Phillies' parade planned for Friday (AP)
Many baseball fans here would not speak the "P" word in the anxious days leading up to the city's World Series title, lest they jinx the team. But now that the Philadelphia Phillies have claimed their second championship, everyone is talking about a parade. Hundreds of thousands of people could crowd the sidewalks on Friday to cheer the city's first national sports title in 25 years.
Like, "in the End Days, Philadelphia shall be crowned again after a long, excruciating long wait" - and then BANG! Armageddon!
No? Oh well... It's gonna happen anyway!
There is some sort of ominous resonance here, though - one cannot deny it!
Philadelphia hasn't won much of anything at all in over a century of sports; this franchise in particular only winning a second championship in 126 years NOW seems to truly MEAN SOMETHING...
To boot, the fact that the Phillies lost their first World Series to the Boston Red Sox, way back in 1915 - those same Red Sox they nearly met this year in the classic and the same Sox that were cursed for so very long (1919-2003 really) before winning it all in very dramatic fashion in both 2004 and 2007 (and very nearly repeating the feat this year too) thus "reversing the curse" and, truly, in fact, shedding it at long last.
The Phillies could be told to have been just as cursed as the Red Sox had been... and the White Sox were too... and the Cubs still are...
The fact (phact...?) is, the Phillies lost their first crack at it to the Red Sox - a fated team to say the least...!
And then the Phillies lost every other trip to the championship series they had in their long history - of futility, for the most part! Poor Philly Phanatic; he never had anything much to be fanatical about! Hysterical, maybe - he could have gone postal a few times too - but fanatical? Nah! The Phillies kept losing all these years! They lost to the execrable Yankees, to the tepid Toronto Blue Jays (who only won with a team filled with bought-over talent from the States...!) and the fact is that their current general manager is the very same man who assembled the mercenary stable in T.O. in the first place, the hired thugs that defeated Philly in the 1990s - j'ai nommé that evil-glared Pat Gillick guy...! This is much akin to making a pact with the evil one in order to finally get over the hump...?!?
It is very Biblical, at any rate, that the diluvian rains made the decisive game a three-day dramatic epic...! And to see the dominant relief pitcher who tamed the damnable (formerly Devilish) Rays and recorded the final out to seal the historical triumph RAISE HIS ARMS to the Heavens above and thank GOD as well as His Son, JESUS-CHRIST the moment he could do so on the national broadcast...! Well - isn't it all very apocryphal, or what?!?
It is also a most revealing fact that the Phillies represent a city known for its "loveable losers" - such as Rocky Balboa and, uh, the Eagles/Sixers/Flyers/Phantoms...! The City of Brotherly Love could only be about loveable losers - and these losers in particular -the Phillies- have been real experts at it too; always coming up just short of things. Winning their first World Series, finally, after 90-odd years (the last original team to finally get it done, so tardily...!) and then they only managed to get it done in 1980 because they faced another perennial loser - Kansas City! But every dog has its day - K.C would get theirs too, just a few short years later... But this is about Philly here; there's nothing remotely Biblical about "K.C." now, is there?!?
Philadelphia will always evoke the creepy Philadelphia Experiment to me, though...! And that's even MORE (political) reasons to have it win it all this ELECTIVE year, mere DAYS really before the sad process gets rolling in D.C. there...!
PLUS, and most interesting of all, of course, Philadelphia is indeed a genuine Biblical name. And it is also the brand and trademark of a most famous sort of cream cheese. (Sort of like "The Number 23" is so eerie for Jim Carrey - but also a mere blend of flavours as far as Dr. Pepper is concerned! That sort of thing... I guess!)
Perhaps MOST importantly though, we could have had a Boston-Philadelphia WORLD SERIES... on the eve of an age of deconstruction and decrepitude for the USA overall, before the rest of the (mocking) world's very eyes! The two cities that represent the most the whole country, the foundation stones upon which the "land of the free" was built, at the forefront of "AMERICA'S PASTTIME" now, just when America is at a most dire turning point in its sordid history...
Very interesting, yes, that NOW is the time when both these cities seem to be turning it around and becoming veritable "cities of champions" - as their nation is no longer a champion but instead veering towards becoming a fallen titan...!
Hmm...!
If not in The Good Book, maybe there's something about this in the prophecies penned by Nostradamus...? The French always liked the Americas so very much - no? I expect a quick web search to unearth something like this:
Mil nonante huit et une décade, mois d'octobre pluvieux
c'est alors que la Philadelphie clame enfin victoire
Et dès lors la fin sera proche, jeunes comme vieux
trouveront les ans durs et périlleux durant la foire (...)
Something like that!
;)
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