It isn’t enough just to be from Philly or to have arrived as a hired mercenary in the City of Brotherly Love, it is necessary to earn civic affection through hard work and an absolute commitment to a common cause that transcends place of birth or any previous stops along the way. In legend and lore, Philadelphia is a tough city that infrequently grants its love, especially to individual athletes or those who wear the colors of its local teams, and only then with large dollops of show-me skepticism. Thomas Wolfe’s celebrated novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, published posthumously in 1940, paints a rather bleak picture of a fledgling author who writes of the hometown he left years earlier but still mostly remembers with fondness, although his literary return to his roots is greeted with menacing letters and death threats from the town’s residents who don’t like his not-always-complimentary takes on the place where they still live. B-Hop’s Latest Hall of Fame Extends Beyond the Ring
