Hey you bastards! I’m still here!!
--Papillon
The above quotation is from the 1973 film, Papillon, starring Steve McQueen as the title character, a felon who continuously escapes from prison only to be re-captured every time he thinks he is completely free. He utters the above lines upon escaping from Devil’s Island as he floats in an inner tube in the middle of the ocean right before the credits start to roll.
Movie watchers who have seen this film (I highly recommend it by the way as McQueen plays his usual endearing tough guy while Dustin Hoffman plays his nervous foil) can identify with Papillon’s perseverance. His desire to escape is inspiring as he survives experiences of mental and physical anguish, including two stints of solitary confinement of two and five years, and still continues to forge ahead with his plans of escaping to freedom.This type of perseverance is what I see in Phillies fans. The ball finally dropped on the ten-thousandth loss last week, and yet, we still come back for more. Plumpy can try to characterize this event as our annual tears event, but alas, the real waterworks are reserved for the yearly wild car collapse.
In my eyes, this “milestone” is a mere drop of water in the river of defeat. Losing has been, and obviously still is, an unfortunate, yet defining attribute of the Phillies franchise. It can be attributed to a lack of talent (especially in the pitching department more so in the past few years), injuries (Gregg Jeffries, Danny Tartabull, Andy Ashby to name a few) and terrible management (both in the dugout—i.e. Doc Prothro and Jimmie Wilson, and in the front office—Ed Wade still haunts the present team with his no-trade claise on Pat Burrell and his selection of Uncle Charlie over Jim Leyland AND giving away draft picks for over the hill veterans such as Jon Lieber, thus setting our farm system back several years, but that’s a story for another time). More often than not, it is a combination of the three aforementioned items. For a franchise that has existed since 1883, the Phillies have managed only 9 playoff appearance, 5 pennants, and a whopping one World Series championship.
What should come as no surprise, then, is that with so few post-season appearances, there have been seasons where not only have they lost, but they were essentially the embarrassment of the league. They not only have had 14 seasons of 100+ losses, BUT 22 90+ loss seasons (note: the 90 loss seasons are comprised of seasons where they lost between 90 and 99 games, but not 100 games). Then there is the flip side of 2 seasons of 100+ wins and 9 seasons of 90+ wins, the last one which was in the glorious year of 1993. I admit that winning 100 games or more is hard on a consistent basis, but the fact that there are so many more 100 loss seasons is down right disgusting. In fact, the years from 1936-1941 represent a ridiculous stretch of stain that does the very word proud.
These stats are clearly laughable, but it is also indicative that you don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to understand that with such a high rate of losing over the course of their existence, the Fightin’s would be the first to reach this nice high, round number. It was mentioned at the end of last season and the beginning of this one, and much of the media took notice of it as the Phils inched ever closer to that “magical” number. I have to attribute the coverage of it to the fact that in these dog days of summer, there are absolutely no stories regarding any other sport. And with baseball still stuck in mid-season gear, the media is grasping at straws.
Honestly, I could care less about this historic first. I didn’t have time to watch the game as I was recovering from a long weekend of Stain that was Arts Fest and had to be home in time to be ready to tackle the work week on Monday. If this 10,000th loss had occurred at a more significant time, I admit then that it would have been the proverbial salt on the wound or the double-edged sword. In an imaginary, disturbing dimension of the universe, I could certainly see the Fightin’s “milestone” loss coming on the day that if they had won the final game of the regular season and would have catapulted themselves into the playoffs, then yes, pick your cliché for that moment and I will confess I’d be a bit more hurt (While we’re on the topic of disturbing dimensions, it would be interesting to see all of the top worst moment from each Philly sports organization occur in the same day and see if any fans would throw themselves off the new SEPTA building…again, a topic for another time). I must say, however, I, and the rest of the Philly faithful, have experienced more devastating losses (SQ and D. Page are sure to remember my reaction to the Eagles third NFC championship loss in 2004).
And yet, with every such loss like that, fans begin to earn their stripes and build up thick skin, and only let the big losses get to them. Moreover, they begin to lie in wait and learn to relish in the sweet, sweet taste of victory. And we want that victory, that euphoria so much so that it pushes the fans to their rabid breaking point of booing every single, tiny mistake that any one of our teams makes in the same manner an overbearing parent pushes his child to be the best. Obviously, this is not the best manner to raise a child or root, root, root for the home team. We have run numerous players out of town because they have never measured up to our expectations (Scott Rolen), or the organization, usually the Phillies, cannot hold on to players (again, Scott Rolen) because losing was way too prevalent. Some athletes, though, have embraced this M.O. of the fan base (Chase Utley, Brian Dawkins), and realize we just hunger for one thing from one of our sports teams: a championship.
Which brings me to the number that is more important than 10,000: 24—as in 24 years since one of our four major sports teams lifted any sort of championship hardware in glorious victory; 24 years since a championship parade marched down Broad Street; 24 years since a fan base has stuck with its teams, but have yet to be rewarded for their undying and supremely loyal support. You can call us rowdy, classless, idiotic, but we want it just as much as any other fan because it hasn’t happened in so long. I dare anyone out there to live in a city where there are four major sports teams as a passionate sports fan and not have any championships to show for it (I believe Minnesota is behind us by 3 years or so). Trust me: you too would go crazy like the die-hard fans here in the City of Brotherly Love.
But we're still here, you bastards! And we're not gonna be satisfied until we see one of our teams marching some hardware down Broad Street. Trust me...it will be a sight to behold.
P.S. As my birthday is tomorrow, I would like to share with you a story that shows some good can come from a Phillies loss. When the Phils were in the World Series against the Orioles back in 1983, they dropped Game 2 and every game thereafter. But on the night of Game 2, October 12, my Dad told me that Phils pitcher Charles Hudson had such a shaky game that, well, he played his own version of baseball with my Mom that night. Thus, I was conceived (I shit you not) unto this world because of Phillies loss (ironically this loss does not count in the 10,000+ as it was a post-season game) and stand as living and stainy-oh-so-stainy proof that there is a silver lining in the storm cloud.
