One of the hardest parts about writing a local sports column is balancing my unbiased opinions about players and teams with my undying support of those very same players and teams. In the past two weeks, I have written about both the Flyers and the Phillies, and it is a weird feeling to see my negative thoughts come to life as if I am a jinx for the team, or to see the occurrence of the exact opposite of what I wrote just days earlier.

I was at the Phillies game on Friday night for their 10-3 victory over our “rival,” the Toronto Blue Jays.

Personally, I will always hate the Blue Jays because of 1993 World Series, but to Major League Baseball, the Blue Jays are only our rival because the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C. and now play 30 miles south of the Baltimore Orioles. Nonetheless, just days earlier I wrote about some of the slumps that certain hitters were going through in the early days of May, only to see them break out of their swoons right before my very eyes.

If you remember, I wrote that Jayson Werth “started out hot, but is just 4-for-24 in the month of May.” He only happened to smack the cover off the ball, hitting three homers and driving in eight runs on Friday night, and in the process, burying the memories of his slumping batting average. Oh, his performance earned him a vote of confidence from Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel, and pushed Shane Victorino to the bench. So much for that slump I wrote about.

The next slump that snapped was that of the Ten Million Dollar Man, Ryan Howard. Last week, I wrote that he looked “content” with his arbitration award, and wasn’t making any adjustments to fix the Mr. Baseball-esque hole in his swing. Whoops! While he still strikes out nearly twice per game, since last Monday, when I wrote that column, RyHo has hit .333 with three homers and six RBIs, and raised his batting average 20 points in the process (stats through Sunday, May 18).

At least I was right about Brett Myers. He just looks lost out there on the mound, surrendering homer after homer and looking more like Adam Eaton than an opening day starter. (Maybe these two sentences will get him back on track!)

I’ll admit, it sure is fun to be wrong when the team succeeds, but when it feels like my column acts as a jinx, as my Flyers/Penguins preview did, being correct never felt worse.

The first sign of the jinx occurred on the Thursday that my column was hitting the newsstands. I wrote about how the Flyers had amazing health through the first two rounds of the playoffs, specifically on defense, and sure enough, Kimmo Timonen misses the first four games of the series with a blood clot in his leg.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Braydon Coburn gets hit in the face with a puck in game 2 and misses the rest of the series. Those are the Flyers best two defensemen, and my column put a hex on them. If this were an instant message, there would be a frowning emoticon next to that last sentence.

I also posed the question: “What if the Martin Biron from the regular season returns?” Sure enough, the Biron who, at best, could be described as “inconsistent” returned to the ice, instead of the one who made so many spectacular saves against the Capitals and the Canadiens.

So in response, I have decided to focus on harnessing this power and jinxing one of our teams to a championship, because they haven’t been able to do it on their own in the 100 seasons of sports since the 1983 Sixers brought home the NBA title.