The horror that comes with being a Phillies fan is known not just to members of my generation, but to my father’s, grandfather’s, great-granfathers, and great-great grandfather’s.\u00a0 The franchise had a World Series drought that lasted 97 years- from 1887 to 1980.\u00a0 They have lost more games than any professional team in any sport, and will makr a milestone by losing their 10,000th game this coming season.\u00a0 Think about that: in a sport with a 162-game season, to lose 100 games in a year is to stink miserably.\u00a0 Imagine AVERAGING that level of futility for a HUNDRED DIFFERENT SEASONS!!! This team is truly disgraceful.<\/p>\n
During that sad stretch the most notable heartbreak took place in 1964.\u00a0 Known as “The Phold,” the Phillies blew a 6.5 game lead with just 12 games remaining.\u00a0 Their 10-game losing streak is one of the most memorable collapses in sports history.<\/p>\n
After winning the World Series in 1980 (oddly enough, the year I was born), the team has produced nothing for me but pain, heartache, and embarrassment.\u00a0 An amazing run to the World Series in 1993 ended horribly with Joe Carter’s game-winning, 3-run homer in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 6.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In each of the last five seasons, the team has been alive for a playoff berth until the final week of the season but has not played a single playoff game since 1993, despite a new stadium and aggressive spending on free agents.<\/p>\n
If I weren’t so jaded, I’d write a\u00a0paragraph about our young superstar Ryan Howard, who won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award this season.\u00a0 I’d speculate about a bright future with him as our leader.<\/p>\n
But I know better than to do that.\u00a0 The more I get my hopes up, the more it hurts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The horror that comes with being a Phillies fan is known not just to members of my generation, but to my father’s, grandfather’s, great-granfathers, and great-great grandfather’s.\u00a0 The franchise had a World Series drought that lasted 97 years- from 1887 to 1980.\u00a0 They have lost more games than any professional team in any sport, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":753,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/philadelphiacurse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}