Hi there, and thanks for coming to The Cipher. It's a big one today! Let's go Mets.
-Lauren |
Love, Hate, Clairvoyance: Your 2024–25 NHL Preview
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You’re Stuck In A Time Loop. How Are You Helping Your Team Win A Game?
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October Surprises Are Bullshit
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Dan's T-Shirt Shack: '90s Edition |
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The Phillies' first moment of success in the 1990s was a 13-game win streak during the 1991 season. That thrilling stretch did not stop them from finishing 78-84, and the team finished last in the NL East the next season. The team was in a rut, a decade removed from its last World Series appearance, and it did not seem like anything would change.
But the '90s Phillies had one magical season in them. They led the division for all but a day in 1993. They upset the 104-win Braves in the NLCS. They lost the World Series to Toronto on Joe Carter's walkoff homer. I am still maybe crying about it, but it was an incredible run. Certain folks still talk about the season in hushed tones. I'm one of them. I was 10. I was a little young to remember the Flyers' deep playoff runs. The Eagles never got close, the Sixers were a joke. It was the closest a Philly sports team got to a title in my childhood.
Throughout it all, we had one phrase to share with each other: "Whoomp! There it is!"
Tag Team's 1993 Miami bass smash is not a song I really understood then, or now. But I don't think it's really supposed to mean anything. As Tag Team's website says, it is a call-and-response party tune that's supposed to get you jumping. I can dig it. Whoomp! There It is! In some ways it just sounds right. (More information is contained in this 1993 Knight Ridder story with a fantastic headline: "A new phrase: 'Whoomp! There it is!'")
The song was not an official team anthem, and some fans may even have played the competing song by 95 South, "Whoot! There it is!," instead.* But as shown by the shirt in my collection, people did use it as a rallying cry for the Fightins that year. The song, however, was not without controversy: Tag Team are from Atlanta.
"It's definitely an Atlanta thing," Lisa Kung of NewsRadio WGST told The Atlanta Journal / Constitution. "It belongs to whoever's doing the best and whoever gets to use it the most. That's us."
Philadelphia's Sports Radio WIP, credited with popularizing the tune among Phillies fans, said that Phillies fans owned the chant: "The song means 'Look at our Phillies now.' It says 'That's the way it is.'" At least I finally have an explanation for what it means. I suppose "Whoomp! There it is!" is a better chant than "That's the way it is."
Thousands of fans did show up at the airport that week to chant "Whoomp! There it is!" at the Phillies after they made their way back from Atlanta with a 3-2 series lead. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported: "'We were here for all this,' said 23-year-old Jeff Pillar, who despite 40-degree temperatures wore only a pair of shorts, t-shirt and cap - all with Phillies logo." The paper added most fans there couldn't see the players, but didn't care. |
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The day Kung's quote ran in the AJC, the Phillies won the pennant with a 6-3 win over the Braves. Tag Team performed at a Phillies World Series game. This is why "Whoomp! There it is!" is remembered as the Phillies chant that year. They did the best, and they used it most. That's the way it is.
-Dan McQuade
*There's an easy way to tell them apart; "Whoot!" is the one that has a more direct message about asking where the booty at. Some versions also have the "Excuse me sonny, do you know where I can find some booty?" sample. Honestly, this is the better song, though the Tag Team video does have the guy who looks like Barack Obama in it. |
A Pre-Emptive Farewell To Jets Interim Coach Jeff Ulbrich |
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Let us be the first outlet to send our deepest condolences and commiserations to the soon-to-be-fired Jeff Ulbrich, who is at this moment the head coach of the New York Jets. For someone who has devoted his post-playing life to the goal of someday becoming a head coach in the National Football League, let us assure you that whether he knows it or not, Ulbrich will come to hate it, and sooner than anyone knows.
Now by any measure, Ulbrich is the perfect interim coach, because he won't be considered for the full-time job when that time comes. No matter the result, he will be passed over or out-and-out ignored because he doesn't have a properly splashy profile for the Jets—to the contrary, he couldn't have a worse one for this circumstance. Ulbrich is part of the reason why the Jets have a very good defense and none of the reason why the offense is so ghastly; he is reportedly well-respected in the locker room as well. Again, this doesn’t matter, but it seems worth mentioning. Also, and crucially, Ulbrich isn't part of the still-nascent Aaron Rodgers coaching tree, as offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett would have been. That one would have been too obvious even for the Jets, whose gift for motivational subterfuge could be matched with a quick search of any fourth grade classroom.
As Comrade Kalaf has covered, the Jets are essentially an enduring metaphor for what happens when you consistently don't plan for anything but the best case scenario. Owner Woody Johnson, his son Chris, and a series of polo shirts behind big desks have missed whatever the essence of successful football is, but they have at least been busy about it. The proof is in the team frantically grinding through a list of quarterbacks (24 starters, 30 total) and head coaches (eight if you include Rodgers, seven if you properly title Rodgers as more of a general manager) in their quarter-century of stewardship. The current regime is the very essence of the short attention span management style.
But interim coaches cannot choose good situations. Good situations don't need interim coaches except in some sort of health emergency or interoffice political nightmare. The just-fired Robert Saleh fell neatly into the second category because he succeeded at the thing he knew how to do—make a better defense—and failed at two more arcane skills, which were learning to take orders from a 40-year-old quarterback with a fat contract, and playing to inflated expectations in a loud town for a team that historically stinks. The Jets haven't made the playoffs in 13 years, the longest active drought in North American big-revenue sports.
Those conditions will not change for Ulbrich. The defense will still be good, and the expectations will not be reduced because it was so handy to blame Saleh for what he could not control. He was handed a willful quarterback well past his sell-by date (with allowances paid for his age and recent injury history) and a front office hell-bent on keeping that quarterback happy. One wonders at least momentarily what would have happened if general manager Joe Douglas had been given license to keep Saleh and defy Rodgers, but then we realize who makes $38 million (Rodgers) and who makes $3 million (Douglas). Well, we did say “momentarily.”
But this isn't about any of them. It’s about Ulbrich, who makes significantly less than Douglas, let alone Saleh. Saleh is now a sunk cost, a year and 12 games of salary earmarked towards paying a man not to work. Douglas is working on the last year of his current deal. Ulbrich is, well, "week-to-week" probably glorifies the gig a bit. Ulbrich came to work, got moved to a bigger office and was hastily fitted for a suit that will look good in a mortuary salon. It's the business he has chosen, only worse. He's not just your run-of-the-mill interim coach, he’s the second bucket on the Titanic. We will pre-remember him fondly.
-Ray Ratto
Photo: Al Pereira/Getty Images |
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