Thursday, October 30, 2008

The City of Brotherly Love

I thought about writing something about the Phillies winning Game 5, but frankly it lost it's luster after it was suspended for the second time. Instead, I'm going to focus on the aftermath of Game 5. Every city has riots after their team wins the World Series, I'm not bashing Philadelphia fans. But last night's riots were especially out of control.

Cars were burned, street signs and lights were vandalized, a fire truck was stolen, store windows smashed in, police officers assaulted, and in the end 76 people were arrested. Of course it had to be 76 people in Philadelphia. But that's about the only humorous part of last night's events.

There's no excuse for the rioting. Granted, the true fans are probably in their warm homes celebrating with friends, or standing outside the ballpark celebrating. It's mostly drunk opportunists that cause the destruction. But a championship is supposed to be a celebration of a city, not an excuse to vandalize one.

Here's some of the footage from last night. It's pretty incredible.









2 comments:

Anonymous said...

much like the Red Sox riots then

Olde Town Glory said...

Even the 2004 Boston riots were tame compared to this. When the Red Sox won for the first time in 86 years, 35 people were arrested. When the Phillies won for the first time in 28 years, 76 people were arrested. But to be fair, Boston didn't have a drought in all four major sports. The Patriots had won in 2001 and 2003 prior to the Red Sox winning in 2004.