Kill the Phillies phanatic

Really, something must be done to appease the baseball gods before the Phillies lose their 10,000th game.

PHILADELPHIA, June 11 — During the 1920s and ’30s, when the Phillies inhabited a park called the Baker Bowl, the fence in right field was adorned by a giant advertisement for soap that read: “The Phillies Use Lifebuoy.”

This only encouraged fans to add a sour retort: “And they still stink.”

In fact, no team has ever stunk so often as the Phillies, who, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, have lost more games than any professional franchise in any sport. The Phillies are 14 losses from a particular threshold of ignominy — the 10,000th defeat for a club that has won one lonely World Series title (in 1980) during its 125 years of often dreadful existence.

“I didn’t know this until a week ago,” Manager Charlie Manuel said before the Phillies defeated the White Sox, 3-0, on Monday. “It means they’ve had a team here a long time. I don’t think we need to celebrate it, though.”

Defeat has been as spectacular and excruciating as it has been regular. On May 1, 1883, the team lost its inaugural game; by the end of that miserable season, a pitcher named John Coleman had lost 48 times. From 1938 through 1942, the Phillies lost at least 103 games each year.

The franchise has set awful records for futility — with a collective earned run average of 6.71 in 1930 and 23 consecutive defeats in 1961. And, of course, 1964 brought one of baseball’s most infamous collapses, when the Phillies held a 6 ½-game lead in the National League with 12 games to play and blew the pennant after losing 10 in a row.

No wonder Atrios is so cranky.

Here, not only the Phillies fail. Sometimes, the entertainment tanks, too. On April 17, 1972, a hang-gliding daredevil named Kiteman was hired to ski down a ramp at Veterans Stadium and soar to home plate, where he would deliver the first ball of the home season. First, Kiteman panicked and froze. Then he caught a gust of unfortunate wind, clipped rows of seats, crashed into the railing of the upper deck and tossed the ball into the Phillies’ bullpen — about 400 feet from its intended destination.

“I was just relieved that he was alive,” Bill Giles, the Phillies’ chairman, wrote in his autobiography, “Pouring Six Beers at a Time.” “Generally speaking, a dead body is not a good omen for the start of a baseball season.”