Editors note: Baseball writer Ben Walker worked for the AP in Philadelphia in 1981-82 and then tranferred to New York, where he has lived ever since.
I traded Center City for midtown Manhattan more than 25 years ago, and still get rankled when people take shots at my old town. It’s been happening a lot lately, too.
Silly-delphia? Foul ball! That’s Double-A, at best. Hardly worthy of a World Series insult.
GAME 3 PREVIEWWhen » Saturday, 7:57 p.m. ETWhere » Citizens Bank Park, PhiladelphiaTV » FOXRadio » National broadcast: ESPN Radio (980 AM, XM 140)
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Jimmy Rollins talks about Philly feeling an inferiority complex when it comes to New York and New Yorkers. That’s true. Took me only a month of living here in the early ’80s to find out.
An AP editor had assigned me the story of a brewing storm: Sylvester Stallone wanted to put a 10-foot, bronze statue of Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and it wasn’t getting done.
After several tries, I got a museum official on the phone. As I recall, he told me he’d previously worked at a prominent museum in New York, perhaps the Guggenheim. For a few minutes, we danced around the question of the delay. Then he cut right to it.
“Come, come, Mr. Walker,” he said. “I think we both know that it’s not quite a Renoir, now is it?”
Well, there it was. As in, you dumb Philadelphians wouldn’t know the Venus de Milo from a metal hunk of junk in a million years.
OK, maybe we didn’t have the Metropolitan Opera House or the Empire State Building or even Yankee Stadium. But at least when we parked our cars in the middle of Broad Street, we knew how to do it without wrecking traffic. Ask anyone who’s tried to drive down Broadway lately … how’s that Bloomberg Beach working out?
I’m a product of both places and can unequivocally state that there’s not another city in this world that can be a New York. And, believe it or not, that’s perfectly fine with the people living in the shadow of Billy Penn’s statue.
Folks here don’t want the hassle, the accent or the cramped spaces of their neighbors up the New Jersey Turnpike. They’re fine letting New Yorkers claim Wall Street, Broadway and Central Park.
I could say, Philly has this and this and this … but who cares?
They’re both great places.
I’ll admit, I’m kind of rooting for the underdog. Naw, not the Phillies — they don’t need any help going into Game 3 against the Yankees. But the city.
My mom grew up in south Philly, near the bakery where opera great Mario Lanza made cakes as a boy. My parents met at the Navy Yard. My Thanksgivings meant a weekend with the grandparents, plus a trip to long-gone JFK Stadium for the Army-Navy game.
So then I read the column in the New York Daily News this week that asked: “Do they have anything besides the damn cheesesteaks that we don’t have?”
And then saw the box in the New York Post that compared each city’s best-known quote. For Philly: “Yo, Adrian!” For NYC: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Statue of Liberty or Liberty Bell, hard to knock either one. That said, heading through Times Square this morning to catch the train, I did see someone dressed as Lady Liberty herself, painted green from head-to-toe and posing for pictures.
And people say the Phillie Phanatic looks odd! Another thing: It’s very easy to go a whole day here and never hear a single “Yo!”
Really, I have nothing against New York. I’ve lived there almost half my life. My wife is in the dance world and works for a Tony Award-winning choreographer. His nephew happens to play in the Phillies’ minor league system.
It’s just that this city is pretty neat, too. Even a noted curmudgeon might agree.
A dozen years ago, I played on a softball team in New York. One of the team’s founding fathers was our right fielder, Larry David, co-creator of “Seinfeld” and future star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Before I joined up, the team had been called the Friends of Clyde (an early episode of “Seinfeld” that features him playing for the Friends O’ Clyde, in fact). But the team broke apart and when I hooked on with Brooklyn-born Larry David, the guys had a new name.
The Phillies.
