Liberal Talk Radio

When Major League Baseball play resumes on Friday, the Phillies will again have a shot at hitting a new highlight in professional sports futility — 10,000 losses, a mark no other professional sports franchise has ever met. After a snarky article in the New York Times (with the rub-it-in-your-face headline “Milestone Marks What Phillies Fans Already Knew”), the Inquirer marked the coming milestone with some local color:

Where can we possibly begin?

With the 17-81 record in their 1883 debut? With the 31-year span in which they produced a single winning season? With the 23-game losing streak in 1961? Or the fatal 10-game slide at 1964’s disastrous denouement?

How about with an owner who sold the office furniture to make payroll? With two others who were banned from baseball? With the ex-sportswriter who bought the team in 1912? Or the shoe salesman who owned it two decades later?

No, there is no simple way to explain the Phillies and their lamentable legacy of losing. It’s like asking why dogs bark. After 124 years of it, that’s just their nature.

What’s prompted this renewed interest of Phillies history is a fast-approaching milestone that will cement the club’s reputation as the most accomplished loser in American sports history.

Sometime soon, the franchise fortune forgot will become the first pro sports team to suffer its 10,000th loss, an unprecedented, nearly unfathomable accomplishment.

. . .

They’ve lost 570-some more times than the equally maligned Chicago Cubs, who are seven years older. The Braves have the second most losses, 9,677, through Thursday’s games, but they too have played seven more seasons than the Phils and aren’t likely to drop their 10,000th game until midway through the 2011 season.

There is no Bambino-like curse to blame here. The reasons the Phillies have been unparalleled losers are not supernatural. They are as plain as the P on their caps.

And yes, a website — with some fine gear to sell — was created.