Pottstown Phillies Writer Probably Going to be Devastated

Interesting trend out of Pottstown this past week, when fans took to the headlines to express the childlike wonder the Phillies stir up for them; just days after the announcement that instead of their favorite team, this summer, the Pottstownians will be listening to radio silence.

Pottstown is sandwiched between Philadelphia, where the Phillies play, and Reading, where the Phillies play.  It isn’t Pottsville, which is 55 miles north, and it isn’t Pottsgrove, which it used to be, when it was founded by John Potts.  The man apparently owned 995 acres of land in the area and decided one day that instead of just being “his property” it was going to be “a town.”  Sometimes I wish I lived in this era of American history for unlimited town-creating purposes alone.

The Pottstown Mercury, despite being named after a fatal poison, has heralded two Pulitzer Prizes in its history, and is the smallest circulation newspaper to do so.  Thomas James Hylton received one in 1990 for his editorials on securing local farm land against developmental barons, and Thomas J. Kelly III was given another in 1979 for a photograph, “Tragedy on Sanatago Road,” an image in which a young girl is stumbling out of an ill-fated hostage situation covered in blood.

Now, they publish gush pieces on the Phillies rotation while withholding the very Phillies on which they gush.  Madness.  Madness reigns in Pottsown.