It seems improbable now, with the love affair this city is currently enjoying with the two players. But history doesn’t lie, and this city almost always turns it’s back on it’s best players. In baseball, who are the three best position players in this city in the past 25 years? They are Mike Schmidt, Scott Rolen, and Bobby Abreu. Mike Schmidt was despised by Philly sports fans, and Rolen and Abreu were both booed out of town. Philly fans bought the “clubhouse cancer” line about Rolen hook , line, and sinker. But when was the last time you heard him disrupting the Cardinals clubhouse? Abreu was this year’s problem. A guy who gets on base roughly once every two times he comes to the plate is always a major problem. And look elsewhere. Donovan McNabb almost single handedly turned the Eagles from a doormat to a perennial powerhouse, and yet Philly sports fans chant the name of the backup as soon as he throws two straight incompletions. AI is one of the three best players in Sixers history, and Philly fans desperately want him gone. And so, the sad fact is that Ryan Howard and Chase Utley will one day hit a cold streak, and the fans of this city will immediately turn on them. Sorry to be a cynic, but history states the case: this isn’t a matter of if, but when.
