Phillies fans relieved to see win
MILWAUKEE - To Philadelphia fans savoring their first playoff series win after 15 years of futility and anxieties, a word: Relax.
MILWAUKEE - To Philadelphia fans savoring their first playoff series win after 15 years of futility and anxieties, a word: Relax.
Mother Teresa said so yesterday, looking down from high in Miller Park and wearing a Phillies jersey. She cast a thumbs-up benediction upon Jimmy Rollins' leadoff home run and pronounced herself at peace.
"I'm a lot better now," she said as the resolute Brewers crowd tried to regain its composure despite instantly falling behind.
Mother Teresa is a Phils fan, but not the famed nun. She is Teresa Maganzini, a South Philadelphia native, Villanova Law alumna and, Chicago lawyer with a personalized Phillies number 10 jersey identifying her as "Mother Teresa."
The moniker? "My name is Teresa, and my husband is a little high-maintenance," she said.
Phanatics will accept any blessing that works after too many lackluster seasons. Mother Teresa Maganzini, amen.
A handful of other Phillies fans speckled among the ThunderStix-shaking Brewers crowd for yesterday's 6-2 win confessed that Saturday's loss had brought back that old, familiar dread.
The chance to sweep the series was gone, they were surrounded by Milwaukee's suddenly optimistic fans, and the other guys' bulky ace was looming large as the potential Game 5 starter. The well-practiced fear and loathing of Philadelphia's bruised fandom crept into Brew City.
"As a Philly fan, you expect to go to Game 5," Mike Zucker, a University of Wisconsin student from Upper Dublin, said on his way into the stadium, "and you expect to lose it."
To get their collective dander properly up for the game, Zucker and fellow transplant Jason Abel tried taunting the surrounding Brewers faithful, hoping for boos. Few came, of course, and Zucker lamented the politeness.
The niceness held. Brewers fans greeted the loss, in their team's first playoff appearance in 26 years, by applauding both teams. In the stands, a line of Milwaukeeans shook the hand of exultant Newtown Square native Chris Smith.
What they said was, "Go get the Dodgers." Why they said it was that they, too, could relax: their biggest rivals also won't win.
"We're just happy the Cubs aren't in it," Brewers fan Garett Kucifer said.
Smith lives in Chicago now, where he's part-owner of a limousine company, but he remains a Philly sports zealot. He had a baseball glove in one hand yesterday, and in the other a BlackBerry that he used to keep track of the Eagles game (a 23-17 loss to the Washington Redskins, as it turned out). Sitting one row in front was his son, Mickey, 12, wearing a Jimmy Rollins jersey.
"He had a choice. He could have been a Chicago sports fan," Chris Smith said of his son. "I told him what a long, hard life he was in for if he became a Philly fan, and he chose it anyway. He gets a little payout today."
Marty O'Connor tried yesterday to tilt the scales for 61/2-month-old son Jack's rooting decisions. They and Jack's mother, Cailin Hadley, had come to Milwaukee from Gloucester City for a wedding and the chance to go to Game 4 fit into their schedule. The trio sat high above right field. Cailin shielded Jack's ears whenever the racket became too loud, and the child's first Phillies game turned out to be a playoff series win.
Was working a spontaneous baseball trip into a long-planned travel weekend with a baby worth it?
"Oh yeah," O'Connor said. "Hell, yeah."
Phillies fans finally can relax and celebrate - but just a little.
The Dodgers await.
