Let's go Phillies
Post-season baseball in the City of Brotherly Love.
It’s 2:15 pm on a Saturday. A sunny and crisp autumn afternoon.
Outside this neighborhood bar, the whole of Philadelphia hums with a collective nervousness. The Phillies, the city’s esteemed baseball team, are in the playoffs. Not only that, they’re playing out of their minds. After hitting late-season form, they scraped into the postseason by way of a wild card entry and are now in the divisional round playoff dismantling the defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves.
I’m elbow to elbow with a mate and we’re enjoying the beer we’ve said we’d get for months. Between sips of pale ale, we go back and forth over work war stories, and marketing ideas, and then back to the game.
The bar bristles with energy and I make sure to take a moment to drink in the scene along with my beer. It’s a smorgasbord of Philadelphians.
You can knock Philadelphia for a lot of things but you can’t deny the city has its own flavor of locals. Passionate, no bullshit, hard-nosed kinda people. And my god do they love their sport.
Today it’s on full display.
There’s the mohawked bartender, wearing a Phillies jersey and a rainbow headband tied around his head to match the Phillies’ star batsmen. He rarely smiles and I think I hear him tell a customer to f*ck off.
The two other bartenders—a young woman, and an older man, also in Phillies jerseys—are friendlier than their mohawked coworker but struggle to keep pace with the deluge of drink orders. Partly because it’s so busy, partly because they don't want to take their eye off the game.
Two young guys wearing Phillies hats, about the same age as me, are catching up over wings and beers in front of us. One of them licks all his fingers clean of wing sauce and for a moment I feel weird for staring at him.
There are three people next to them, in Phillies hats and t-shirts. They pivot their gaze between the four TV screens in front of them.
A lone man perched at the bar holds the seat next to him by placing a red Phillies beanie on the seat. That move is usually a no-no in a packed bar where the policy is always first-come, first-served. Today, he gets a pass.
The icing on the cake is the USPS worker, who walks past us early in the game to pull up a standing spot at the end of the bar. His full mailbag and neatly-pressed uniform suggest he’s still on the clock. I hear him ask the guy next to him how the Phillies are doing and then say he’s popped in just to catch the score but might stay for a few pitches. He can’t stay long, he says, he has to get back to his route.
The scene plays out through the afternoon. A mess of crazed Philadelphians watching in angst and exploding in cheers and high-fives with each run or strike-out.
When they finally win, the bar blasts the team song, and everyone raises their glasses and sings in unison. The Phillies are one step closer to the World Series and happiness will reverberate through the city for the rest of the weekend and into next week.
As I wait to pay my bill, I look over to the end of the bar. I see the USPS worker still standing there, ordering another drink while arguing with someone about the game. The mailbag, still full, sits on the chair to his left. Because in this town, even the mail stops for the Phillies.
And somehow that feels right.