Loathesome Losers: The Anatomy of a Phillies Fan

I have decided to stop shouting into the wind long enough to acknowledge the Phillies "official" 10,000th loss tonight, a 10-2 decision to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Phils failed to plate any runs before the bottom of the ninth after scoring a combined 23 runs in the past two games, and Brian Sanches surrendered four home runs (including one to Lil' Adam Kennedy) all by himself. That sounds about right.

A final word on the "milestone"--a lot of people are chalking the losses up to "longevity," perhaps trying to deflect attention from the fact that they have chosen to write about/cover/root for a franchise that, by all accounts, is a born loser. Yes, the Phillies are old, but the next closest squad (the Braves) is more than 300 losses away from 10,000. They have finished under .500 seventy-five times, accounting for 59 percent of their total 127 major-league seasons. They have won a single World Series, the fewest among any team that is at least 100 years old. They have had exactly one window of consistently competent ownership in their entire history, but their few glories have occurred in relatively recent memory and thus their struggles are generally overlooked.

The fact is that the Philadelphia Phillies are far and away the worst franchise, pound for pound, in professional baseball. The failure to acknowledge this awful truth, I believe, is one of the big reasons that Philly fans are stereotyped as boorish louts rather than "lovable losers" (like Cubs fans) or priggish-yet-sympathetic martyrs (like Red Sox fans pre-2004). We get so defensive about this losing legacy--one that we consciously chose to adopt as our own--that we don't deserve much sympathy. We're like the burnout who eats a dozen Big Macs a day and then blames McDonald's for making him fat.

So to all the Phaithful who are getting their underpants in a bunch over the celebration of 10,000 losses (notably the 700 Level), I have one question: When are you going to move to St. Louis? Because if you want to plaster a lobotomized grin on your face whether your team is on top of the world or at the bottom of Tony LaRussa's gin and tonic, playing your fiddle while Busch Stadium burns, then that's the place to be.

Me, I will welcome a little public embarrassment--the type that should rankle an invisible ownership, if it has any decency left, into paying some more attention to the W/L columns than to the bottom line. I will recognize that cheering for a loss--one highly unique, historic loss--isn't any lower than the lowest moments that Phillies fans have created. I will continue to risk my mental and cardiovascular health rooting for the guys in red pinstripes to win, as I have every day of my doomed fanhood.

But right now I will most definitely celebrate 10,000.