As disastrous as the past week was for the Giants, there was still an element of fun.

There are 10,000 elementary school kids at the game today. They just started a "Giants suck" chant. Philadelphia is like no place else. — Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) May 10, 2018

I wanted to know more about this. Was 10,000 an exaggeration? Regardless, where did they all come from? Why were they there? It turns out, May 10th was Citizens Bank Weather Education Day Presented by NBC10 First Alert Weather. I can believe that parents and children alike purchased specialty tickets for this specific event. I can also believe that Philadelphia school children were primed to chant “Giants suck”. What I can’t believe is that the chant was actually on the event schedule.

Luckily, I got an email from an old friend, Qiana Rowlands, who moved to Philadelphia a few years back. She’s a journalist who just so happened to be there when the chant began and was kind enough to email me her interviews with some of the kids after the game to find out why they thought the Giants sucked (“I asked them: Why do the Giants suck?”). Here were the real responses from real, actual Philadelphia schoolchildren:

Traci Cheesesteak, age 9: They look stinky. And I saw one of them spit on the ground and it was green and black! Geno Balboa, age 7: Yeah. And they’re fat. Jawn Jawnson, age 12: Ay yo, it’s like this: everything outside of Philly straight sucks. Iverson Reynolds, age 12: The weatherman from before told us about droughts and how climate change will lead to more of them and that some people don’t think climate change exists. The Giants are like those climate change deniers. Chase Utley Dupree, age 10: Their pitchers are belly itchers. And their batters worse than Family Matters. Joel Embiid, age 24: We, uh, we just got eliminated. I’d rather not talk to press right now. You on Instagram? Iggles McNabb, age 13: They made Andrew McCutchen cut his dreads. They’re racist. [I told him McCutchen had cut them when he was still with Pittsburgh.] Naw. It was Frisco. They’re racist. I know all about that NIMBY s—, too. Wawa Bell, age 8: Daddy said so. Mommy said don’t say “suck”, so I said they stink. (giggling) Rocky Rubenstein, age 12: [shadow boxing the entire time] Ay yo, I don’t know, but it was all in good fun, you know? Come out to a ballgame and you gotta rag on the visiting team, right? Just part of the game, you know what I mean? Liberty Li, age 12: I’ll never forgive them for what they did to us in 2010. [I remind her that she was 4 years old] My dad bet all our rent on that series. We lost our house!

My thanks to Qiana Rowlands for getting these interviews. And Andrew Baggarly is absolutely right: Philadelphia is a different place.