Coming to Grips

The End of This Era is Looming

When you’re growing up as a kid, you tend to idolize sports players. Calogero, in a Bronx Tale, loved Mickey Mantle more than anything. If you ask my dad about Richie Allen he will wax poetic for hours on end if you let him. “Tape measure home runs. You wouldn’t believe the power he had.”

The same is true for a slightly younger generation and Mike Schmidt. For me, I worshipped Allen Iverson for the 10 brilliant years he starred in Philadelphia. To the same extent, I’ve put my heart and soul into rooting for Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard. The writing was on the wall in 2012 but as a fan I’ve always held at least a sliver of hope that these guys could take the Phillies back to postseason baseball. Sadly, it’s officially time to come to grips that this group will never be able to get it done again.

I’ve written about this experience before, and I know that it’s going to happen again. When Allen Iverson left town he left a void in my Sixers’ fandom. He came to Philadelphia when I was in 5^th grade and was still leading the league in scoring when I was in college. Those are formative years for a fan. It’s what shapes your thoughts and expectations about what an enjoyable sports experience is. You build an artificial relationship with someone you don’t even know, but it’s someone who comes through for you more often than not. Iverson was not a role model, but he was someone I looked up to. He is 10 years older than me and it’s always easier to look up to a guy that is older than you.  So when he left, it was almost impossible for me to be able to build a bond with the Sixers like the one I had from 1996 to 2006.

There comes a time in every sports fan’s life when you start to see the years these professional athletes were born and the landscape changes a bit.  Your mindset, and that relationship with the players, shifts. Lebron James was born within a year of me. Just about every player on the Sixers roster was born in the 90s. The Eagles best player, LeSean McCoy, is three years younger than me. That doesn’t make me any less a fan of Shady, but you just fundamentally can’t have the same kind of hero worship for these guys when they are considered your peers. Or even younger than that!

That is what makes the end of this Phillies era of dominance so difficult for a fan in their late 20s. The aging core of former superstars on this team is my last grasp at having the same idolization I felt as a kid watching The Answer. Jimmy Rollins has been around since my freshmen year of high school. Utley and Howard burst on to the scene a few years after that. I could still look up to these guys. I was in college when they were having their really big years and just out of college when they won the World Series. They were all born in the 70s and I revered these guys who were a generation older than me. Ryan Howard hitting a home run was the equivalent of Iverson dropping 35 at will for me.

I know I will always be a fan of Philadelphia sports teams. Those types of allegiances cannot change. I know that all of the franchises will have championship caliber teams that I will put all of my rooting interests in as the years go by. But I also know I’ll never feel the same way about the Phillies as I do for this group of players. That's something that's tough to come to grips with.