Today the world feels normal again. The birds aren't chirping; the church bells aren't ringing. The morning coffee tastes more bitter; the eggs are burned. And your boss is hovering over your desk asking for those reports.

This is Philly. Second place is normalcy.

Being on top of the baseball world was fun while it lasted - all 371 days, to be exact. We were champions, and the exuberance, the effervescence were unparalleled.

But were we ever really comfortable being champs? A generation-plus of sports fans in Philly had no clue what winning felt like. Once we reached the pinnacle, did we really know what we were supposed to do? Or did we start to lose our identity?

After the 2008 championship, people were nicer. They opened doors for each other. The chip on our collective shoulder was gone.

We didn't boo our Phillies as much as we did before Uncle Charlie hoisted the championship trophy on a crisp October night. Even Charlie himself said so when his team wasn't playing well early in 2009.

We had gone soft. For once, the City of Brotherly Love was not an ironic nickname. We had a team we loved as brothers and respected as the champions they were.

Sure, there was occasional discontent among the fans aired on talk radio. But it wasn't as pointed as it had been during The Drought.

When Brad Lidge struggled early in the year, many fans said he needed more time; you couldn't expect perfection every year. Around the eighth blown save, those fans eventually came around. In the past, though, the catcalls would have rained down after the third or fourth blown save. We had become nicer.

Even as recently as a week ago, the fans' ire wasn't what it would have been - or even should have been. When Lidge and Pedro Feliz bumbled Game 4 and the World Series away late on a Sunday night, one expected pure outrage. Instead, people seemed numb. Instead of booing at record decibels, the crowd got quiet quickly. The tone on talk radio the following morning was more hurt than angry.

The only player who faced a true lambasting was Cole Hamels, whose comments about wanting the season to end were taken out of context. Even so, he didn't get the treatment Ricky Watters did after his infamous "For who? For what?" comments.

Even today, as we wake up to another morning as non-champions, we aren't as enraged and depressed as we should be. The mood is more, "We lost, but we're happy with the run and to have been there again."

Of course, we should be proud of the Phillies and thankful for the three-year run they've given us to date. They did end the championship drought. And Uncle Charlie could and should be elected mayor tomorrow.

However, to be happy to have been there is unacceptable in Philadelphia. The Yankees were not clearly the better team. The Phillies could have won the series with a couple of balls bouncing their way. Where is the sadness and the anger that we're known for?

It's not there because we didn't know how to deal with being champions. The fan base just hasn't been itself.

Now that can and will change. Dig deep down and pull out the brazen, hard-core, chip-on-the-shoulder fanatic. It's who we are. Honk your horn and give a New Yorker the finger. Throw a snowball at a Mets fan this winter. It'll make everything normal again.