Frankly speaking, we don’t care much about Philadelphia. We tolerate certain things: Rocky Balboa, for example. Most of us take road trips there in elementary school, visit Independence Hall and see the Liberty Bell, and those moments stay with us. And honestly, who doesn’t love a good cheesesteak?
Frankly speaking, Philadelphia doesn’t care much about New York either. They tolerate certain things. Broadway, for example. Almost everyone who comes here who isn’t from here is looking for the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. And even the most Philly of Philly people generally concede: our pizza is the best pizza.
Everything else is fair game.
Definitely sport.
But you know, it’s funny: we can go pretty deep into the details of the New York-Boston sports rivalry, because there are dozens of examples across all four major sports of high-profile collisions and clashes when the he playoff money was on the table.
Philadelphia-New York?
In other words: unless you want to go back to the turn of the last century, when the Giants and the Athletics were the Athens and Sparta of baseball, when they were ruled with an iron fist by John McGraw and Connie Mack… well , baseball has been pretty barren (and those two teams don’t even play in those cities anymore, haven’t since the mid-50s).
The Yankees and Phillies have played in the World Series twice, and the Yankees have won twice, in 1950 and 2009. But Yankees and Phillies fans have spent more than a century in benevolent indifference toward each other. others. The Phillies and former Brooklyn Dodgers had late-season emotional conflicts in 1950 and 1951 – the Phillies outlasted the Bums in 1950, then beat them on the final day of the season in 1951 to force Bobby’s playoff run Thomson.
And while things between the Phillies and Mets often got rocky between 2005 and 2009, they have rarely been good at the same time since 1962. They have never met in a playoff series. In 2007 and 2008, the Phillies caught up to the Mets, but that never happened while they were playing each other.
The Rangers and Flyers met in one of the bloodiest series in NHL history, in the semifinals of the 1974 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. It was the year of death for the Gilbert/Ratelle/Hadfield/Giacomin Blueshirts, and the coming-of-age year for the Broad Street Bullies. There was also a memorable seven-game battle 10 years ago, with the Rangers eliminating the Flyers in Game 7 in their first step to the Cup final.
In truth, the Devils (most notably in Game 7 of the ECF in 2000, when Scott Stevens nearly murdered Eric Lindros) and the Islanders (who actually beat the Flyers to win their first Cup) legitimately claim to have a rivalry more deeper with the Flyers than that of the Flyers. The Rangers do it.
The Eagles and Giants have met five times in the playoffs, each since 1981, and the Eagles have won three times, most recently at the end of the 2022 season when they beat the Giants 38-7 en route to the Super Bowl. They have never met in an NFC championship game; Until they do, the enmity between them is symbolized by two regular season moments: Chuck Bednarik nearly decapitating Frank Gifford in 1960, and the return of DeSean Jackson in 2009.
Which brings us to the Sixers and Knicks, meeting for just the fifth time since the Syracuse Nats became the 76ers in 1963. The first three times, the Knicks fell to the Sixers’ three most powerful combinations: losing in six against the ’66. -’67 Sixers (who went 68-13); getting swept by the 1978 Sixers (55-27, a year after taking the Blazers to Game 7) and getting the 1983 Sixers (65-17), the first step in their “Fo, fo, fo” quest.
The Knicks’ only victory? The three-game sweep in 1989 when at the end of Game 3, a group including Mark Jackson, Sidney Green, Trent Tucker and Charles Oakley dragged a broom around the old Spectrum, infuriating Philly fans (and, very probably, inspiring the anti- (the Knicks jihad that Knicks fans believe Charles Barkley has been waging for decades).
And now this: seven games for a place in the second round. Let’s go. Let’s go.
New York Post
