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The Phillies stink. The Sixers and Flyers stunk. The Eagles might be pretty good, or they might stink, too. Even the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer, playing a game I don't care about in a league that isn't major in a city that isn't Philadelphia, stink.

In other words: Philly sports are back to normal.

We've been here before. My sports fandom dates to the early 1970s, a sleepy era when the city's teams were filled with has-beens, never-weres, and whoever-said-you-coulds. Among the few Phillies I still remember is a pitcher named Dick Selma, not for his arm but because there were two things that came in every pack of 1972 baseball cards: a thin rectangular slab of pink Formica passing itself off as bubble gum, and a Dick Selma card.

Fast-forward a few years, and everything had changed. The latter part of the 1970s was a time of wild sex, rampant drug use, pulsing disco, and unfortunate fashion choices. And that was just the Phillies' dugout. (For the record, most of those things did not apply to my own 1970s, which were light on bar crawls and heavy on bar mitzvahs.)

It was a golden age: The Flyers won two Stanley Cups, the Sixers were building up to their 1983 championship, the Phillies were a playoff team with a World Series win on the horizon, and the Eagles were a few years away from the Super Bowl.

New teams and leagues materialized out of nowhere like Real Housewives around a video camera, and we still won. The Philadelphia Freedoms of World Team Tennis? First place. The Philadelphia Atoms of the North American Soccer League? Champs. It was as if someone was devising leagues or, sometimes, entire sports just to create a winning team, almost on a whim, which I'm pretty sure is how someone came up with "luge."

It was too good to last.

The Phillies are the city's only team to win a title in the last 30-plus years, and that came not long after they became the first professional sports organization to rack up 10,000 losses, a disproportionate number seemingly involving Kyle Kendrick.

So here we are, wandering through a veritable sports desert, thirsting for the cool refreshment of victory but choking on the dusty sands of defeat and ludicrously extended metaphors.

When it's all over but the doubting, when sports goes from must-see to must-flee, what's a Philly fan to do?

Here's how to make the most of your sudden surfeit of free time.

Go down the Shore: Atlantic City's continuing revitalization efforts are a reminder that with hard work and diligence, if you keep the faith even when times are bad, things will - however implausibly - get even worse.

Play for the farm team: Gardening can be a relaxing and enjoyable hobby. There is a rare satisfaction in starting, say, Brussels sprouts from seed, then nurturing the fragile young plants until that glorious morning when you harvest a bumper crop of Brussels sprouts, glistening with dew, and promptly toss them into the compost pile. Because, really, who wants Brussels sprouts?

Do it yourself: Instead of sitting around and watching overpriced athletes running around (or, in the case of baseball, standing around), why not get off the couch and into the game? Sure, you're not getting paid millions of dollars to shoot some hoops or swing for the fences, but nobody's booing you, either. Well, unless you screw up. This is Philadelphia.

Embrace the reality: Losers, as Taylor Swift would say, gonna lose. Accepting that makes all the difference. If you don't realistically expect the Phils to win, a game at Citizens Bank Park becomes a relaxing and entertaining day in the sun. With beer. Watching at home is even better - when things go wrong, which they will, you can change the channel. And get another beer.

Take up a hobby: I hear baseball cards are hot again. And if you're in the market for a 1972 Dick Selma . . .