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Non-local sports writer backs Phillies fans booing Jayson Werth

Okay, I have to admit up front that I grew up in D.C. and have something of an affinity for the baseball team that's currently in town playing the Phillies.

But a lot of you follow me on Twitter, or have been in my Phillies game chats over the years, and you know that I'm a steadfast defender of Philadelphia sports fans' right to yell whatever they want from the stands. You can boo someone as much as you want, no matter how dumb it makes you look or how much useless, over-the-top ridicule it invites from the rest of the country.

(And most of you already knew that other part of my background too. Which is fine.)

So I was reading the Washington Post's D.C. Sports Bog, which is a bit like this one in that it has journalists trying to take a fan-centric look at local sports, Tuesday morning at work. You might know about one of its authors, Dan Steinberg, because pretty much any time Philly fans do anything relating to a Washington sports team, he's on it within seconds.

(I know him fairly well. He's a good guy, and he actually rather likes Philadelphia's sports culture, even if he doesn't always say so. Really, he does, I promise.)

Steinberg wrote something this morning about Phillies fans booing Jayson Werth in Monday's game at Citizenks Bank Park. When I first saw the headline I thought the post would be mocking in some form.

Well, it wasn't.

Jayson Werth is well into his third season in Washington, but the boos in Philadelphia haven't stopped. And while I usually enjoy poking fun at our Northern neighbors for their propensity to hoot, I actually think this is fine.

This despite the fact that one of Philadelphia's most estimable baseball bloggers, Dash Treyhorn, is getting sick of fans treating Werth this way:

Quite the chorus of boos for Jayson Werth, there. It's been a few years, can't we let that go now?

So on one side, you have the Philly guy saying to let it go, and on the other side the Washington guy saying to keep it going because he thinks it's fair game.

Bizarre.