I guess I was fortunate. I graduated High School in a suburb of Philly in 1980.
I remember the night they won. They were pretty damned good in the late 1970’s leading up to it too. Not being a huge sports fan, I had no idea that they were at that time rising above DECADES of utter ignominy.
Mike Schmidt was an utter prick to people in public. Carlton was quiet and weird the way lots of truly gifted pitchers are. Greg Luzinski, The Bull, was a nice fellow and really did point to the upper left decks to The Bull Ring before slamming another homer right to it.
The Phils had a travelling basketball team in the off-season and they’d play fundraiser games around town. They played at my Jr. High School once as a fundraiser. That was…hmm…1976.
The Reds were the Red Stockings until 1889. So they were not one name, even discounting the issue of the 50’s.
But, the Phillies have not always been the Phillies. They were the Quakers from 1883 to 1889. They also fail to qualify as a one city, one name team. :eek:
After consulting with my handy copy of The Sporting News Complete Baseball Record Book, it turns out that during the 54 seasons the Philadelphia A’s and the Philadelphia Phillies co-existed in the same city, the A’s usually outdrew the Phillies and often by a wide margin. Of course, the fact the Athletics fielded some great teams in between Connie Mack’s periodic attacks of parsimony while the Phillies were consistently bad probably had a lot to do with this but this was generally true even when both teams were mediocre or lousy. The truth was until about 1950, the Phillies were considered the “other” baseball team in Philadelphia and should’ve logically been the one to move (much like the Browns in St. Louis) were it not for the strange reversal of the franchises’ fortunes that year when the Phillies “Whiz Kids” edged the Dodgers for the NL pennant. Even though that team was soundly defeated by the Yankees in the World Series and the franchise quickly reverted back to its tradition of mediocre-to-crappy baseball, the Phillies remained dominant over the moribund A’s who quietly departed the City of Brotherly Love for Kansas City after the 1954 season.
One wonders if the Dodgers had held on and won the NL pennant in 1950 whether the Phillies would’ve the team to move west and the A’s would still be in Philadelphia today.
No matter how far back from first the Phil’s get, the blindly loyal fans make remarks along these line. If the Phil’s are 10 games out in August, the fans will actually say without rolling their eyes: “If they can just get on a 10-game winning streak and >insert Mets or Braves here< can just play .500 ball, we’ll be right back in it.”
There are about 1,500 loyal Phillies fans. The rest of us ain’t like the Cub or Red Sox fans. There are a millionn Cub or Sox fans, but only about 1,500 hard core Phillies fans that are comparable.
The Cubs are like the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox, in that their reputation as losers is based exclusively on a failure to win a World Championship, not on year-in and year-out losing records. The Cubs have been competitive through most of their history, save for the period between 1947 and 1966, when they really did suck.
I live in Center City, a block away from the Kimmel Center. But, I grew up in Cherry Hill. To be honest though, the Phills right now are less disappointing than the Flyers were last season. I bought a 10-game package and saw exactly 1 win.
Can’t anyone count? The Royals/Kings are five cities:
Rochester
Cincinnati
Kansas City
Omaha
Sacramento
“Tri-Cities” count as one, since it’s only named once. “Omaha” was part of the Kings name for several years.
The only other candidate for five is the Houston Mavericks/Carolina Cougars/Spirits of St. Louis of the ABA, since they had three home locations in Carolina.
This is exactly right. I’d only add that there is also the mystique of squandering championship chances in memorable/fantastic ways: The Lou Brock trade, the black cat in 1969, Durham’s wet glove in '84, the Bartman game…
But I wonder if even this is legitimate; doesn’t just about every team that comes close but loses have a key moment they can point to as the legendary “reason”? Yes, the ball dribbling thru Buckner’s legs in '86 was an unusual play, but I don’t think it’s fair to call it the key reason for the Sox choke (for one thing, there was still a game 7 to play), and even if the Sox had lost in some other, more routine way, I’m sure some other “key” moment in the series would get the focus…
