different than them," says the 45-year-old millionaire, who told Bill Clinton he wouldn't kick season ticket-holders out of their courtside seats during the Finals, even for the former leader of the free world.

If you had to pick a moment when the fortunes of this city reversed course, a good choice would be May 19, 1996, when the Sixers drew the first overall pick in the NBA draft: Croce, who'd been briefed on the event's button-down decorum, jumped up, high-fived everyone on the dais and cradled David Stern's head and kissed him on the cheek. On that day, a town once named fattest in America by Men's Fitness fell in love with a feel-good fitness guru with a very un-Philly-like optimism.

"By sheer will, he ended a malaise in this team's history," says Dave Michaud, a lawyer from South Jersey. When crowds waned during the Derrick Coleman era, Croce—who as a kid hopped over barbed wire to see the Eagles—stood by the First Union Center gate and greeted his "guests." During this year's Finals, he scaled the Walt Whitman Bridge to hang the highest Sixers banner in the city.

"I'm the guy who used to sneak into stadiums and outrun ballpark security," Croce wrote in his book, I Feel Great and You Will Too! "Now, I get in through the front door, with the red carpet and the primo parking. It's an evolution Darwin himself might not have imagined."

STILL CRAZY
Tucked away on 20th Street just north of Center City, McCrossen's Tavern is everything a sports bar should be. Neil McCrossen opened its wooden doors in 1937, after Prohibition, and passed it on down to his nephew Jay. There are no big screens, just a couple of well-placed boxes above the bar. And there's good grub to go with the odd celeb sighting: Dikembe Mutombo favors the penne vodka with chicken; John Chaney likes the rack of lamb. McCrossen's is also a place where four friends—a Philly fan's focus group of sorts—have spent far too much time over the past decade.

The Magazine: So what's wrong with you people?
Neil Cullen, 31, software engineer; once flipped off the Vet's Phanavision camera during a twin-bill loss to Expos: It goes back to the Broad Street Bullies. Even if our team doesn't win, as long as our guys beat the crap out of yours, we're happy.
The Mag: But you're happier when you win, right?
Kevin Hogan, 32, editor; tells his dad he's still in therapy because he wasn't allowed to go to Phils' victory parade in 1980: We have so few champions here. We don't count Villanova. Other cities have had teams that dominated. We get short spurts of success and long moments of disappointment.
Dave Forde, 32, legislative aide; says highlight of trip to Europe at 17 was seeing Bobby Clarke in airport: We don't know how to be happy. The Phils could win 120, but if they lose three in a row, we'd think it's '64 all over again.
Kevin: Folks stick with Philly teams for the same reason they watch General Hospital—the drama is better than the result.
Jay Bevenour, 32, illustrator; believes Rick Tocchet should never have to pay for a meal in Philly again: Like that Eagles-Cowboys game in '94. The Birds pull within 11, Kotite goes for two. They don't get it. You don't go for two when you're down 11. Then Kotite says he couldn't read his sheet telling him what to do because it got wet in the rain. He actually said that!
The Mag: Describe a Philly fan's kind of player.
Neil: We love guys who play above their skills, guys like Bowa, Barkley. We can't stand prima donnas. We say, "Look, I worked hard all week. I had to bust my ass to get to the game, so you better bust your ass in the game."
Kevin: I always thought Iverson was a punk. But the transformation this last year under Larry Brown changed him from the guy with a gun in the front seat who misses practices to the guy who always comes back for more, overcoming all adversity. When the fans saw him battling, that's when we loved him.
Dave: We know we'll never field a high-priced team of fancy free agents. A team of 10 Aaron McKies would be perfect.
The Mag: Best Philly fan story?
Kevin: I was living in San Francisco with Howard, my roommate at Temple. This was '93 or '94. We had this friend, Ed, huge Phillies fan. Ed traveled from Philadelphia to San Francisco to reunite with a girlfriend who was coming from Asia. The rendezvous was scheduled for my apartment. Ed shows up early, just as Classic Sports was broadcasting Game 6 of the Royals-Phils World Series. We're glued to the TV when his girlfriend arrives. She is ignored, but this is Game 6, so she's cool about it. But the whole time Howie's saying, "I bet this guy is gonna pop up; I bet McBride is going to hit a double." Eventually, she realizes we're watching a 13-year-old rerun. Their relationship ended pretty quickly after that. Great game, though."

WING NUTS
It's Tuesday, 6 a.m., 39 hours until the Philadelphia 76ers play for an NBA title for the first time in 18 years. Vegas has declared the Sixers a 20-to-1 underdog, but on 610 WIP sports radio, no one's ruling them out. Not host Angelo Cataldi, the hypercaffeinated former sportswriter who kicks awake the nation's fifth-largest market each morning. Not sidekick Rhea Hughes, a redhead with a mastery of Philly sports. Not Sheldon Weintraub, 66-year-old "senior assistant," a retired podiatrist who lectures about great moments in Jewish sports history.

Philly sports aren't the center of the universe here—they are the universe. I come from Philly, and for this story, I've wrangled my way onto WIP to ask callers about why their world is misunderstood. The studio is packed. Between verses from a singer-songwriter duo strumming "The Ballad of Iverson," impressionist Joe Conklin's brilliant Jack Nicholson and a contest for the most knowledgeable fan in Philly, I offer my theory that the Philly fan is very Zen, because "Zen is about being comfortable with who you are and what you're about."

In fact, no one feels the need to defend Philly fans; the problem is you, not them. And if that seems like overcompensation, well … "Philadelphia fans feel they're viewed as second-class," says sports psychologist Sachs. "They feel obscured in the shadow of New York, D.C. and Boston." Adds Philadelphia Magazine editor Loren Feldman: "There's an unfortunate sense that if you were any good, you'd move to New York."

So there'll be no apologies today. Sean, a member of the Dirty 30, WIP's pack of face-painted, ferocious Eagles devotees, calls to say that "people look at this city as the ugly stepchild." But mainly he needs a barber who can shave a Sixers emblem into his head and dye it red and blue.

WIP is part of the city's psyche. In 1993, when it looked as if the Eagles would never return to the Super Bowl, morning cohost Al Morganti suggested the station start a "Wing Bowl." Once a minor spectacle, the Wing Bowl now stuffs 20,000 into the First Union Center each January. They come to see wrestling dwarfs, string-bikinied babes doused in hot sauce and, at the last Bowl, champion Bill "El Wingador" Simmons inhale 137 wings in 30 minutes.

Tinamarie, a brassy brunette who sang "God Bless America" on a trampoline at Wing Bowl IX, calls in to croon a paean to the Sixers to the tune of "Hello Dolly." She tells Angelo that after they beat the Bucks, she and her fiancé had their best sex ever. (A Philly kind of girl.) Then Rich is on the horn, yelling, "I'm 76ered! I'm going crazy!" Anthony rings to say, "Look at Dikembe, Eric Snow, McKie, Iverson. You see it in their eyes. To be a true Philadelphian, you have to go back to the Rocky days—they know they have to take it from the beast." As he raves in his Sixers-in-seven mentality, we wonder why the most revered athlete in Philly history is fictional.

HOWLING MAD
Cold, concrete Veterans Stadium is an awful place to watch a game. But when the fans are riled, which is often, it's a formidable asset—a deafening thunderdome that once shook Dodger Burt Hooton off the mound
during a playoff game.

Much of that thunder erupts from the 700 level—the cheap seats. You don't want to be near the 700 level as a late-afternoon Eagles-Giants game winds down (especially if the Eagles are losing). The brawls are legendary, and in 1997, the city set up a courtroom in the stadium's basement (The Mag, Dec. 11, 2000) to pass speedy judgment on unrulies. And, no, these cheap seats ain't like your building's cheap seats. "Green Bay fans support their team," says Eagles coach Reid. "But there is no 700 level in Lambeau Field. Really, there's only one 700 level in the NFL."

Like most fans, Philly's finest are "people looking for an identity," says sociologist Charles W. Smith of Queens College. "But Philly fans are perceived as nasty and bad-mannered. A Philly fan is seduced into living up to that reputation." Which came first: the chicken or the egging?

But the 700 level is where the ferocity that makes Philly fans seem like the worst is revealed to be the passion that makes them the best. A discerning passion, for sure, which is why Phillies attendance is down 10% from last year's 97-loss campaign. They're cautious in this town, suspicious of anything that even smells like a setup. Welcome to Philly. And welcome to Section 739, where, on the right evening, you'll find 14 dancing men donning wolf masks. This is the Wolf Pack, pitcher Randy Wolf's personal cheering section. And like so much that fuels the Philly fan, the Wolf Pack was born out of disgust.

It was 1999, another season that began badly and ended worse. Phils ace Curt Schilling was openly complaining about the team's lack of pitching. Then Wolf, a 22-year old farmhand, popped up and delivered. "After he won his first five games, we decided Curt needed to be less of a crybaby," says Pack member Patrick Wood. "So we got behind Wolf." Thus, in the midst of one of the worst seasons in Phillies history, a gaggle of cousins from the Thompson and Wood families decided to make their den in the 700 level.
The Pack never misses a Wolf start, including the day Patrick got married. He went straight from the ceremony to the Vet to catch an inning. But these rabid wolves are also respectful: no drinking or cursing in the Pack. "Too many kids up here," says Charles Wood, a state trooper.

By the fifth inning of a recent Brewers-Phils game, it seems like every kid in the stadium—as well as the Phillie Phanatic—has joined the Pack in the upper deck. Kids with bad teeth and Coke-bottle glasses. Fat kids with leather gloves and white sweats. A minipack of 8-year-old she-wolves with purple-painted nails and size-5 Nikes. "Hungry Like the Wolf" blares over the speakers. Everybody dances.

But what wolves do best is howl. And tonight, they howl a lot. They howl because Randy Wolf is on his way to a brilliant 10-K performance as the home team takes the Brew Crew 2-1 in 12. They howl because, unbelievably, inexplicably, the Phillies sit atop the NL East. They howl for the return of Larry Bowa, whose pound-your-head passion stands for all that these people love about sports—and life (so clearly the same thing). They howl for Iverson's 52 the night before, for what Donovan McNabb's got in mind for the fall. They howl because Santa Claus was drunk, Michael Irvin was a showoff and hell if Baseball Weekly wasn't right. They howl because this is their city, they are its fans and, now and forever, they are in it together.

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