The Price of Philly's Victory

Wonder if the city's safe enough for a championship parade. (And whether we'll ever find out.)

by Brian Hickey

PHILADELPHIA, PA. (Nov. 2, 2007): It was the day sports fans in this hard-luck, blue-collar town anticipated for nearly a quarter-century. Now, it's a day that nobody will ever forget — for all the wrong reasons.

On Wednesday night, the Phillies — wild-card playoff qualifiers on the last day of the regular season — ended their hometown's 24-year pro-sports-championship drought by beating the New York Yankees four games to two in a World Series for the ages. Two days later, more than 1.5 million people flooded downtown Philadelphia to continue their raucous celebration with a Broad Street parade to honor their Fightins'.

But in a split second, unmitigated joy gave way to unprecedented panic and widespread rage because at least one of those revelers brought a gun to a party.

Early reports remain sketchy, but eyewitnesses have told ESPN News that when the team caravan approached Ellsworth Street just after 12:30 p.m., four shots rang out. When the dust settled, World Series MVP Chase Utley was being rushed to Hahnemann Hospital with a gunshot wound to his left shoulder. Currently in surgery, Utley's injuries are not thought to be life-threatening, but hospital officials would say only that he's listed in critical condition and that his family arrived shortly after the incident.

The same, however, can't be said for the damage done to a city transfixed on images of Utley's shaken teammates huddled outside the ER waiting room. On a day they expected to be slugging back bottles of Dom at a victory rally, they were instead washing a teammate's blood off their commemorative Modell's championship T-shirts. Fans flocked to the hospital in a show of support.

"After the first one, I thought it was just a champagne cork. But the second, third and fourth? That wasn't no champagne," said a tearful fan who helped clear a path for medics on the parade route. "The blood was just streaming out of his arm. I've never seen anything like it. If Chase's career is over, and we're all praying it isn't, this city will never recover. Anybody out here would trade the title to have him back on the field next season."

The city's mayor, John Street, remained out of town on undisclosed "business" and was unavailable for comment Friday afternoon. Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who said Street sent him a "concerned e-mail" from his iPhone, held an impromptu press conference. He told reporters that a "manhunt like none other in city history" was under way and that anybody with information about the case should call police immediately.

"At this point, we're relatively certain that Utley wasn't the target. We're getting reports that two men in the crowd were fighting over a woman when one opened fire, missing his target," Johnson offered. "The stray bullet then went into the parade route, barely missing a slew of fans, including young children, even babies, and struck him. Let me make one thing clear: The men and women of the Philadelphia Police Department will not sleep until this gunman is brought to justice. Our prayers are with the Utley family."

Johnson added that sketch artists are waiting for any information that might help them work up a visual. So far, he said, there's little to go on as nobody who was in the immediate vicinity of the fight is cooperating.

Along with several Phillies — including Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, who won the deciding game with a three-run ninth-inning home run off Mariano Rivera — Johnson pleaded with would-be vigilantes to not get involved. "What we need is somebody to come forward with information, an identity, a description, anything," he said. "What we don't need are mobs roaming the streets exacting justice."

The Phillies have offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter, and the FBI has offered its assistance.

Johnson also noted that while the majority of on-duty officers were detailed to the parade route, there were five fatal shooting in North and Southwest Philadelphia, bringing the city's homicide tally to 343 this year. The victims included a 65-year-old grandmother and 7-year-old boy who was playing stickball in a playground.

Neither Johnson nor NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would comment on reports that the league may cancel this weekend's highly anticipated showdown between the first-place Cowboys and second-place Eagles, currently scheduled for 8:15 p.m. Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field, across Pattison Avenue from where the Phillies started what was to be the day they'd dreamed about since childhood.

"We never thought it would come to this," Johnson said. "Forget 'wake-up calls.' This city is just not a safe place. We've asked for the community's help time and time again yet, on a day meant to bring us all together, one gun transformed us into an international symbol of lawlessness. You ask me, 'What can we do to stop it?' Well, I don't have an answer. This city is officially a war zone, and I'm a cop, not a soldier."

(hickey@citypaper.net)