Phillies Fans Gave Joe Maddon Headaches in 2008 World Series
By John Town
Reminiscing about the 2008 World Series with the Phillies, former Rays and current Cubs manager Joe Maddon talked about how Phillies fans messed with the Rays at their hotel.
Phillies and Philadelphia fans as a whole are known for harassing opponents. If you Google “Phillies fans”, some of the terms that come up include “throw batteries”, “are the worst”, and “boo Santa Claus”. Just this year, one fan was ejected by a home plate umpire for heckling. Messing with opponents is a longstanding tradition in Philadelphia.
Game Two of this year’s World Series had to be moved up from eight to seven PM in order to beat an incoming barrage of rain. If you remember, the Phils and Rays also had to deal with rain in their World Series back in 2008. The two teams got through five and a half innings of baseball before Game Five of the series was suspended due to an utter downpour.
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The suspension left the Rays in an odd position; they already checked out of their hotel, expecting to be on a flight back to Tampa that night. The Rays’ director of team travel, Jeff Ziegler, had to find 87 rooms for 170 people ranging from players to management to families. The former St. Petersburg police officer called hotel after hotel, with Jack Curry of the New York Times saying Ziegler “had as much success as someone selling $600 doorknobs.”
The Rays eventually shacked up at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, DE, which was just 40 minutes from Citizens Bank Park. The hotel actually charged the team half of their normal rate, which was a legitimate discount considering a Classic King room cost $279 a night. Maddon told Curry that it was “one of the nicest hotels we’ve stayed in all year.”
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However, there stay was not all sunshine and rose petals. Maddon talked about how Philadelphia fans made sure their presence was known even in Wilmington:
"“The Philly fans, they knew we were there somehow. Five o’clock in the morning they’re driving around the hotel blowing the horn, trying to wake everybody up at 5:00 in the morning, 6:00 in the morning.”"
Despite losing the Series, Maddon still called the experience “one of my better memories in baseball.”
Maddon deserves at least some credit for being so positive thinking about what was an overall negative experience.
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Reading about this from the perspective of a Phils fan, I find what the fans did at the time comical. I’m sure if I was one of the players on the Rays at the time I would have a different perspective on the situation. Players get heckled in nearly every city by one fan or another, but it says something about Philadelphia fans’ reputation when they do something as memorable as this.