Historically Bad

Moments ago, my beloved Phillies suffered their 10,000 defeat. They are the losingist franchise in sports history, and of course the first to reach such a sad stratosphere of suckage. The Braves are 2nd in the history of the world, and they're over 300 "behind." It's not that cool, I've gotta say.

Congratulations to Charlie Manual for subbing like mad to get 17 Phillies some game time for their historic day. That's nice. Also nice is that reigning NL MVP Ryan Howard made the final out. And equally unjust is that THIS team gets saddled with the stigma. They're not world-beaters at this point, but they're 46-45. That's over .500. It's not all that impressive, but it's certainly not historically bad. It's average! But so it goes.

Really, the worst years of the franchise weren't even in my lifetime (although the late 80's -- early 90's sure did have their down-side). It's the 30's and 40's that REALLY put them behind the curve. At least I wasn't alive then -- not only would the news each morning have been bad, but it would have been delivered by the pony express and about a week behind. And I thought it was bad when I had to wait for the morning paper for a final as a kid!

10,000. That's just a big, big number. There are 162 games in a year, so it's like losing EVERY game for over 61 straight years. It's like losing 100 games a year for 100 straight years. It's like losing EVERY SINGLE DAY for nearly as long as I've been alive. That's just bad, kids.

In around 24 hours I'll bring their beautiful red background back, but for now, it's time to mourn. Time to wallow. Time to bask in the bitter irony of finally winning . . . for losing.