Yes, I’m finding a way to work the zeitgeist of the moment into the Phillies’ dead zone portion of the calendar. This is blogging at its finest, folks.
Philadelphia is not a city where each of the major sports teams lives in a bubble. Sure, there are some fans who only like baseball and only root for the Phillies, or who only care about football and are Eagles diehards, but most of us grew up living and dying with all of the sports all the time.
Some of us favor one over the others, to some degree. I’m a Phillies fan, first and foremost, but the Eagles are a very close second. As a younger man, the Sixers and Flyers were 1C and 1D, but as you get older, you only have so much RAM to devote to these things.
Here at the Hittin’ Season Billy Penn page, this is primarily a home for you to consume all there is to know about the Phillies, but given the Birds’ complete and total destruction of the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game last Sunday, it makes sense for these sports worlds to collide.
Because, if we are Philadelphia “sports fans,” then the successes and/or failures of all the teams do have an impact on the others.
Which brings us to these Eagles and the 2025 Phillies. Obviously, Phils fans are frustrated at three straight postseasons that have not only failed to lead to a parade down Broad Street, but each has ended a round earlier than the one before. Not only that, the team hasn’t been able to significantly address the offensive shortcomings that have torpedoed each of the last two postseason runs and there is concern that, even though the starting rotation has improved, the bullpen isn’t as good as it was a season ago.
The Eagles have an opportunity to put the Philadelphia sports community on Cloud 9 with a revenge Super Bowl win over Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs and give the Phils a little cover. They have an opportunity to win their second Lombardi Trophy and deny KC the distinction of becoming the first franchise in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls.
On the latest Hittin’ Season podcast, we discussed what kind of impact an Eagles victory (or loss) in the Super Bowl would have on our collective angst as Phillies fans.
Make no mistake, there will be an impact.
If the Eagles win, the pressure on the Phils to finally win a World Series title will be lessened a bit. The fanbase will be able to take a few of their championship-starved eggs out of that basket, and it will trigger a release valve of euphoria that should reduce the mania for Bryce Harper and the boys to finally get over the hump. Of course, by the time the pennant races are in full bloom in August and the Phillies encounter the slumps and stumbles that go along with every 162-game campaign, we’ll likely get crusty again, but we’ll also still be a bit distracted re-watching NFL Films clips of Super Bowl 59 on YouTube.
On the other hand, if the Eagles lose to the Chiefs, I shudder to think what it will do to the psyche of the fanbase. The two teams have already butted championship game losses in October of 2022 and February of 2023. Another Super Bowl loss to Mahomes, Reid and the Chiefs would be a crusher, and there will undoubtedly be a demand for the Phillies to “save the city.”
No, it won’t be fair, but it will be reality.
Regardless of what the Eagles do, Phillies players, and the franchise itself, won’t be affected one way or the other by the Eagles’ Super Bowl outcome. They know they are overdue for a World Series title and that, for many of them, time is running out. They feel it more than we do.
We don’t know how long the Phils’ World Series window will stay open. Right now, they are still a top-five team in Major League Baseball. Outside of the Dodgers, they are as good as anyone. Harper, Zack Wheeler and everyone else really have to win a World Series at some point, don’t they?
An Eagles Super Bowl win would give them some much-needed cover to start the season, but a loss will only ratchet up the pressure, fair or not.
