Game 5 and mystery Phillies liquor shots please crowds at South Street bar

Part five of a multi-part series.

Many fans watching World Series Game 5 at the bar North on Monday night were skeptical at first, in part due to the Phillies’ performance in Game 4.
“Word on the street is the Yankees are going to let us win this game so they can beat us in their own state,” said Donnie Biresch, a sophomore Temple student.
Biresch’s conspiracy theory didn’t stop him from accepting the free celebratory “Phillies shot” North granted its game watchers during the seventh inning. North’s Phillies shot ingredients are unknown, but it was red, potent and crowd-pleasing.
The 222 South Street establishment is co-owned by Phillies fan Ben Reiter, originally from Long Island.
“There is a direct correlation between how much money the bar makes and how much I like the Phillies,” he said of his fandom.
“This is the kick-start I needed, the Phillies and Halloween.”
The token die-hard fans were in attendance at North, as well. One of them, decked out in Phillies garb, said he came all the way from Wisconsin to watch his favorite team.
The bar was filled with cheers and high fives when – thanks to Cliff Lee – the Yankees came up short in the ninth.
As Biresch predicted, the Phillies took Game Five, 8 to 6, and the Series makes its way back to New York for Game Six on Wednesday night.
Michelle Provencher can be reached at michelle.provencher@temple.edu.

Temple students, Phils fans out in full force to watch team’s blowout Game 1 win

Part one in a multi-story series.

Game one of the World Series kicked off Wednesday night, and Phillies fans were out in full force despite Mother Nature’s attempts to rain out the game.

Fox and Hound, one of Center City’s biggest sports bars, served as a perfect scene to take in game one.

By the bottom of the sixth inning, a mob of game-watchers already crowded the bar and began spilling out the door of the popular watering hole onto the corner of 15th and Spruce streets, as a brawl between a male Yankees fan and a gaggle of female Phillies fans was broken up inside the bar.

“The only difference between watching the game in New York and watching the game here is the number of people who get punched in the face,” said Phillies fan Jimmy Farrell.

A FOX-affiliate reporter in New York said Philadelphia’s only well-known athlete was Rocky, and he’s fictional.

“That insult is based on the presumption that the people of Philadelphia would take it as an insult,” Farrell said.

Clearly, participating in the series festivities is not for the faint of heart, even with Fox and Hound’s injury-preventative steps, such as only serving drinks in plastic cups and bottles.

Lifelong Phillies followers weren’t going to give up that easily. Alex Frigoletto, a senior marketing major at Temple, said following Philly sports is how she was raised.

“There’s a photo of me as an infant with a Phillies hat on, and another wearing Eagles stuff,” he said.

Surviving the upcoming week’s mania isn’t what Frigoletto is worried about, though. She said it’s her wallet.

“I’ll go out every night if my finances allow it,” she said.

Senior Ben Levy is proof that there’s no excuse to stay home on game night.

“I never come out, except now because we’re in the World Series.”

That sentiment goes for Yankees fans as well. Believe it or not there was a small group of Yankee lovers sitting at the bar. While they kept to themselves, many Phils fans couldn’t help but chuck drinks and trash at them.
Michelle Provencher can be reached at michelle.provencher@temple.edu.