Stu Bykofsky: Born in the Bronx, Stu's rooting for...?
I GREW UP in the Bronx during the era of Yankees supernatural supremacy, so how can I root against them?
I GREW UP in the Bronx during the era of Yankees supernatural supremacy, so how can I root against them?
Philadelphians don't know what it is like to wake up in the morning, or in April, and know your baseball team will win the pennant.
OK, the Yankees didn't win the pennant every year through the late-'40s and mid-'50s, but almost. Pennants came as regularly as subway trains, World Series wins just a bit slower during my prime boyhood fan years. Between 1947 and 1956, the Bronx Bombers were world champions seven times, including five consecutive titles. (The Yanks swept the Phils in 1950.) The Yankees spent so much time in the sun they were as tan as George Hamilton.
In your lifetime, the closest Philadelphia came to a dynasty - until now? - was the Flyers of the mid-'70s, when they won back-to-back Stanley Cups. Before the deciding Game 6 of the 1974 Stanley Cup finals, coach Fred Shero promised his players, "Win together today and we walk together forever."
The Sixers got into a few championship games, but last won it all in 1983. The Eagles made it to the Super Bowl twice, and lost twice.
The Yankees of my youth were more than a ballclub. They were an aspiration to excellence that became reality year after year, season after season, buoying Noo Yawkers, bedeviling everyone else.
I loved the purity of not allowing players' names on the back of Yankees jerseys. It made a statement: The Yankees are a team first, individuals second. Yet some of the greatest individuals in the game - Ruth and Ford and DiMaggio and Mantle and Berra - wore pinstripes, along with one of the greatest hearts, Gehrig. Standards set by these men lasted for generations.
So how can I not root for the first team I ever loved, the first men I ever cheered?
I've now lived in Philly for more than half my life, but geography is not destiny.
These Phillies broke 25 years of championship celibacy, exploded the Billy Penn jinx, drove a stake through memories of the 1964 collapse, rescued the Quaker City from its psychological prison of doubts, pessimism and fears. Last year's Halloween Day parade erased all the April Fool's Days Philadelphia fans had endured.
These Phillies have earned fans' love, respect and devotion. Their bats and gloves and fightin' spirit tore up the label of this being an "also ran" city, something Philadelphia doesn't deserve.
But given my attachment to my boyhood heroes, and what they meant to me then, does some tiny particle at my sentimental core want the Yankees to win?
No freaking way.
New York is the place of my birth and happy childhood. The sidewalks and tenements of the Bronx will be with me forever. Along with my parents, New York molded me and owns real estate in my heart. Hard-nosed and fast-paced, obnoxious and big-hearted, sophisticated and arrogant, New York is one of the greatest cities in the world.
But there comes a time to put your childhood toys in the attic. Philadelphia is my dear, adopted home and the Yankees are like a money-grubbing and annoying ex-wife. These wonder-ful Phillies, this band of brothers, have my heart.
Back-to-back pennants make them the greatest Phillies team ever.
If they win back-to-back Series, they will stand atop Olympus among the greatest baseball teams ever.
To do that, they must beat the Yankees. They will.
And then these lovable, talented, indomitable Phillies will walk together forever.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: