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.

10,000 A Second Time Around?

One of the things I love about blogging is thrill of "being there"--writing about stuff either as it happens or shortly after.

Last night (or early this morning, depending on how you look at it) was definitely a "being there" experience, though all I meant to do was get a few thoughts down about the Phillies' historic 10,000th franchise loss and do a post later examining how this milestone makes me feel.

Well, I had to put that on hold after glancing at the paper this morning. Apparently, the Phillies "official" count was still at 9,999 after last night's surrender to the Rockies. I went into a full-fledged panic. I flew to my computer and frantically started checking the several sites tracking the total number of losses.

Celebrate 10,000 was all nines. PhillySucks was 9,998 as of July 8th--corresponding with the "official" total. Wikipedia still had a tally of 9,999 losses, which was strange, considering the page displayed the same number after the extra-inning loss on Friday night.

I had checked my math on Saturday morning to make sure that the next loss would indeed be the 10,000th, using Wikipedia as my source. Now, fearing a calculation error, I did it again this afternoon--it added up to 10,000. Wishing to corroborate that information with a different source, I added up the figures posted by Baseball-Reference--which added up to 9,999.

Completely frustrated and on the verge of pulling a Larry Bowa-style freak out, I compared the records, season-by-season, between the two sources. It wasn't long before I found my deviation.

In 1890, the Phillies finished the season with a record of 78-54. This appears to be an officially sanctioned record as it appears almost everywhere: Wikipedia, Baseball Almanac, ESPN, even the Official Site of the Philadelphia Phillies.

There is one place I have found where the record is different--Baseball-Reference. The site lists the 1890 record as 78-53, citing a game on May 23, 1890 against the Chicago Colts (forerunner to the Cubs) that was ruled a no-contest but somehow went in the books as a Phillies loss. A little more research revealed that Phillies PR did indeed address this discrepancy a couple weeks ago, noting that the franchise does not consider the May 23rd game a loss despite what the numbers say on its own official website.

I processed all of this in two distinct phases:

1) I felt horrible for (a) getting the number wrong and (b) somehow letting the PR story slip by me. I try to keep up with the newspapers and press releases, but most of my writing comes from observations gleaned from the information on baseball websites and the games themselves. This isn't meant to be a fast-breaking news blog, after all. Still, an official statement on the subject of the 10,000 losses should have been a target of my commentary. At this point, I seriously considered scrapping my most recent post and acting like it never happened.

2) I kept thinking about it over lunch and finally found some self-sympathy. I've been running these numbers on my own since the beginning of the season. And when every site I used to compile those numbers at the time (this was sans Baseball-Reference) says that the Phillies lost 54 games in 1890, I'm going to take that at face value. I'm just a Joe Schmoe blog--I don't have easy access to 19th century copies of the Spalding Guide. I wish I did, but I just don't. It's easy for me to miss certain minutiae.

Moreover, I looked at the specifics of why the May 1890 Phillies-Colts game was ruled a no-contest. There was an apparent substitution dispute; the umpire wouldn't let the Phils put in reserve outfielder Bill Grey for some reason. The records still say the Phillies eventually lost the game 10-8. I assume that they finished the game under protest and, miraculously, won redress from the National League. Maybe it was more common in those days.

Anyway, I looked up Bill Grey's statistics out of curiosity. I wanted to answer the question: had be been able to play in the game, would the Phillies have won? I don't have the benefit of a complex computer simulation, but the equation Little-Used Reserve Outfielder + .242 Lifetime Average seems simple enough to me. Who knew that the gamesmanship surrounding this incident would be replicated over a century later?

Obviously, the denied substitution didn't seem like a big deal to most people after the fact, hence the 54 losses listed almost everywhere. This information plus my mistrust of the Phillies' PR motives (wouldn't you like the chance to remove losses from your favorite team's record?) went a long way in putting my mind at ease. I won't go so far as to call it a cover-up, but I'd like to think I inadvertently penetrated the Phillies' weird statistical voodoo tactics, kind of like Napoleon's troops stumbling upon the Rosetta Stone out of pure dumb luck.

But if the Phillies want to celebrate their 10,000th loss for a second time, that's just fine with me. Who knows? Maybe they'll find a way to keep that one off the books, too.

Here's How Phils Got the Number [Philly.com]

At Long Last, 10,000 Losses

We did it!

At 12:16 AM EST on Sunday, July 8, 2007, Wes Helms strikes out swinging on a Manny Corpas pitch, and the Colorado Rockies defeat the Philadelphia Phillies by a score of 6-3. Jamie Moyer, the poor soul, is the losing pitcher.

Few situations could have been more fitting for the 10,000th franchise loss: on a horrendous road trip, with a lead surrendered by a bullpen sinking faster than the Lusitania, with an offensive output concentrated entirely on early home runs, to a franchise that has done almost nothing of consequence in its 14 years of existence. The early tease and the subsequent roll-over (in this game as well as Friday night's) were almost poetic. It's as if the team had finally realized their fatalistic mission and set out to dispose of it as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

It would have been better only if Pat Burrell had struck out looking at a fastball on the inside corner to end the game. Otherwise, it's a perfectly obscure ending to a perfectly obscure milestone.

Here's to the next 10,000. Let's hope they sprinkle in a few more W's this time around.

Phillies Notes: Ryan Howard, Baseball Diva

While scouring YouTube for some more Andrew Bird videos, I learned that Ryan Howard was a guest on David Letterman's show earlier this month. How this slipped by me I'll never know, but for now I'll blame my roomie's preference for watching the depressing, hollow shell of a man that used to be Jay Leno.

Now, in light of everything written about Big Ry this spring, check out this video of Jimmy Rollins and Howard arriving at the show:



I'm sure his phone call was very important. Maybe it was a holla from Jared the Subway Guy.

- Just when I start bitching about lineups, Laid-Back Charlie throws this doozy at me. Rowand leading off? J-Roll in the Bobby Abreu Position? Wes Helms at first?

The inmates are truly running the asylum, because it's hard to tell what anyone's roles are anymore. Carlos Ruiz and Rod Barajas (despite attending the School of Hitting) seem to switch off every day. Whenever Jayson Werth gets playing time, he shows he's just as capable as Pat Burrell, or at least Shane Victorino. And no matter who gets called to pitch the 9th inning, it's always a headache. Your latest victim: Antonio Alfonseca.

- Speaking of losing, there's still plenty of time to enter the official "Baker Bowl Road to 10K" pool. The magic number is now 30 losses and counting. The rules are at the end of this post.

I should also clarify that I really do have the Nomar bobblehead--my fee for temporary Dodger fanhood services rendered, namely booing the shit out of Barry Bonds. Because he's just rude.

Phillies Notes: A Numbers Game

In between his training sessions with Apollo Creed, Aaron Rowand is quickly becoming the latest, greatest Philly sports hero. His 4-for-5 performance (including a home run) against Florida on Friday extended his hitting streak to 15 games.

This game was the quintessence of Phillies baseball and another reason for me to rue the fact that I can't see any of the games while I'm out on the West Coast. You had J-Roll and Face Utley keying a dramatic comeback in the eighth until Tom "Yugo" Gordon promptly gave up the lead the very next inning.

Luckily for the Phils, rampant expansion has appeared to have the same depleting effect on nearly every team's bullpen, and they rallied for the win behind another Rowand single and Carlos Ruiz's clutch, um, infield grounder for the winning RBI. (Ruiz is actually proving me very wrong so far, both with his offense and defense--two Marlins caught stealing.)

Friday's lineup was notable in that Rowand is now apparently batting sixth instead of seventh, due to his current hot streak. In my mind, this is a big mistake and gives me a chance to expound on what's wrong with the conventions of setting the order of a baseball lineup.

The "conventional wisdom" on the order of hitters is skewed towards instant gratification. This is odd since baseball, more than most sports, seems to reward patience and careful planning. Yet every single lineup is ordered to maximize the potential of scoring a run in the very first inning.

Why? "Playing the percentages" has always been laughable to me in a profession where a thirty percent success rate (for hitters) is seen as exceptional. I would much prefer a method employed by the best Little League coach I ever had--spread out of some of your more consistent hitters. On the H.L.S. Orioles, we always had a big bopper at the top, in the middle, and near the bottom of the lineup. We were all skeptical at first, but the stigma of batting seventh or eighth quickly wore off once we saw the results: a complete lineup where it was nearly impossible to string together more than one "easy out."

If Rowand stays in the sixth spot, the last three lineup spots look something like this:

7. Wes Helms
8. Catching platoon (Barajas and Ruiz)
9. Starting pitcher

It's good strategy to "protect" your best hitter, but it's just as smart to protect some of your weakest--especially a guy like Helms, who's a solid contact hitter if he gets to see a few good pitches. I would even advocate Rowand dropping to eighth every now and then, considering the top-to-bottom strength of the Phillies lineup, as they always seem to get in situations where the eighth spot makes the last out and the pitcher's spot has to lead off in the next inning.

Bottom line, I'm tired of situations that put a lot of pressure on the heart of the order to close a deficit because they know the "weaker" half of the lineup has even less of a chance to produce runs. Because, more often than not, what we end up with is Abraham Nunez failing at a closer's fastball to end the game. GODDAMN IT, we need some sabermatricians up in here. Think outside the box, people!

A few more significant numbers:

- Utley plunked again on Thursday against the Nationals and now up to 8 HBPs. He had 14 all of last season and now has 39 on his career.

- Rollins hits his eighth homer from the leadoff spot, tying a National League record for the month of April. The Major League record is 11, by Brady "Totally Not on Steroids" Anderson in 1996.

- The Phils have won six of their last eight to climb into a tie for third place in the NL East with the Marlins. Man, do I hate the Marlins, who have won more championships in the past decade than the Phillies have in well over a century of baseball. And I'm not alone.

- As certain sectors of the media have observed, the Phillies franchise is closing in on 10,000 losses, by far the most of any professional sports franchise. The magic number is currently 32.

I am hereby establishing an informal pool to guess the date/opponent and score of the 10,000th loss. The winner will receive a congratulatory post and a 2007 Nomar Garciaparra LA Dodgers bobblehead. Guesses can be posted as comments on any entry until May 6. Here's a schedule for reference.

My official guess: July 3, at Houston, 7-1. Good luck!