They're not from Philadelphia, so it's OK

This is the first Flyers post on the blog, so it is something to celebrate, but it’s the only thing to celebrate about this story. This is a time to complain and be disgusted about The Media and other fans all over the world.

"We're going to talk about this briefly and not give it the attention it deserves because we can't dump on Philadelphia fans here."

Since the beginning of time, Philadelphia sports fans have been looked at as ravenous, mean, hateful, unforgiving idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about and are a black eye to all of professional sports. That stereotype is really the only one of its kind. We have done some questionable things in the past, but is it as justified as it seems? What have we done that is so wrong? Sure we “booed” Santa Claus, even though people seem to forget that he was drunk when we pelted him with those snowballs. We also threw a battery at JD Drew and cheered when Michael Irvin got carted off the field on a stretcher, but are we the only fans who have had some kind of indiscretion like that in the past? Lets look at some recent happenings of the exact same thing, which seem to have gone unnoticed.

The first one is a little less serious, but still something that was completely ignored. When Michael Vick got knocked out of the Falcons game with a concussion on Sunday, we don’t think we heard anyone mention that the Falcons’ fans in the building cheered. The whole stadium was cheering because number 7 was laying on the ground, bleeding out of his mouth, but yet, no one seemed to even talk about that. We think we can guess why, since they are “little old” Atlanta, just a bunch of good ole country folk “who don’t mean no harm, they just like to have a good time.” Still, shouldn’t this be just as upsetting as the Michael Irvin – Eagles incident? The Eagles fans started cheering early before they knew it was a serious injury and yet, it’s still talked about 12 years later like we are pariah and animals. Atlanta gets a free pass, because they have Samuel L. Jackson on their side (WHO ISN’T EVEN FROM ATLANTA, GO CHEER FOR YOUR HOMETOWN REDSKINS INSTEAD OF BEING A BANDWAGONER).

The second comparison is much more serious. As you can probably tell with the JD Drew talk that we brought up, we are going to be comparing this to the awful incident that happened to Wayne Simmonds, one of the newest Philadelphia Flyers, in London, ON Thursday night. Let us preface this by saying that JD Drew was a complete bum who deserved the hatred from Philadelphia. He would not sign with us because he knew he was not good enough to turn the team around and we rightfully hated him for it. On August 10, 1999 at Veterans Stadium, Drew had a battery thrown in his direction as a symbol of our hate. It didn’t even hit him, it was just thrown in his direction and there was no damage done other than a possible dent in the lovely Vet Stadium turf. Now fast-forward 12 years later to London, ON. Wayne Simmonds, who is one of only a handful of African American hockey players in the NHL, gets a racially charged banana thrown his way. First off, this is disgusting and should never happen in any way. These couple fans should be banned from ever attending another sports event again as punishment for what they did. The incident did get some media attention, but do you see anyone talking about those terrible Canadians now? A couple of knuckleheads throw a battery in the direction of JD Drew and it reflects on the whole population of Philadelphia, but something much worse happens in London, ON and nothing is even mentioned about the fans. Lets ignore those “sweet Canucks” and just assume it’ll go away in the long run because again, they’re not from that “awful, dirty” city of Philadelphia.

This is something that will probably never change when it comes to Philadelphia sports fans. We will always be looked at as a bunch of low-life, no good Neanderthals who are no better than blood sucking leeches draining the dignity from professional sports, but we are better than The Media gives us credit for. We are Philadelphia, wear it proud. Hopefully the remainder of our Flyers' posts will be about the team's domination.