North Star Writers Group

That’s what gets me, personally. My beloved city’s fantastic new achievement has surprisingly little to do with the fact that they’ve been around for 124 years. No, their recent victory in the race to 10,000 was won – quite comfortably, I might add – by being unmistakably a cut below the competition.

The Phillies have achieved an amazing winning percentage of .468 in their remarkable history. Put in terms of 162-game seasons, they have averaged an unbelievable 10 games below the .500 mark. When you think about it, that is an astounding statistic. Ten games below .500 means there is plenty of work to be done in the off-season. Ten games below is not at all mediocre. It is nearly impossible to choose an appropriate adjective for such an unfathomably below-average statistic. It is one thing to be known as a bad franchise for a few years in a row, or even a few decades, but to be statistically bad so consistently over such an impressive period of time – well, like I said, I’m not sure there is an appropriate word for it. All I can come up with is retarded. You know, slow.

If the Phillies were to play seven-and-a-half seasons of undefeated baseball, they would be back at .500. It is a different level of incompetence.

We all enjoyed the Red Sox story – their 86-year championship drought. But the Phillies can beat that. They’ve won once in 124 years.

The Phillies’ amazing defiance of all mathematical probability is enough to make Pythagoras, Euclid and Isaac Newton roll over in their graves. There truly is an argument to be made that the math textbooks our children are studying are not scientifically sound. And it’s all because of the Phillies.

But for me, if there is one thing more outstanding, more exceptional, even more noteworthy than the Phillies’ uncanny ineptness, it is the resilience, dedication and quite frankly, the naiveté of the wonderful Philadelphia fans. We should have given up by now. As Samwise Gamgee put it in The Two Towers, “By all rights, we shouldn’t even be here.” For instance, if we lived in Utopia, in a more perfect sports world, the best and the worst teams wouldn’t exist. The players and managers of this horrifically bad team would all be gardening. They’d be out doing something well. But Philadelphia baseball fans can thank their lucky, capitalistic stars that they still have team.

Even if we don’t appear grateful, we are. We are addicted to our team. It’s like a bad relationship. Phillies fans are constantly getting cheated on, left alone every night of the week, deserted, pushed around, under-appreciated and let down. But we keep coming back.

It’s not really worth asking why. This is just the way it is.

In honor of the losingest franchise in sports, let us all celebrate each and every one of our precious 10,000 losses. Let us all lift our glasses and toast to the sultans of suck, the kings of collapsing, the lords of losses, the champions of choking, the icons of incompetence, the heroes of horribleness, the bosses of bad, the dictators of desperation, the fathers of futility – and to another 124 years of losing and one more precious World Series Championship.

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This is Column # NS064. Request permission to publish here.