Today, the world feels back to normal. The birds aren’t chirping, and church bells aren’t ringing. The morning coffee tastes more bitter and the eggs are burned. The horns are louder and more abundant thanks to the Septa strike. And, your boss will be hovering over your desk asking for those TPS reports hourly.

World Phucking Champs, no more. Back to being the bridesmaid. This is Philly. Second place is normalcy.

Being on top of the baseball world was fun while it lasted. All 371 days to be exact. We were champions and the exuberance we felt running through our veins, the effervescence flowing from our bodies was unparalleled.

Being a champion was fun while it lasted.

But, were we ever really comfortable being champs? A generation-plus of sports fans in Philly had no clue what winning felt like. Once we achieved the pinnacle, did we really know what we were supposed to do? Or, did we start to lose our identity?

Following a championship, people were nicer and opened doors for each other. The chip on our collective shoulders was gone.

We didn’t boo our beloved Phillies as much as we did before Uncle Charlie hoisted the championship trophy on a crisp October night in 2008. Even Charlie himself said that early in the season when his team wasn’t playing well. We had gone soft.

For once, the City of Brotherly Love was not an oxymoron. We had a team we loved like brothers and respected like the champions they were.

Sure, there was the occasional discontent among the fans that was aired on talk radio. However, it wasn’t as brazen as it had been during The Drought.

When Brad Lidge struggled early in the year, many fans said to give Lidge more time. You couldn’t expect perfection each year. At about the eighth blown save, those fans eventually came around. In the past, the catcalls would have rained down after the third or fourth blown save. The result of a champsionship was that we had become nicer.

But, wasn’t that just human nature? Or, were we supposed to react the same way we did before the championship? Was it too greedy to rip a championship team apart because you wanted a second title?

The truth is, we didn’t know how to respond. And, we still don’t. As a city, we hadn’t been in this position in 25 years (28 years for the Phillies).

Even as recently as Monday morning, the fans ire wasn’t what it would have, or even should have been. When Brad Lidge and Pedro Feliz bumbled Game 4 and the World Series away late Sunday night, you expected pure outrage. Think Donovan McNabb puking-and-not-calling-timeout-in-the-Super Bowl outrage.

Instead, people were more numb than angered. Fans were upset, but instead of decibel-level breaking boos, the crowd got fairly quiet, fairly quickly. The tone on talk radio the following morning was more laid back in the “I feel like I got kicked in the nutsack” way. The true anger lacked.

In the past, those players would have been lambasted.

The only player to receive some negative feedback was Cole Hamels when his comments about wanting a fresh start were taken out of context. Cole is a laid back Californian, so it was easy to misdirect the frustration solely toward him. However, even then, he didn’t get the same treatment that Ricky Watters did following his infamous “For who? For what?” comments. People will be harder on Cole next year now that we’re no longer champs.

Even today, as we wake up following another championship defeat, the feeling isn’t what it should be. The mood is more of “we lost, but we’re happy with the run and to have been there again.”

Don’t get me wrong. We should be proud of the Phillies and thankful for the three-year run they have given us to date. They did end the championship drought. Uncle Charlie could and should be elected mayor tomorrow.

However, the Yankees weren’t clearly the better team. The Phillies could have won the series with a couple of balls bouncing their way. To be happy to have been there is unacceptable. Where is the sadness and the anger that we’re used to?

It’s not there because we didn’t know how to act as champions. The collective fan base hasn’t been itself.

Today that can and will change. Dig deep down and pull out the brazen, hardcore, chip-on-the-shoulder fanatic. It’s who we are. Honk your horn and flip the finger to a New Yorker. Throw a snowball at a Mets fan this winter. It’ll make everything normal.