After a summer of utterly brutal heat and stifling humidity, we are enjoying gorgeous early fall days.  Crisp, clear, blue-skied, sunny, and warm-ish.  Perfect, splendid September, we welcome you.

This past weekend I found myself in several iconic Philadelphia locations:  the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Rittenhouse Square and the Phillies ballpark.  Early drafts of the Constitution were on display in the first.  People were pursuing happiness in the second.  And in the third, celebrating a thrilling hometown win with a walk-off home run by Jayson Werth.  As the T-shirt worn by the man in front of me at the Phils game said, “Life is good.”  (That is copyrighted, by the way.)

My brother Jim recently visited from St. Louis.  He’s a good sport, up for anything, from sampling lots of Philadelphia hoagies and cheesesteaks to helping Chris remove window AC units, from hanging out in the city while I had a meeting to visiting our gym with us.

Jim and I also did some quick research on our family at the PA Historical Society.  We found many cards in the catalog with the last name Crabb, including four in a row pertaining to Thomas, Robert, James and William – the names of my brothers and dad.  Good old Anglo Saxon monikers, all.  If we wanted to actually see these letters and documents from the 1700s and 1800s, we could just visit the Society, pay a small fee, write a list of the papers we wanted, and they would be brought to us.  I’m adding this to my list of things to do someday.

As I’ve said in this space before, I always loved summer the most.  Not anymore.  Fall, you are my new best friend.

The game was spooky enough for me. The weather was clammy, cold and rainy, delaying the start by what seemed like six hours. Our team lost chillingly, and everyone in our section was taunted by the bloc of drunken blue-clad Yankees in section 142. It was a riot waiting to happen.

So I can’t wax rhapsodic about the actual game. Some of the attire at the Halloween game was fun, though.

We drove down with friends Frank and Carol, their son Alex and his friend Matt. Matt wore his one-of-a-kind jersey, which his family won for excellent turnstile timing.  They also won lots of tickets, and Matt’s mom Beth got to throw out the first ball at a game.  Matt said proudly, “She got it in the strike zone.”  A victory for all mothers everywhere.  And Beth is a MOB-ster with 3 boys!

Then there were these two lovelies, with frocks, hats, and clip-on earrings from Salvation Army. The bearded guy’s shoulder loop was hanging out and I fixed it for him, as he frowned in bafflement and asked, “What is that FOR, anyway?” I told him it was to keep his dress from falling off the hanger, and he immediately felt he knew too much about women’s clothing and needed to return the flowered concoction THAT MINUTE.

And finally, we sat next to a rather elderly couple, who got points for staying to the bitter end, keeping a scorecard, and putting a tilda over Ibanez’s “n.” Their thin plastic ponchos flapped disconsolately, bat-like, in our faces the entire time, an apt soundtrack for a night in major league hell.

It’s not over til it’s over, however. Remember the Red Sox were down 1-3 before roaring back to beat the Yankees in the playoffs a few years back!  There’s another game tonight!

The Phillies are going to the World Series again!  At the magic moment, the moment of victory, the culmination of the NCLS, I was fast asleep.

I’ll admit it – I am a fair weather fan.  But the term seems to carry an unnecessary negative connation.  And given the choice between being a die hard and fair-weather gal, I choose fair weather.   Consider the following:

We fair weather fans cheer just as loud as the die hards when our teams win.  We love to clap; we rarely boo.  When our teams lose, we don’t scream, curse, or put our heads in the oven.  We might let out a sigh, maybe a shrug, and wander into the kitchen to see if there is any slow churned vanilla ice cream left.  We never get mad at the players or coaches.  We are completely over a loss in about, uh, four seconds.

Where die hards have a great deal of internal stuff going on during games, we fair weathers are externally motivated.  We are pretty much there for the party, the side conversations, and whatever food and drink is being served.  We don’t personally identify with the teams or the players as much as we do with fellow fans.  Given a choice to spend the evening with one of the Phillies or with a group of friends watching the Phillies, I would prefer the latter.

Fair weather fans do not interrupt life for sports.  Sometimes we fall asleep during the gasp playoffs.  We are perfectly happy inquiring about the score the next morning.  We do not need to wear any specific clothing during the series, sit in a certain spot, or make phone calls after a particularly good or bad play just to hear another die hard breathe on the other end of the line.  Die hards debate the wisdom of pinch hitters; fair weathers debate the wisdom of soul patches.  A “heart breaker” to a die hard is a ninth inning opposing team come from behind; to a fair weather, it is simply Chase Utley from behind.  

Dies hards and fair weathers co-exist and we both have loads of fun during the play-offs — but we really don’t understand or appreciate one another.  Whereas the die hards scoff at us fair weather folks for our lack of passion and commitment, we look at the die hards and think they are a little unbalanced.  With the exception of our good friends Rob (who works for the Phillies) and Kim (who has to live with Rob), there seems to be little reason to get too exercised about a game.  I have held Rob’s World Series ring in my hand.  That thing is heavy, sparkly and worthy of a little post season angst. 

But for the many of us, it just doesn’t matter that much.  We should treat our sports teams like our children – love them when they win – and love them even more when they lose. 

The forecast for Philadelphia:  Fair weather.  At least for a few more weeks.  Go Phils!

This is relevant because, nine months after the last nine innings, the drugs resulted in Hugh, with whom I sat last night. Since he was only a Clomid washed down by ballpark beer in ’93, I’m not sure that means that technically he has attended a World Series before. But last night, he saw every pitch and every swing and he was overjoyed (a huge thank you to our fabulous friend Frank for the tickets).

This kid loves sports, both as a spectator and as a player. I can completely see him landing a job with ESPN one day. Here he is, seconds after the Phillies became the champions.

Not even the weird guy standing in front of us, blocking our view by obsessively taking photos of the Phanavision screen and random crowd shots, could dampen our enthusiasm. Not even when Humorless Odd Photographer got miffed when my rally towel disturbed the air over his hair. A piece of red fluff landed in his coif and he didn’t know it was there. HA! Take that, cranky dude. I’m like my mother – she would go to a baseball game and, even if the bases were loaded and nobody was out, would focus on how many hot dogs the man across the aisle consumed. Despite my chronic people critiquing, I did actually also watch the game – and it was thrilling. Here’s the scene in the parking lot before, which looks way more illegal than it was.

And over in the rowdy section behind Pat Burrell where Chris and Malcolm were sitting, yes, Single Baseball Fan, two MORE balls landed right in their hula hoop – but Chris was not there for one of them, and the kids directly in front of M got the other – which was the Ray’s homer – so they did the right thing and threw it back.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to write the brothers some notes getting them out of school for the parade tomorrow. I already know they’re going to have a raging Phever.

I’ve been in a 50th state state of mind this week. On Monday, Malcolm had to bring in an authentic Hawaiian dessert to share with his 6th grade Visa (world cultures) class, currently reading about Pearl Harbor. I’ll spare you details of the 3 grocery trips and endless stirring over low heat to make a coconut milk pudding. I wonder if any of the kids detected my secret thickening agent, Jello Instant vanilla mix? Hey, when the stuff hadn’t gelled by Monday morning, desperate measures were required. Plus, it tasted great!

The Hawaii theme continued last night, when it was all about Shane Victorino, the Flyin’ Hawaiian, who was key in getting the Phillies to the World Series (Wave those rally towels!)…and Barack Obama, who will be key in getting America back into World Class shape (Wave that voter registration card!).

Flipping channels between The Game and The Debate, I did have some questions. Why can’t Manny stop fidgeting? And isn’t there a more flattering hairstyle for him? Why can’t McCain stop blinking? And doesn’t he know that’s a sign of lying? Maybe he’s never played poker. Why couldn’t Obama have smiled less when McCain was talking? And doesn’t he know that looks smug? Why wasn’t McCain wearing a flag pin? And is anyone going to make a huge deal out of that little omission?

Best malapropism of the evening: McCain saying Palin was a “Freth of bresh air.”

I’ll sign off with this amazingly inspired treatment of McCain & Palin as a famous cartoon couple. As caricatures go, it’s absolute perfection. Kudos to the Gallery of the Absurd – but careful, you could lost here.

http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com/14/2008/09/john-mccain-sar.html