Woo! It's First Post Time!

I've been tossing around the idea of starting a blog like this for quite some time now, and after the beating I've been taking as a Flyers fan for seriously loving Sidney Crosby's Cup win back in June I decided to go for it. And what better day to start it than on Sid's 22nd birthday?!

So, this is the first post to my first ever blog. I got the idea for this based on endless seasons of torture from friends and my own confusion. I am a born-and-raised South Philadelphian. I bleed orange and green, and I live and die by the Phillies W-L column (and Ryan Howard's horrific throws to second base, which always inevitably end up in CF. Oy.) As for the Sixers, I sort of lost interest when Kyle Korver went to Utah, and am currently wishy-washy on the entire NBA thing. Korver is actually the only NBA player I still follow, especially after the miserable Sixers season of 2008-2009.

Unfortunately, most of my "second favorites" come from my teams' rivals. Favorite baseball player outside of any Phillie? David Wright of the New York Mets. Favorite hockey player outside of any Flyer? Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins. In fact, the Pens are my second favorite NHL team, tied with the Anahiem Ducks (who aren't too much drama seeing as they're in a different conference). I own multiple Pens DVDs, and the Stanley Cup champs hat. I even jumped and cheered when they won the Cup, which I closely followed. I cheered for them the entire time, after I came out of mourning over that whooping they handed us in Game 6. In the NFL, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers don't provide too much turmoil on fall&winter Sundays, thankfully. My favorite Eagle, Stewart Bradley, is most likely down for the season, so watching the heart attacks they call games will be a bit tougher this season.

Baseball is perhaps my biggest area of contention. The New York Mets - or, as I prefer to call them, the Mess - are always on my tv, thanks to the Extra Innings cable package. I've got season tickets to the Phillies (as well as the Flyers), and live just a five minute walk from the park. I've been following DWright ever since his July 2004 MLB debut. In the AL, my favorite team is the Red Sox, and this seemed to only pose drama for me during the ALCS of 2008, if they would have won. My other AL team I enjoy following? The Toronto Blue Jays. I don't intentionally aim to root for all these conflictions, it just has fallen into place that way over the years. I will always root for Philadelphia over anyone else, even DWright and Sid the Kid.

As a female sports fan who also works and studies in the industry, it's always tough. I get a lot of crap from guys who think I only follow a player "because he's cute." It's true that I definitely can appreciate the good-looking guys in the sports I follow, and often I find my favorites attractive, but that is definitely not the basis for my fandom. I'm not ashamed to say that a player is hot, and I don't think I should be. I know what I'm talking about, and there's no reason I can't comment freely on it. Guys comment on female celebrities/athletes all the time (Anna Kournikova, anyone?), so why is it such a double standard? But I digress... Once they find out I actually know my stuff and am pretty hardcore, they lighten up considerably. I am the first one to fight for the fact that yes, girls CAN BE sports fans too and SHOULD BE taken seriously, even if I do squeal and bang at the dashers when No. 87 skates by.

Philly fans have it notoriously hard. Seemingly every year, maybe even up to four times a year, we're taken to the brink, and then let down in often spectacular and unfortunately hilarious ways. Now you can see why any sports season is tumultuous for me, aside from the (usually) heartbreaking drama brought on by my teams. My basic idea for this blog is just to talk about everything sports - a place where I can freely root for both No. 18 in the Black&Orange and No. 11 in the Black&Vegas Gold, as well as No. 18 on the hated Blueshirts, among others. I actually doubt I'll even have any readers, but I just think it'll be a fun thing to do, something I've never done before.