Dan Carcillo, best known for missing body parts and kind of looking like Mandy Patinkin, has just become the second ex-Philadelphia athlete to teach us all a thing or two from several hundred miles away. He is also the second ex-Philadelphia athlete to be pretty much right on the money in doing so.
Yeah. It’s ridiculous. . . . If you lose, people look for excuses, and they nitpick. They make stories out of nothing. It’s unfortunate. That’s just the way it is. It’s kind of their culture. People are kind of outspoken and rude.
–Dan Carcillo
As part of Opertaion: Closed Casket, Carcillo recently became the latest Flyer to depart an increasingly unrecognizable team. This is not quite a bad thing, as Flyers leadership, spearheaded by GM Paul Holmgren who may or may not have been carrying an actual spear throughout his dealings, felt a complete restructuring of the team was necessary in order to compete more deeply in the playoffs.
Carcillo slipped onto the Chicago Blackhawks roster and sat down in front of the Chitown media with his new jersey and was asked a bunch of questions about his old life and his new life. When a player comes from Philadelphia, there’s a special twinge of smarm that escorts questions out of the local unorthodox columnist’s mouth. Remember when Cliff Lee signed with the Phillies and every other questions was based around trying to get him to insult New York? Regardless of the circumstances, it is quite simple to get them to say something lightly to mildly disparaging about their former city, and if something is said, it is smashed between plenty of friendly, tactful words as well.
But as someone who wrote earlier today that the Phillies probably drafted a kid from Georgia just to dick with the Braves, I can tell you that yes, every single thing in this town, done by an athlete, is dissected and stared at until it shrivels up. And when it does, we just find some other piece to rip off and hold under the light (I’m going under the theory that a blog commenter brought up, that the media and fans can be easily linked due to one feeding the other).
Every day, TMZ-style blogs centered solely around Philadelphia sports spend their entire days sitting in front of a computer, waiting for stories to break so that they may employ the sarcastic one-liners from a stable of generic jokes, rarely making a point, and never saying anything of real value or even entertainment. And that’s just on the internet; some of the real journalists can be plenty ignorant all on their own. And have. Many, many times.
But we’re getting off topic here. The point is, CARCILLO INSULTED PHILLY DUDE. YO HE WANTS ‘RUDE?’ YO WE’LL GIVE HIM RUDE. FIRE UP THE OLD VAN COVERED IN SPIKES WITH THE TINTED WINDOWS THAT WE ALL RIDE AROUND IN TOGETHER. WE’RE GONNA ROAD TRIP IT TO CHICAGO, STOPPING ONLY TO THROW UP ON THE OCCASIONAL TODDLER, AND TEACH HIM A LESSON ABOUT SAYING THINGS THAT ARE SO CLOSE TO THE TRUTH THAT EVEN WE DON’T DISAGREE WITH THEM.
RIGHT. RIGHT.
PHILLY, BABY.
