Reflecting on 10,000 losses

If we have said it once we’ve said it a thousand times: stick around long enough and your team will lose some games. And as one of the older clubs in the history of Major League Baseball, the Phillies have lost more games than any other team in professional sports history.

Actually 10,000 of them.

The Phillies, as everyone knows by now, lost their 10,000th game on Sunday night to the St. Louis Cardinals. In fact, the outcome was never in doubt even when the Phillies scored two runs in the ninth inning of the 10-2 loss. Even when images of that game from Dodger Stadium in August of 1990 when the Phillies rallied for nine runs in the ninth to win 12-11 were conjured, no one really thought the Cardinals were going to blow it.

Something like that would have really upset the fans that remained to see a bit of “history,” stomping and clapping with anticipation with each pitch following the second out of the ninth inning.

Nevertheless, the remarkable part regarding the Phillies and all of the losses in the fact that they have been to the World Series just twice since 1980, five times since 1883 and have won the World Series just once in 125 seasons.

That, folks, is amazing.

But a stroll through the Phillies clubhouse reveals that the players are not really hung up on any of those facts. Better yet, when rookie Kyle Kendrick was asked about winning Friday night’s game to delay the dubious milestone for another time, the 22-year old right-hander just shrugged.

Yeah, sure, he seemed to say, it was really good that I didn’t lose the game that would have been the 10,000th loss in team history. Then again, it didn’t seem like Kendrick really cared about all of the fuss. For one thing Kendrick is 4-0 in his six big league starts for the Phillies so it’s not like he contributed anything to three centuries of baseball futility in Philadelphia.

“He’s done his part,” fellow rookie Mike Zagurski mused to a couple of scribes while relaxing in front of his locker with an amused look on his face as more than a few reporters scurried about in a vain attempt to get someone, anyone to say anything about the Phillies and their 10,000 losses.

But why would they? The elder statesmen of the team are Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell who have had nothing but winning seasons since their first full seasons in 2001. Sure, there was that 80-81 year in 2002, but in every season since – save for 2003 – the Phillies have been in the playoff mix all the way to the last week of the season.

Like Burrell and Rollins, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard know nothing about playing for a losing Phillies club. Ask them about the frustration about missing the playoffs on the last few games of the season and they have a full range of experience. But being on a losing team? They haven’t been there.

That doesn’t make them too different than nearly every other player to ever pull on the Philadelphia uniform, though. Better yet, the players who actually have been to the playoffs as a member of the Phillies is as select a group as a collection of Nobel Laureates. Actually, the Phillies with playoff experience are a more select group. After all, they give out a bunch of Nobel Prizes every year and at the current rate the Phillies go to the playoffs once every 13.8 years.

That is, of course, if form holds up and they miss out again this season.

Perhaps the point is that since 1883 the Phillies have provided a much more esoteric definition of what winning and losing is. Maybe for the Phillies and their fans victories come in small packages, like that game at Dodger Stadium in 1990 where they scored nine runs in the ninth to win 12-11? Maybe the measure of a true victory is one in which the odds and trends are tipped ever-so slightly for a brief and fleeting moment in time? Aren’t those victories more exhilarating any way? You know, proving people wrong just that one time before returning to the old song and verse…

After all, by now all the followers of the Phillies ought to know that tune by heart.