Let me tell you a little story about a baseball team. They moved into a brand new stadium and immediately they started selling out all their games. Year after year the team played in front of capacity crowds. And with these crowds came unparalleled success. Never in their franchise history did they enjoy pennants and division crowns and playing in the World Series like they did during that run. For 6 out of 7 seasons they participated in the playoffs, appearing in the Series twice in that stretch. Pretty heady times for the teams and its fans. But then, all of a sudden the winning dried up. They missed the playoffs for 5 straight years, with 4 of those years playing under .500 ball. A one year trip to the playoffs has been followed by a few more years of looking up at the contenders. And guess what happened to their attendance? As you might have guessed, their average attendance has plummeted - from over 42,000 fans per game at its peak down to the most recent season where they attracted only 20,000 per game. As with everything else in life, the success of your favorite baseball team runs in cycles. Up one year, down the next; up one decade, down the next. It’s the rare team that can sustain excellence over a long period of time.
So to my fellow riders on the Phillies bandwagon: enjoy these seasons while they are playing well, because they won’t last. Go to as many games as you can, buy all the t-shirts and hats and jerseys you can during these successful days. Just ask the fans of the Cleveland Indians, who saw their team plummet from 100 wins and playing in the Series to next-to-last in their division in a few years. The one saving grace about a second division team is that I will be able to go to the games without paying stub-hub prices and sitting next to a gaggle of cackling girls in Utley jerseys who are too busy texting their friends to appreciate the beauty, intricacies and athleticism of the game. They might even let us smoke cigars in the stands again.
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