SportsFan Magazine -- Celebrating the Life and Times of America's Sports Fans

Writing on Saturdays is abnormal for me, but my computer is going to be packed away later this day and so I have to write now or forever hold my peace. I don't know when next I shall have access to the Internet for an uninterrupted time, so let me get some stuff out of the way now that I have been holding in anticipation of a truly historic event.

It shan't be long until the Philadelphia Phillies lose their 10,000th game. Odds are that I'll be back on the air before that happens, but I don't want to take any chances. The Phillies are a franchise with a history of bad stuff. It really isn't all that surprising that they will be the first team to achieve the ignominy of 10,000 losses. Consider:

The Phillies lost the first game they ever played in 1883. One of the pitchers on that squad, John Coleman, lost 48 games in that first season for the franchise. It was an omen...

In 1930, the Phillies could boast of eight position players who hit .300 or better for the season. Nonetheless, the team finished last because the cumulative team ERA was 6.71 - a record for futility that stands to this day.

In 1961, an obnoxiously miserable Phillies squad managed to lose 23 consecutive games. I'm confident that a team who managed to make the College World Series could play against major league competition and find a way to win one game in a 23 game stretch.

In the late 30s/early40s, the Phillies had a pitcher on the staff named Hugh Mulcahy. He was lovingly known to the fans as "Losing Pitcher Mulcahy" because that was the notation in the box scores in the paper more often than not. From 1937 - 1940, "Losing Pitcher" managed to lose 76 games; that's an average of 19 per year.

In 1943, the Phillies' owner, William Cox, was banned from baseball for life because he bet on baseball. If what he did was what Pete Rose alleges he did - namely bet on his team to win - then Cox was a supreme loser. The Phils lost 100 or more games from 1938 - 1942 and then they lost "only" 90 games in 1943. If Cox only bet on his team to win, he deserved to go bankrupt.

But the worst part of the curse of the Phillies' franchise is that they have unfailingly managed to be on the wrong side of the baseball DNA - particularly when it came to pitchers. Remember, this is the team that traded away Hall of Fame pitchers Grover Cleveland Alexander and Ferguson Jenkins. What they got back in trades for those guys was not worth much at all. In addition, the Phillies' scouts and front office types have always seemed to find a way to acquire the "wrong" brother.

The Phillies had Mike Maddux not Greg Maddux.

The Phillies had Tim Worrell not Todd Worrell.

The Phillies had Ken Brett not George Brett.

The Phillies had Mark Leiter not Al Leiter.

But the greatest ignominy in the "wrong brother" scenario had to be the way they dipped into the DiMaggio gene pool. Joe DiMaggio was among the 50 best players ever; Dom DiMaggio played eleven years in the major leagues and hit .298 for his career in addition to being a superb defensive center fielder. The Phillies signed Vince DiMaggio at the end of his career. Probably the only thing the Phillies can feel good about regarding Vince DiMaggio is that he hit .257 in his only year with the team and that is 8 points higher than his career average.

Once MLB went to an amateur draft, you might think that the Phillies would have had a better shot at top talent. Well, they did have a shot at top talent but their scouts seem not to have been able to recognize it when it stared them in the face. The Phillies once drafted a pitcher named Marvin Freeman whose physique was such that the name Starvin' Marvin was an obvious nickname. That physique did not portend great durability and Freeman's career bore that out. Freeman pitched parts of ten seasons in the major leagues but only worked more than 100 innings twice in his career; in three and a half years with the Phillies, he threw a total of 103 innings. In his best year with Colorado, Freeman started 18 games, pitched a total of 112 2/3 innings and had a 10-2 record. That was one pretty good season in a ten year career; HOW-EVAH, the player selected immediately after Marvin Freeman was Al Leiter.

In another draft, the Phillies took a high school phenom Freddy "Action" Jackson who reportedly could outrun a deer. Too bad the Phillies were not fielding a track team because Jackson never made it past AAA ball where he struggled mightily. The player taken immediately after Jackson is someone you may have heard of - Frank "the Big Hurt" Thomas.

It takes blue-chip ineptitude on the field and off the field to lose 10,000 times in any sporting endeavor and when it comes to ineptitude, the Phillies have no equals. Back in the 1920s, there was a sign on their outfield wall for Lifebuoy soap (one of the first deodorant soaps) and the sign said that the Phillies used Lifebuoy. Their fans would always remark that it didn't matter because the team still stunk.

Now, with that backdrop of baseball futility, here is a Quick Quiz:

In 250 words or less, will the Tampa Bay Devil Rays ever achieve mediocrity? If so, how? If not, why not?

Finally, here's an item from Bob Ryan's blog at boston.com regarding Mike Timlin, whom the Phillies had for a brief time:

"It's no secret the Fenway faithful want no more of Mike Timlin. This was perhaps best summed up early Tuesday morning by a woman of my acquaintance who said, 'You know how they say stress causes weight gain? Well, my stress is when Mike Timlin comes into the game. That's when I head to the refrigerator."

But don't get me wrong, I love sports.........


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