Philly Fan gets ripped at Dodgers Stadium -- all in good fun?

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You know what takes guts?

It takes guts, real, bona-fide guts, to go to a place like Dodgers Stadium for a serious game like this and sit among raving lunatic Dodgers fans -- many who are well past tipsy now -- with a red Phillies cap and a blue, very official looking Ryan Howard uniform.

There are a few fans here who have internal fortitude enough to come here in getups like this, and one of them is Bob Bognet, who is wearing that exact outfit while sitting all by himself in an end-of-the-row seat on the third deck of Dodgers Stadium.

“I’m getting abused,” Bognet just told me, a grim smile on his face. As he spoke the guy behind him looked at Bognet and began to serenade him with a loud chant: ‘Phillies suck! Phillies suck!”

Bognet, who told me he grew up near Philadelphia and moved to LA seven years ago to work in the movie biz, shrugged it off.

“Been like this all night. They come at you with, ‘You suck! ... You’re a son of a’… well, some more vulgarities. It was actually worse last night. Last night I was in the loge (the seats down near right field, which tend to be more than a bit rambunctious). It didn’t get to fights last night, but there were people definitely ready for it … these fans are pretty brutal, man.”

I asked Bognet for a prediction.

(Writer’s note: This was just minutes before the last madcap 5th inning when the Dodgers went ahead, 3-2, after the Manny double, and the equally madcap 6th, when the Phils answered with a run of their own.)

He assured me his team would win by a score of 4-2. Ryan Howard, of course, is Bognet’s choice to be the hero for the boys from back east. “Howard will win it with a homer,” he said. The rest of what he told me, something about Brad Lidge, was drowned out by a chorus of boos.

Yeah, Philly fans have a notoriously nasty rep, but there are more than a few here in Dodgerland who don’t appear to have taken etiquette lessons any time in the recent past. One thing is certain – all of the fans are having a great time tonight, even Bognet.

-- Kurt Streeter