Let me finish tonight with the fact that we're now owned by Comcast of Philadelphia.
To me, the news here is that after years of domination by New York, my hometown of Philadelphia is now calling the shots.
Don't think this is a big deal? Then you don't know what you're talking about. Philadelphia didn't start this rivalry. Before the Declaration of Independence was written and signed in our city, we were the largest city after London in the entire English-speaking world. It was New York that moved in and grabbed all the noise.
I remember growing up and going to St. Christopher's when the fire department official came around to give us kids a pep talk. Sure, New York had the higher buildings and all but we had all the firsts: the first free public library, the first zoo, the first fire department. Everything came first in our city.
I don't think people living in Philadelphia need that kind of morale boost anymore, but they figured we did back then.
Actually, I'm old enough to remember when a lot of national television came from our city. There was the Big Top, that great circus show on every Saturday, Cinderella Weekend, the quiz show that Mom starred on, Bandstand, of course, and later Mike Douglas. We even had as daily live cowboy show produced out on the back lot at Channel 10.
Now, we have NBC itself and our own msnbc, all owned by Comcast in Philadelphia.
This will bother the Jets and Giants fans but it's good business for fans of the Iggles. That's how you pronounce it, by the way, IGGLES.
As for the Phillies, I can only say, wait until you see the pitching now that we've got Cliff Lee again.
The simple fact is that from day one I've been excited by the fact that the city I come from has a company big enough to be bigger than anything New York has.
So with pride I admit that I've spent a good part of my life losing my Philly accent, not saying words like WOIDER and AHHTY-TUDE. But I don't think I lost my Philly attitude, which is a little bit of "So you think you're BETTER than me?"
Not anymore.