As Rollins walked to the plate for his first home at-bat since issuing his inflammatory comments about Phillies fans a week earlier, he was showered with a mixed greeting. About half the sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park last night booed the shortstop, while half cheered. That's pretty much the way it went with each successive at-bat, too.

By now, everyone knows how the drama began: Rollins appeared on Fox Sports last Wednesday and called local fans "front-runners," accusing them of being with the players in good times and against the players in bad. Word of the perceived slight spread through Philadelphia faster than a Ryan Howard home run reaches the outfield seats.

"It really wasn't meant to make a point," Rollins said before last night's game, although he added that he doesn't regret his comments. "But for every action, there's a reaction."

The frustration shows

"Mondays are different in the Delaware Valley after an Eagles loss," said Merrill Reese, the longtime Eagles radio broadcaster. "You can see it in people's faces. And after an Eagles win, you can see people almost walking on air, they're so happy. It could be pouring on the Monday after an Eagles win, but the sun is always shining. The fans here are so tied emotionally to these teams."

That kind of investment often swings opinions from one end of the spectrum to the other. One day Allen Iverson is stepping over Tyronn Lue and into our open arms, the next he's openly criticized as a punk who won't practice. Either way - positive or negative - venting has long been Philadelphia's chief pastime.

"Booing and cheering are very closely related," said Eric Zillmer, who teaches sports psychology at Drexel and serves as the school's athletic director. "They come from the same psychological mechanism. It's why it's possible to switch so quickly from cheering to booing. We have high expectations. We feel huge highs and suffer terrible lows."

Those valleys appear that much deeper when measured against the peaks reached by other cities. Not winning a title for a quarter-century is bad enough; watching Boston repeatedly celebrate, though, is almost too much to bear. Not to mention watching Tampa, Raleigh, and other small hamlets hold parades. Then there's Philadelphia's longtime antagonist just 90 miles to the north, which recently claimed an improbable Super Bowl win over the Patriots, who dispatched the Eagles four years earlier.

"If we were kicking butt and winning championships, people would be a little more relaxed," said Garry Cobb, a former Eagles linebacker turned media personality. "But there's no doubt that people have a chip on their shoulders because they have to hear New York and their mess about 'We're New York' and whatever."

Gruff and proud

"I think some worry that if the game is on TV and they don't boo, people watching will be disappointed," Councilman Frank Rizzo said with a laugh. "It's almost expected, so we have to deliver. And if they boo and it isn't loud enough, people are disappointed. But, so long as it isn't disruptive, it's also plain, old fun. It's tradition."

That's precisely what it is, according to Zillmer - learned behavior passed from one generation to the next. Passion is something fans here catch early and never bother to cure. So, as far as many Philadelphians are concerned, if they cheer themselves hoarse or cry themselves to sleep, there's really nothing they can do about it. They're as capable of controlling their emotions as they are of hugging it out with Mets supporters.

"Love-hate relationship"

"They're in there playing the game in their heads. They're on the field. It's a love-hate relationship. Think about your own life. There are people who you adore, and they're the same people you fight the most with. They don't feel like they're a spectator watching a sport, they feel like they're your friend. You're the hardest on the people you love the most."

On its face, that might sound insane or a touch pathetic - that the city lives so vicariously through its athletes, and that the population's self-worth is so deeply enmeshed with success or failure. To the contrary - and likely to the surprise of Rollins and, oh, pretty much the rest of the country - it's possible that Philadelphia's attitude is actually cathartic. (Though good luck getting anyone who wasn't reared on scrapple to buy the idea.)

"We're so passionate - sometimes we cry, sometimes we laugh," Zillmer said. "That suggests to me that we're a much healthier city than some people think. We don't bottle our emotions. We're not aloof. Some other cities, it's not that they bottle their emotions, it's that the emotions aren't even there."