Chris Christie: Phillies fans are 'bitter' and Citizens Bank Park is 'not safe'

Chris Christie is turning heel.

By now, everyone in Philadelphia knows the Cowboys-loving New Jersey governor hates the Eagles. So it's easy to ignore him when he goes on New York sports radio and says Eagles fans "suck" and calls them "angry, awful people."

But on Wednesday night, Christie took his trolling of Philadelphia sports to another level during an appearance on SportsNet New York's Baseball Night.

Christie, who says he has been a Mets fan since the late 1960s, was speaking about the team when the subject turned to Tug McGraw and the Phillies' use of his "Ya Gotta Believe" slogan on new graphics adorning the hallways at Spectrum Field in Clearwater. Mets fans have been oddly fixated on the use of the slogan, which McGraw made famous when he was a Met during the team's 1973 World Series run.

That's when Christie, who is reportedly interested in becoming a sports talk show host once his tenure as governor ends next year, went full Skip Bayless, blasting Phillies fans as "awful people."

"The Phillies suck," Christie said. "Let's just start with that. They're from Philadelphia. They're an awful team. They're an angry, bitter fan base and it's not safe for civilized people to go to Citizens Bank Park if you want to root for the other team."

"Ya gotta believe what?" Christie continued. "Ya gotta believe we're awful people!"

Watch:

The Phillies had a perfect response to Christie's trolling:

Setting his sights on sports isn't a bad strategy for Christie, who is tied for the lowest job approval rating of any governor in the history of New Jersey polling.

"I'm a sports fan, and I enjoy that stuff," Christie said during the segment. "Whether it's something I'll do when I get out, I've got to start thinking about that. ... But I'd love to do something like that as part of what I do in the next phase of my career.

"It's certainly one of the things that I hope I'll have a chance to consider when I get out and stop being governor," he added.

"If he stays out of politics, and just does sports talk for a year or two, he might find his political career in better shape than he left it," former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has said of Christie's sports-talk aspirations.