I keep hearing how Philadelphia sports fans once booed Santa Claus as an example of what jackholes they are.
Whats the straight dope on it?
“True” says snopes, “kinda” says me.
Fans had been promised a Christmas Pageant at half-time during an Eagles game back in 1968. But because of awful weather, they didn’t dare bring out the float that was supposed to haul Santa and his sleigh onto the field. The guy who was supposed to play Santa also didn’t show. Someone made the boneheaded decision to send a kid in a very unconvincing Santa costume onto the field as a substitute, where he was booed and pelted with snowballs. They weren’t “booing Santa” so much as they were booing how pathetic the whole thing was.
Yes, that happened. Soon it will have been 50 years. Meanwhile multiple fans run onto the field in Chicago to commit literal assault (and a beer gets dumped on a player while he’s playing on the other side of town), refs in Cleveland are forced off the field by fans throwing bottles, the fans wage actual combat with the players in Detroit - on the playing surface, all in recent memory, and the Philadelphia as special fan hellhole meme keeps on rolling. Ah, sports media.
Well, the Santa incident was hardly the only example of Philly fans behaving badly. That’s a funny story, but more meaningful over the years have been the town’s treatment of visiting players, visiting fans, certain of their own players–and the frequency of fights among Philly fans.
Didn’t some Flyers fan steal the license plate off of a car with Quebec plates last year? That’s brilliant, I’m sure it was fun trying to get back into Canada without a license plate on your car.
Which is all bullshit.
A lot if it gets blown out of proportion. But there were plenty of incidents in the Vet in the time I spent in the 700 level. A lot of that element got washed out by the cost of tickets at the Linc. Tickets alone are about three times what I used to pay. And that’s not even considering the seat license for a large number of seats.
The guy I tailgate with laments that Santa incident. I think it was the movie “Patton” where Patton says “I wish I kissed the son of a bitch” after getting in trouble for slapping a soldier. My friend feels the same way.
Now now, Philadelphia’s had other incidents too, otherwise the Philly cops wouldn’t have come armed with mean german shepherds at the 1980 World Series, and the Vet wouldn’t have had its own jail and mini court room.