Like a large peacock commanding center stage, Philadelphia and its sprawling, surrounding suburbs are strutting like a bunch of Mummers these days after the Philly Special Eagles won their first Super Bowl Sunday.
It was an electric pinball 41-33 victory over the dynastic New England Patriots with Super Sub Nick Foles improbably and deliciously prevailing over the sublime Tom Brady.
Folks from Philly aren’t used to such unbridled joy because it doesn’t happen very often.
Indeed, it has been a decade since the Phillies last won the Word Series.
Consequently, Philly faithful basically are Chicken Littles waiting for the sky to fall on them. And it usually does.
When it comes to their sports franchises, Philly fans have had to face unendurable slop season after season. They were forever strangled by a contractive spam of insufficient success.
Waves of depression have lapped the town for decades, shivering synapses and deadening souls but not nerves.
To their immense credit, Philly fans never got jaded by losing. They steadfastly reacted to losing like a beautiful woman to cleaning toilets.
But now jubilation is the current emotion and it feels like a foreign substance to Philadelphians. But they don’t care. In fact, they’re punch drunk with this surreal and strange sense of euphoria.
Snake tongues of joy keep flicking in their faces – whoo-eet, whoo-eet! There hasn’t been such a furious flurry of jabs since Ali was in his prime.
I don’t know what got into the Eagles this season. But they reached into stores of energy and drew from cells never used and they now are champions of the world.
Maybe the Eagles’ Super Bowl championship wasn’t quite the shot heard
‘round the world. But it was enough of a shot to split Philly’s ties to sports futility.
