The Best Thing That Happened This Week: Chase Utley’s Standing O’s

It can be tough to be a sports fan in Philly. If it’s not national commentators dragging up outdated stories of snowballs thrown at Santa, it’s video of a drunk dude throwing up on a kid at a Phillies game. Or arrests at Eagles Court. Or that time we jeered Jonathan Papelbon until he grabbed his crotch and got suspended for seven games. Or when we threw batteries and fruit at Dick Allen. Or cheered for Michael Irvin’s career-ending injury. Or booed Donovan McNabb. It’s like the world thinks we don’t got no class, ya know?

The thing is, we do. Look at how long and loud we cheered for Chase Utley in that game on Tuesday. We even cheered for him after he hit a home run off us. And then a grand slam off us! Which, by the way, Ryan Howard said was mighty classy of us. “I definitely think it was something bigger than the game tonight,” Howard said of the outpouring of appreciation for his former teammate, nearly a year to the day after Utley was traded to the Dodgers. It was. He earned every one of those f’ing cheers. We owed them to him.

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