Phillies:MLB's Biggest Losers
The Philadelphia Phillies Have Lost 10,000 times - And Counting
To commemorate their 10,000th loss, here's a quick look at how the Philadelphia Phillies, the losing-est team in pro sports, got there.
The Philadelphia Phillies aren’t the best at much. But there is one thing they are better at than any other team in any other sport anywhere. The Phillies are the world’s greatest losers.
When the St. Louis Cardinals recently spanked the Phils 10-2, it marked a dubious occasion: it was the 10,000th loss in the team’s history. Now think about that for a moment. To lose that many games, a team would have to go down to defeat 100 times a season for 100 years.
That paints a pretty bleak picture. The fact is, though, that the Phillies haven’t been quite as bad as that. While they have suffered through 14 100-loss seasons, the Phillies haven’t dropped that many in a single year since 1961.
In their 124-year history, the Phils have enjoyed 50 winning seasons. Unfortunately, those good years have only translated into 4 National League pennants and 1 lonely World Series Championship, the 1980 Fall Classic in which they bested the Kansas City Royals in 6 games.
Keeping with tradition, it’s even been a while since the Phillies graced the post-season. Prior to this season, their last appearance was in 1993 when Joe Carter’s homer off Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams gave the Toronto Blue Jays their 2nd straight World Series title. It also left the unfortunate Mr. Williams persona non grata in the City of Brotherly Love as one of their many scapegoats.
In order to be such big losers, the Phillies’ futility, naturally, goes way back. They began life in 1883 as the Philadelphia Quakers, although it wasn’t long before the locals started referring to them as the Phillies. Maybe that was because their first season as the Quakers wasn’t anything to write home about. They lost their first-ever game to the Providence Grays and proceeded to come out on the light side of the score sheet 81 of their 98 games that season.
Since then there have been more dark days than light for the Phillies, more so than any other team. Their closest rival in the futility department is the Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves. But the Braves are still over 300 defeats shy of the Phils’ record. And what of the Cubbies, baseball’s loveable losers? They’ve lost almost 600 fewer games.
Among those many, many defeats, 10 were part of one of the great collapses in baseball history.
The year was 1964 and the Phillies held a robust 6½ game lead for the National League pennant with just 12 games to go. World Series tickets had already been printed and were in the mail. But the Phillies conspired to lose 7-straight games at home and then traveled to St. Louis for a 3-game set. They were swept and the Cards passed them for the flag.
With that in mind, there is some irony in the fact that it was also the Cards who sent the Phillies to their historic 10,000th defeat.
So, the Phillies are the losing-est team in pro sports history. But is it really all that bad? They may not be particularly loveable like some other long-time losers, but they just keep plugging away, day after day, season after season for 124 years now. Despite the disappointment and shame that come with 10,000 losses, there’s something to be said for the fact that the Phillies have hung around so long.
