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Jimmy Rollins is in stellar company. The slick shortstop boasted the Philadelphia Phillies were the team to beat in the National League East last year, helped prove it in dramatic fashion, then walked off with the league's most valuable player award. So, naturally, Phillies fans booed him this year, just as they'd booed slugger Richie Allen in the 1960s and the sublime Mike Schmidt in the 1970s and '80s. Schmidt is merely the greatest third baseman in major-league history — so great he made it look easy. Philly fans don't like it when things look easy.

They didn't like it either when J.D. Drew refused to sign with the Phillies after they drafted him in 1997; the first time Drew played in Philadelphia in an opposing team's uniform, fans hurled not only insults but batteries at him. Quarterback Donovan McNabb weathered his first barrage of Philly booing on draft night in 1999, when the Eagles picked him instead of Ricky Williams. Kobe Bryant won the most valuable player award at the NBA all-star game in Philadelphia in 2002 — and got booed the entire contest, despite being a hometown kid. He said he was "pretty hurt."

So imagine how Michael Irvin felt. The Dallas Cowboys star injured his neck against the Eagles in 1999, lying motionless on the turf — prompting Philly fans to loudly cheer. "Unspeakable, even for us," chided a Philadelphia Daily News headline. The city's football fans had grown so rowdy that a municipal court judge was installed in the Veterans Stadium basement, allowing for convenient onsite arrests, trials and convictions.

As for that oft-repeated Santa story: That one actually occurred at old Franklin Field in 1968, at the end of an abysmal Eagles season. A heavy snowstorm kept Santa and his float from their planned pageant. Instead, according to The Great Philadelphia Fan Book, a skinny kid named Frank Olivo, already wearing a Santa suit, was plucked from the crowd and sent into the fray, with predictable results: As the band struck up Here Comes Santa Claus, fans booed and fired snowballs at him.

Olivo later said he thought it was funny. But would he do it again? "No way," he replied. "If it doesn't snow, they'll probably throw beer bottles."