My Lovable Losers

For most of my professional life I have kept on my desk at work a framed Benjamin Franklin aphorism. Under the heading "How to be Remembered" it says, "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing." There's no way ol' Ben could have known when he penned the quip more than 200 years ago that two centuries later, the baseball team in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia would do something worth the writing unlike anyone before them.

You see Sunday night, my beloved Phillies set a record for futility (or phutility, as we like to spell it) 125 years in the making. You might think a big rivalry, a bobble-head giveaway, post-game fireworks or some other sort of positive event would have drawn 44,872 people to Citizens Bank Park on a steamy July evening in the City of Brotherly Love. Alas, for perhaps the first time in baseball history, a sell-out crowd (for the third staight night) turned out to cheer their team to defeat. The 10,000th regular season defeat since the Worcester Brown Stockings arrived in Philadelphia and changed their name in 1883.

It is a dubious honor to be sure. Never in the history of professional sports has a team lost so many games. And it'll be a few more years until the next team will do it. But it is an honor we Philadelphians will relish with morbid fascination. We are a loyal lot with little to cheer through the ages. So we have to take success, even at losing, when we can get it. Ironically, the Phillies, who have let down the fervent faithful so many times, did not disappoint the Phillie Phanatics this time around. Last week, they won the last game before the All-Star break at Colorado to hold at 9,999 loses. Then, in typical fashion, they teased us with two wins to start the second half of the season before losing Sunday at home before the third-straight sell-out crowd, which rose to its feet in celebration after the final out. Imagine a New Orleans funeral with cheesesteak breath.

10,000 is a lot when you're talking about anything. But when you're talking about losses, it gets painful. My father and his generation still cringe at the thought of the Phillies epic stretch collapse in 1964, failing to win the pennant despite having a 6.5-game lead with 12 to play. And this record doesn't even include my generation's most painful moment. Joe Carter's homer to end the 1993 World Series doesn't count toward the total. Yes, it has been a motley crew that has brought my team to this point. For every Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton or Richie Ashburn to don the red pinstripes, there have been dozens of Danny Tartabuls, Bruce Ruffins and Hugh Mulcahys.

But none of it really matters. Not to me at least. In addition to the countless games I've watched on TV and listened to on the radio, I have attended 24 of the Phillies 18,810 games. I've watched them lose 14 of them. I'll attend my 25th Phillies game later this month cheering and booing with all the fervor a Phillies fan can muster. And that's saying something. Whether they win or lose, I'll always live and die with my Phils. After all, it's in my genes, in my blood. It's part of who I am. And one day, we'll celebrate their 10,000th win. I just hope to live long enough to see it.