An Open Letter to Domonic Brown

Dear Domonic Brown,

I first met ya, along with 45,047 other Phillies fans, on July 28, 2010.  Ya might not have seen me when you first came up to for your first MLB at-bat because the entire ballpark was giving you a standing ovation, but I was the one in Section 111, Row 24, Seat 1.  None of us had met ya before, but we had read about you in the local newspapers and heard about you on the local sports-talk radio stations.  Some, believe it or not, were more anxious to see you than I.  Dozens of fans wore jersey-shirts with your name and number.  Even a handful of Dom Brown Phillies jerseys were in the crowd—that’s a heavy and gutsy financial expenditure for a player that no one had seen play in the majors.

You went 2-3 that night with a double and an RBI.  It seemed like a beautiful fan/player relationship was blossoming.  Then, you went .210 with 2HR for the remainder of the season.  You played thirty-five more games that year.  We watched you struggle.  We watched you track fly balls like Mr. Magoo.  And, some fans probably booed you at times.  That’s also how Philadelphia fans treat their own—we cheer when our players try and when they succeed, and we boo when they don’t do simple things like catch a routine flyball.  It doesn’t mean we hate you, it just let’s you know that we expect more.  When that play is over, like any good relationship, we—as a fanbase—move on to the next play. We don’t hold grudges, not on our own.  Chipper Jones, Scott Rolen and others are a different story.

We watched you struggle in 2011 (.245, 5HR) and again in 2012 (.235, 5 HR) before your breakout season last year. And, when you broke out, the fanbase was there to support you.  In a down year for the Phillies, in which their attendance drastically dropped, the fans still game together to vote 1,427,696 times for you to get into the All-Star game.

Knowing that fans took time to vote for you that many times, and that they spend upwards of $100 in this economy for your jersey, and that over three million people came out to watch a below .500 team play in 2013, and that no one was complaining about your lack of production in the 2nd half of the 2013 season (4 HRs), it’s really hard to understand why you would want to troll Eagles fans via Twitter after a loss to Dallas Cowboys.

brown_not_broI understand that you’re like most Cowboys fans, in that you feed off the negative attention.  That’s fine.  I also understand that, like most Cowboys fans not from Dallas, you are a bandwagon-jumper.  You grew up in a suburb of Tampa Bay.  Why you aren’t a Buccaneers fan bewilders me.  Perhaps, you didn’t have the stomach to sit through the years of Testaverde, Craig Erickson and Trent Dilfer. And, while the Buccaneers struggled, you saw the Cowboys win a couple Super Bowls in your early years.  So, you jumped ship to a winner.  What that says about your personality, I really don’t know.

I do know that, as a fanbase, Philadelphia doesn’t jump ship.  We still come out, three million strong, to watch a horrible baseball product because it’s our horrible product.  We don’t go out and purchase Braves or Cardinals hats when the Phillies suck, i.e. 2013.

We’ve sat through football seasons with quarterbacks such as Brister, Peete, Hoying, Detmer, Pederson and coaches like Marion Campbell, Rich Kotite.  The current Eagles haven’t won at home in over a year and Eagles fans continue to sell out Lincoln Financial Field.

Philadelphia fans have backbones made of steel in the world of sports. The Flyers haven’t won a Stanley Cup in thirty-eight years, yet still have near capacity attendance.  So, I’m confused as to why you’d want to shove a Cowboys victory in our faces via Twitter.  You seem to have been treated fairly by the Philadelphia sports fans. Maybe you look at it differently.

Please remember that a war with the Philadelphia sports fans is not something you will ever win.  Players come and go.  The fans are always there.  Life on the field can become extremely difficult for a player in a sport where even the best fail seventy percent of the time.  That’s a lot of opportunity for the BOOs to rain down.  And, for someone who didn’t have the stomach to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, the ire of the Philadelphia Phillies fans could be a difficult pill to swallow.  Hopefully, this is just a stupid episode based on youth and poor judgment.  Hopefully, you grow up before Spring Training.

Good Luck in 2014! Go Phils!

Sincerely,

Violations Greg!