OK, PHILADELPHIA. The way I look at it, we’re just about even. Three forever moments for you. Three forever moments for us. Oh, sure, we’re missing a few games here, a few games there. You won’t find Jim Bunning’s perfect game on this list, but you won’t find Scott Stevens knocking Eric Lindros to Kingdom Come on here, either.
We won’t mention the Knicks sweeping the Sixers in 1989 if you won’t mention that bloody Flyers-Rangers series back in ’74, deal? Or else we could make this a best-of-nine, a best-of-11, a best-of-77, if we really want.
Let’s face it: We keep things cordial for the kids’ sake. You don’t like us. We don’t like you. We are barely civil to each other on the Turnpike. You think we talk like a cross between gangsters and punch-drunk boxers. We think you speak in an accent that requires a second tongue in order to make it through all the mangled vowels. You’ve taken from us. We’ve stolen from you. So now we have Yankees-Phillies, seven games to work this all out, once and for all, to make right a century or so of sporting standoff.
No. 1 for You: Chuck Bednarik — Yes, yes, yes. It really doesn’t matter that 49 seasons have now passed since your raging lunatic of a franchise player shook his fist over Gifford’s prone body, or that (more to the point) 49 years have now passed since your Eagles (or Iggles, in the local parlance) have won the football crown you so desperately crave (or that we’ve won four of them in the meantime). You guys crow whenever you see this picture, or this replay. And . . . well. It was a hell of a hit.
No. 1 for Us: Islanders Topple the Flyers –What people forget is just how good the Flyers were in the ’70s. They won Cups in ’74 and ’75, then were interrupted by the Canadiens dynasty, then had the best team in hockey in 1980. What the Islanders became starting in 1980, that could’ve been the Flyers, and when you add the two Cups they already won . . . well, anyway. Bobby Nystrom ended that conversation with one flick of his wrist.
No. 2 for You: Eagles Oust the Giants — And . . . well, yeah, that one still stings. The Giants had captured everyone’s heart as they made that run through the 2007 season, and what happens the first time they try and defend that title? They run into the Iggles. Donovan McNabb outplays Eli Manning, ruining the grandest of plans. The Cardinals may have won in Giants Stadium two days ago; nobody believes that would’ve happened last January.
No. 2 for Us: Nets Stun the Sixers — We tend to think that the Celtics and the Lakers neatly divided the ’80s between themselves, and so it sometimes seems that terrific 1983 Sixers team — that came within one measly loss of fulfilling Moses Malone’s “Fo, fo, fo” prediction — gets horribly overlooked. Maybe that’s because, in defending that title a year later, the Sixers couldn’t even defend the Spectrum once in falling in five games to a Nets team piecing together its only non-Jason Kidd highlight reel.
No. 3 for You: National League Torture — Oh, sure. You can talk all you want about what the Phillies did to the Mets in 2007, and what they did to them again in 2008, but here’s the thing: The Phillies tortured the Dodgers in 1950, too, stealing a pennant on the season’s final day, at Ebbets Field, no less. And if you want to go back even farther, Connie Mack’s A’s beat John McGraw’s Giants in two of the three World Series in which they played against each other, in 1911 and 1913.
No. 3 for Us: American League Torture — And this isn’t relegated simply to the fact that in 1950 the Yankees torched the Phillies’ beloved Whiz Kids in four straight games in what, for now, is the mid-point of Yankee excellence — the 13th of 26 championships. No, Mack always believed his A’s were the flagship team in the AL, and as of 1930 had five World Series to the Yankees’ three; by 1954, the Yankees had 16, and the A’s were fleeing for Kansas City.
See you tomorrow night, Philadelphia, when the rubber match commences. Helmets are optional. But recommended.