“Why Can’t Us?” Explained….

So, I will admit that I have written a lot of posts around the MLB playoffs.  This is actually surprising to me because if you see a pattern in all of the posts, it is not my favorite sport to watch.  I will admit, with the Phillies as the World Series champions it did get a lot more exciting to watch, especially because a lot of readers are Philadelphia fans…so it made it all the more exciting to give you the facts you needed for all of the playoff parties.  You are probably wondering now, what the title of this post has to do with baseball…and why, yet again I am writing about a sport that collectively we agree can be as boring to watch as watching paint dry…

So, last week when I gave you the information about the Golden Gloves…(if you missed it, it is a must read)…I got a question about t-shirts being sold on cafepress.com in relationship to the Philadelphia World Series champions.  The shirts simply said “Why Can’t Us?” and were pictured with a Liberty Bell.   When asked, I had no clue what this meant….however I did notice right away that it was not a gramatically correct question and it was in relation to Philadelphia, making me wonder if it was another thing giving Philadelphia a bad rap…it turns out it is not….its kind of cool story…

Basically during the MLB playoffs, there was an XM playoff baseball show where a Philadelphia fan from Delaware called in, exhausted both from being overworked and from waiting for a Philadelphia championship.  This guy’s name was “Marty.”  Marty and the announcers talked back and forth about the game from the night before between Philadelphia and the the LA Dodgers (the NLCS).  At the end of the phone call, the announcers asked Marty what he thought about the fate of the Phillies and he replied that he thought there would definitely be a World Series Championship parade in Philadelphia.  He mentioned that the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox had beaten the curses that prevented them from winning championships…so for the Phillies, “Why Can’t Us?” 

So what????  So, it turned out that a Philadelphia blogger (Dan Levy) from the 700club.com had been listening to the program and wrote about it that day…he thought it was a cool slogan that should be spread around Philadelphia as a rally cry of sorts for the playoffs….he then went to cafepress.com and quickly created t-shirts with the slogan and decided that all proceeds from the sale of the shirt would go towards the fight against ALS (Lou Gherig’s disease).   The slogan became a phenomena around the city and other bloggers picked up the story as did a lot of the local television stations….So Marty from Delaware sort of became famous…pretty crazy stuff.  If you click on the link to the 700club.com  above you can hear the XM sound byte. 

Ok..so what can you do with this information?  Well…although it did become a slogan to some…not all people have heard about it…as you know my husband is one of the biggest Phillies’ fans I know…he had no clue what I meant when I asked him about the “Why Can’t Us?” phenomena…so educate the people around you….at least for once you can be gramatically incorrect without being penalized…and hey the more merchandise that gets purchased, the more money that will go towards ALS research….so spread the story around…and get yourself a t-shirt or “be green” and get a mug…

Thanks Amanda for the inspiration to research this story…keep the questions coming and I will see what I can find…

 Other things that might come up in conversation today….

NFL: 

• The Tennessee Titans still remain undefeated (only team in NFL this year) – you can comment that although their schedule is mixed in terms of difficulty, they have a good defense and a good running game.
• The Indianapolis Colts had a big win against the Pittsburgh Steelers – it was a big win because it keeps their playoff hopes alive.
• The Monday Night game is the San Francisco 49ers vs. the Arizona Cardinals…the 49ers stink…so not sure if people care about this game as much.

 

College Football:

• Alabama and Texas Tech are still #1 and #2 in the BCS (respectively)
• Penn State had a disappointing and their first loss of the season to Iowa…this dropped their ranking from #3 to #8…

 

Have a good Monday…I am off to really start researching basketball and hockey since I am behind the times…

-sportsgirl