Last Sunday, the Philadelphia Phillies erased an early Colorado lead and beat the Rockies, 8-4. By doing so, they forestalled -- for a few more days, until the All-Star break is over -- reaching a milestone that no other professional sports team has ever attained.
With their next loss, perhaps as soon as Friday, the Phillies will lose a baseball game for the 10,000th time.
As a Phillies phan for more than five decades, and as the possessor of a very low dKos UID, I feel the pain of this impending increase in digit-count.
To rack up 9999 losses, a team needs two principal attributes -- a long history in the game and a tradition of ineptitude. The Phillies qualify on both counts.
Although there were earlier major league clubs in Philadelphia (the 1876 Athletics in the National League and the 1882 Athletics in the American Association), the Phillies came into existence when the NL's Worcester Ruby Legs collapsed after the 1882 season. Al Reach, a pioneering professional player and later a sporting-goods magnate, relocated the franchise to his adopted hometown, and they played (and lost) their first game in Philadelphia on May 1, 1883.
In the succeeding 124 and a half years, the Phillies have rarely been mediocre. None of that middle-of-the-pack stuff for them. No, it's been a history of occasional excellence lightly salted in a sea of god-awfulness.
On the plus side, they won the 1980 World Series. They've played in -- and lost -- the World Series four other times (1915, 1950, 1983, and 1993). And they made it to -- and lost in -- the first round of the NL postseason three straight years in the late 1970s and again in 1981.
On the other hand, the Phils finished dead last in the National League (1883-1968) or its Eastern Division (1969-present) 31 times -- exactly one-fourth of their full seasons. They ended up next-to-last in 16 more seasons. They've been in the "second division", the lower half of the standings, a total of 66 times (since 1994, with a 5-team NL East, I counted 4th and 5th as "second division"). The Phils have suffered through extended periods of extreme futility:
- last or next-to-last six consecutive years, 1919-1924
- last or next-to-last nine years out of ten, 1919-1928
- last or next-to-last thirteen straight years, 1933-1945
- dead last five years in a row, 1938-1942
- dead last four years in a row, 1958-1961 (and saved from the cellar only by the expansion Mets the next year)
- last or next-to-last six straight years, 1968-1973
The Phils have lost 100 or more games in 14 years (all of them 154-game seasons). No major league team has ever lost more consecutive games than the Phillies, who dropped 23 straight contests between July 29 and August 20, 1961. No other team has recorded a team Earned Run Average as high as the 7.69 recorded by the 1930 Phils. One unfortunate Phil of the 1930s and 1940s was actually saddled with the nickname "
Losing Pitcher". And he made it onto the All-Star team one year.
Which is not to say that the Philadelphia Phillies have been uniformly awful. Some 32 Hall of Famers have played for the Phils, though only a few of them spent their HOF-quality years on the club. As "real" Phillie Hall of Famers, I would name, in order of their debuts with the Phils, Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson, Billy Hamilton (shared with the Boston Braves), Pete Alexander (shared with the Cubs), Chuck Klein, Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn, Jim Bunning (yes, the KY Senator, shared with the Detroit Tigers), Steve Carlton, and of course the greatest thirdbaseman in baseball history, Mike Schmidt. The Phils lost Nap Lajoie when he jumped to the newly-formed American League, and Elmer Flick soon thereafter, and infamously dealt away rookies Ferguson Jenkins (in 1966) and Ryne Sandberg (in 1982) as throw-ins on trades.
Even when they showed their rare instances of high-quality play, the Phils have almost always found ways to disappoint. For example, Game 6 of the 1993 World Series:
BLUE JAYS 9TH: BATISTE REPLACED HOLLINS (PLAYING 3B); WILLIAMS REPLACED ANDERSEN (PITCHING); Henderson walked; White flied to left; Molitor singled to center [Henderson to second]; Carter homered [Henderson scored, Molitor scored]; 3 R, 2 H, 0 E, 0 LOB. Phillies 6, Blue Jays 8.
Then there's the top of the 9th inning of Game 3 of the 1977 NLCS (bolding in the original):
DODGERS 9TH: Baker grounded out (third to first); Monday grounded out (second to first); DAVALILLO BATTED FOR YEAGER; On a bunt Davalillo singled to second; MOTA BATTED FOR RAUTZHAN; Mota doubled to left [Davalillo scored (error by Sizemore; assist by Luzinski), Mota to third]; Lopes singled to third [Mota scored]; ground ball off turf-seam hit Schmidt in knee and caromed to Bowa who apparently threw to 1B in time; Froemming said safe; Lopes was picked off first but was safe on an error by Garber [Lopes to second]; Russell singled to center [Lopes scored (unearned)]; Smith grounded out (pitcher to first); 3 R (2 ER), 4 H, 2 E, 1 LOB. Dodgers 6, Phillies 5.
The play-by-play doesn't even begin to describe the craziness of that inning. Manny Mota's "double" was a flyball that any leftfielder except Greg "Bull" Luzinski would have caught against the wall. But Phils' manager Danny Ozark inexplicably forgot to send in defensive sub Jerry Martin to replace Luzinski with a two-run lead ... Ozark had made that switch 43 times during the season, and he did send in Martin to run for Luzinski after he was hit by a pitch in the bottom of the inning.
The 1950 Whiz Kids were almost derailed by the late-season military call-up of young southpaw pitcher Curt Simmons, but the Phils hung on to win their first NL title in 35 years. But the absence of one of his two star starters caused manager Eddie Sawyer to inexplicably choose MVP Jim Konstanty, whose 74 games during the season had included zero starts, to pitch the Series opener against the Yankees. He allowed just 1 run in his 8 innings, but the Phils got just two singles off Vic Raschi and lost 1-0. It was the first of four close losses (three by one run) in New York's Series sweep.
But those losses are nothing compared to the Phold. Behind newly-acquired hurler Bunning, emerging lefty Chris Short, powerful rightfielder Johnny Callison, and amazing Rookie of the Year Dick Allen, the Phillies built up a big lead over the summer. After Bunning's win over the Dodgers on September 20, the Phils led Cincinnati and St. Louis by 6.5 games with just 12 more to play. Their "magic number" was 7. The city and the region were agog. My family's World Series ticket order had been submitted. But the team promptly went on a 10-game losing streak. Team management panicked, making one disastrous tactical decision after another. My parents had long since bought me and my brother tickets to the last home game of the season as a present for my 14th birthday, so we were in the stands on September 27, 1964 when Bunning started against Tony Cloninger of Milwaukee. Callison belted three homers, Allen had a double and two singles ... and the Braves crushed the Phils, 14-8. It was the seventh loss in the Phold, and it was the game after which the Phils fell out of first place. BTW, Joe Torre's 8th inning homer off Jack Baldschun remains the hardest-hit ball I have ever seen, a rifle-shot off the back wall of Connie Mack's bleachers. In the end, the Reds and Phils ended up tied for second, one measly game behind the Cardinals. Perhaps the only saving grace of the Phold was its value to David Halberstam.
I was born a few miles away from Shibe Park, while the Whiz Kids were splitting a late September twinbill in Boston. I saw the Phils play (and lose) many a game in that ballpark, renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953. In the first professional game I ever attended, on July 17, 1957, future HOFer Robin Roberts was ejected from the game between the 1st and 2nd innings. In fact, I only ever saw the guys in red pinstripes fail to lose at Connie Mack once -- in the only start during the last eight years of his career, Dick Hall threw a complete game and beat the Pirates 4-1 in the first game of a twi-nighter on June 15, 1967.
After the Phils moved to Veterans Stadium, one of the archetypal cookie-cutter stadia of the 1970s, I saw more Phillie non-losses. For instance, I was in the ballpark on September 28, 1972 (another birthday present) for Roberto Clemente's 2999th hit and the 26th victory of Carlton's astonishing 27-10 season. And I've also watched momentous Phillies events elsewhere, like this one by Mickey Morandini in Pittsburgh on September 20, 1992 (emphasis added):
PIRATES 6TH: Van Slyke singled to right; Bonds singled [Van Slyke to second]; King lined into a triple play (second to second to second) [Van Slyke out at second, Bonds out at first]; 0 R, 2 H, 0 E, 0 LOB. Phillies 1, Pirates 1.
A final word about 1980, the year of the Phillies' greatest achievement, their World Series victory over Kansas City...
I MISSED IT.
My parents were living in Israel that year, and I had scheduled a vacation visit with them. Like any self-respecting Philadelphia baseball fan, I paid no attention to the postseason schedule while planning my trip. So it turned out that I left for Ben Gurion Airport the day before the Phils clinched the National League East title over Montreal. And I returned from my trip the day after they beat the Royals in Game 6 of the Series.
O, the woes of being a Phillies Phan...