When Bryce Harper arrived this winter, he cited his desire to lay down roots in Philadelphia as a reason he’d signed with the Phillies. Would he have said this about any city in which he’d landed? Yes. But it made it clear that throughout the free agency process, one of his priorities had been to find a community of which he could be a part.
It’s human nature to seek others for warmth, for support, for protection from predators. Yes, as Philadelphians, we are often the monsters from which other communities shelter themselves, but we also built our own functioning society here between the rivers for when we’re not terrorizing neighboring homesteads.