Study Confirms that Phillies Beloved by All
By Justin Klugh
Hunter Pence proved that a Phillies player can go from zero to beloved in the time it takes to put a catch phrase on a t-shirt. All he had to do was have some marginal success and we’d excuse him for doing anything wrong, even the stuff we swore we hated about Domonic Brown.
But our freakish whimsies aren’t on trial today, which is good, because they’re pretty much 100% indefensible. No, today we can say with Forbes Magazine-esque confidence that the Philadelphia Phillies are the most praised and wondrous baseball players in all the land.
E-Poll and Nielsen Sports conducted a survey to gauge the favorite players of the American people, and four out of the top ten are already posters on your wall that you cut into heart shapes: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard.
"“The Phillies in a way have become America’s Team, they work hard and they win.”–Stephen Master, VP of Nielsen Sports"
Yes, in a weirdly universal moment of praise, the Phillies have finally been accepted by the mainstream as the most heart-fluttering baseball studs on the planet.
- Roy Halladay
- Josh Hamilton
- Joe Mauer
- Chase Utley (In a twist, batting clean-up)
- Cliff Lee
- Ichiro
- Mariano Rivera
- Evan Longoria
- Chipper Jones
- Ryan Howard
It has been a rollercoaster year for Phillies poll-wise. There is no stronger pillar of this nation than magazine polls, and we Phillies fans have had our share of pure elation and heartbreaking truths. Are we the worst fans in sports? The most loyal? These were questions that many would say are subjective and unanswerable. But here come the magazine polls providing us with the ammunition to both take down our enemies and shoot ourselves in the foot.
And perhaps these most recent answers will provide the context for our fan behavior. Could it be that our players in Philadelphia are so likable on a universal level that we are driven insane? I would sit here and tell you “yes,” but why supply our own answers when our nation’s magazine polls are so likely and so definitively going to provide them for us?
We thank you, Forbes Magazine, for unlocking the shackles of inhumanity which bind us to a country’s wrath.
Huh.
Lot of white guys, on second glance.