A chat with the Mornhinwegs, of South Philly

"YO MART, how you doing?"

As comforting as a front porch light left on in the evening, it is his neighbors' greeting that lets Marty Mornhinweg know he is home. He doesn't get there much these days as he readies the Eagles for Sunday's playoff game against the Giants, but on the nights he does, the Eagles' offensive coordinator loves the flavor of the neighborhood that greets him.

Unlike most professional athletes and coaches here who talk about the passion of Philadelphia fans and then drive home to their suburban sprawls, putting a bridge or a highway between them and the people who bring the richness to this city's sports identity, Marty Mornhinweg goes home straight into the heart of them.

He, his wife, Lindsay, and their four kids live in South Philadelphia, alongside the people with the blowup Eagles on their front lawns and the paint on their faces come Sunday.

"We've got Rocky No. 2 in our neighborhood, a few of them," Marty Mornhinweg said with great affection. "They're great people, really great people."

For someone associated with the Eagles, the idea of moving into the very neighborhood that gives Philadelphia its blue-collar soul might seem about as sensible as an antelope making a bed in a lion's den.

But talk to the Mornhinwegs and you hear a family that loves its life, a wife who is thrilled about the restaurants she can frequent and the culture her kids have experienced, kids who love playing in the nearby parks and discovering some of the city's hidden ballfields and basketball courts and a husband who is delighted that he can practically see his office at the NovaCare Complex from his front door.

A family who never had lived anywhere but in the suburbs are now savvy urbanites. The kids sometimes take the subway to school and Marty Mornhinweg even has offered restaurant tips to some of his fellow coaches.

"We just love it here," Marty Mornhinweg said. "We couldn't be happier."

Thanks to the nomadic life of a professional coach, the Mornhinwegs have resided in their fair share of ZIP codes. There were 54301 in Green Bay, 94101 in San Francisco and 48201 in Detroit. Each time they did what most people associated with pro teams do. They moved to the suburbs, where big lawns embraced their children and deep cul-de-sacs preserved their privacy.

But in 2003, when Andy Reid invited his old friend to Philadelphia as an assistant head coach, the family decided to take a chance.

"In this profession, you don't have the luxury of saying, 'This is our home for the next 20 years,' " Lindsay Mornhinweg said. "We thought, 'Let's give the city a shot.' At first I was a little intimidated. What are we thinking? But Marty said, 'What's the worst that can happen? You hate it and we move,' and I thought, you know, that's a really good way to think. What is the worst that can happen?"

The initial plan was to spend the first season in Center City, enjoy the culture, dig into the history, see the sights and then go find a big place in the suburbs. The family took up residence in the Phoenix, the renovated apartment enclave at 16th and Arch and the kids enrolled in Friends Select, a Quaker school in Center City.

On Eagles' game day, Lindsay Mornhinweg would give away her precious parking pass to friends, preferring to hop the Orange Line with all the Eagles faithful to Broad Street, and in the offseason the family visited the museums and historical sites in and around the city.

"And then the real worst-case scenario happened: Everyone loved it," Marty Mornhinweg said, laughing. "No one wanted to leave, so we decided to buy."

At Reid's suggestion, Marty Mornhinweg looked into one of the new townhouse developments going up in South Philly. Surprised at the size, happy that the kids could stay in their same school and play on the same rec-league teams and delighted by the fact that there was a patch of grass out front, they made the move.

To be entirely accurate here, theirs is not your traditional South Philly rowhouse. These are a little tonier, brick-fronted numbers that run as high as $600,000 and offer an amenity rarely seen in this part of town: a garage.

But they also boast the one necessity that makes a South Philly home a South Philly home.

"Yeah, we've got a stoop," Marty Mornhinweg said.

Certainly, the Mornhinwegs didn't take this leap without reservation. As seasoned veterans of the NFL, they knew well the notorious reputation of Philadelphia sports fans and knew all too well that someday things would go bad. They always do eventually. So what would happen then? Would they be sitting ducks?

"My one fear was that our house would be egged or that our kids would be outcasts," Lindsay Mornhinweg said. "Would they be telling me, 'Your husband stinks,' or what if, God forbid, one of my kids dropped a pop fly?"

But surely, a kid has dropped a pop fly and things definitely have been bad. The Eagles were 6-10 last year, mired in the Terrell Owens fiasco and out of the playoffs. And before they finished 10-6, they were 5-6 this year.

"Nothing's happened," Lindsay Mornhinweg said. "My kids play sunup to sundown around here and no one has ever said anything to them. If anything, people protect us, I think. They may not even be aware of it. It may be subconscious, but they really do."

Marty Mornhinweg doesn't remember telling his neighbors what he did for a living, but in the part of the city where he lives, he didn't have to. Most of them knew, their Eagles knowledge more embedded than the ABCs.

Yet despite their passion and fierce interest, they've left him alone. They haven't pressed him for game-plan info, nor have they slid plays under his door.

"At first, I thought they must not know what my husband does for a living," Lindsay Mornhinweg said. "But now as things have started to go well, people come up to me and say nice things, so they must have known. Some guys who were doing work on the house gave me an article out of the newspaper, just because they thought it was nice and I would have liked it. The UPS guy told my son he wanted tickets the other day. All of these people who never said a word when we were down are now saying such great things."

Perhaps more than anything, the Mornhinwegs have enjoyed most the chance to really get to know the people who root for them. They have learned firsthand that fans might be fanatical, but that doesn't necessarily make them mean-spirited.

"I think these are the best fans in the country," Marty Mornhinweg said. "They're extremely passionate and they have their opinions, but they live it. We're right in the middle of it, so I get it."

Both Marty and Lindsay admit to being a little amazed by their gumption. He, after all, is a California boy who went to college in Montana. She was raised in Arizona.

But if a life together in coaching has taught them anything, it is that nothing is forever and that to take a pass on something might be to never enjoy it. They didn't necessarily want to leave San Francisco, but Marty Mornhinweg wanted to be a head coach, so it was off to Detroit. Most assuredly, the family wasn't exactly ready to leave Detroit, but after two seasons Marty Mornhinweg was let go.

Happy in Philadelphia, they would love to believe it's forever but naiveté has a short shelf life in this profession. Better to enjoy it now than regret not taking the chance later.

"It's just never been a traditional lifestyle for us," Lindsay Mornhinweg said. "Marty and I really talked about that before we got married and had kids. We knew we weren't going to be the type of family to have holidays at home, to live near our parents. The chance that our kids would go to the same high school for 4 years would be pretty slim. We knew all that. There were no rose-colored glasses.

"But we have a lot of fun. It's always been an adventure and this is just the latest one. We're really very lucky." *