PHILADELPHIA -- Everybody knows a guy like the Philadelphia Phillies.
He sits in the back of the classroom, and you always forget to invite him to your birthday party.
He works down the hall tirelessly and quietly day after day, then shows up as a line of type in a company memo and your mouth drops open. "John? He's been here for 25 years?"
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That guy?
These guys have been playing major league baseball since the "modern era" began in 1900.
In that time, they've won one -- one! -- World Series.
And it's difficult to say which is worse, the fact that they've won only one in more than 100 years of trying, or the fact that, outside of Philadelphia, you mention that to most folks and they're stunned.
Really? One?
Well, yes. And of the 103 World Series that have been played so far, the Phillies -- a franchise since the 1880s -- have participated in ... only five of them?
As the National League Championship Series begins here at 8:37 p.m. ET on Thursday night, the Phillies again will take a swipe at the brass ring. In a classic duel with old foe Los Angeles, they again will attempt to give Larry Bowa, Mike Schmidt and the rest of the 1980 Fightin' Phils company on history's mantel.
They again will attempt to raise the national profile of an organization that, somehow, mostly has managed to slip through the cracks throughout the decades.
"The law of averages, you'd think, would catch up and you'd win," says Mitch Williams, the closer known as "Wild Thing" on the last Phillies team to play in a World Series, in 1993, and now a popular broadcaster for the club. "It hasn't worked out that way.
"Ask the Cubs. They haven't had one since 1908. I think that's why it's fallen under the radar for so long. (The streak) hasn't been the worst, by a long ways."
The New York Yankees have spent decades flexing their muscles and winning. Boston and the Chicago Cubs built huge national followings based partly on the fact that they kept -- keep, in the Cubs' case -- breaking everyone's heart. Hell, even the Cleveland Indians, who haven't won a World Series since 1948, have their own curse, The Curse of Rocky Colavito.
The Phillies? They made national news briefly this summer when they became the first professional sports franchise to lose its 10,000th game.
Then everyone went back to following the Cubs' 100-year drought and talking about the new Batman movie.
Even many of the Phillies themselves will admit that, yeah, it's true, the club's national profile ranks somewhere down there between that of Larry King's first wife and wheat germ.
What did second baseman Chase Utley know of Phillies history before he became their first-round pick in 2000?
"Not a lot," Utley said.
And what, exactly, is "not a lot"?
"Uh, zero?" Utley said. "I grew up in Southern California. I wasn't really familiar with the East Coast."
How about you, Greg Dobbs?
"I had absolutely no idea," said the Phillies' pinch-hitter extraordinaire. "I was an American League guy. I really didn't. Not one iota. I mean, I knew about Steve Carlton. I knew Jack Schmidt. I mean, Michael Jack Schmidt. I knew (Bob) Boone.
"But playing on the West Coast in Seattle, I had no clue what I was walking into."
Out of a century of baseball mediocrity (except those years between 1933-48, when the Phillies set a record equaled this year by the Pittsburgh Pirates for compiling 16 consecutive losing seasons), the Phillies' Brief History of the World Series reads thusly:
There was the 1915 Fall Classic, when the Boston Red Sox, with a young pinch-hitter named Babe Ruth, beat them in five games.
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| The Phils' drought is so under the radar that even Chase Utley had no clue about his team's history. (US Presswire) |
There was 1983, when Baltimore flicked them aside in five games.
There was that time in 1993. Toronto knocked them off in a wild series (the Blue Jays won Game 4 15-14), and that was that.
Then there was 1980 when ... ding, ding, ding! The Phillies won, defeating the Kansas City Royals in six games. No other team in baseball history waited so long for its first World Series title.
This is the franchise that brought back manager Eddie Sawyer in 1958 -- eight years after he guided the Phils to the 1950 World Series -- in a desperate attempt to stave off what would become a four-year streak of last-place finishes. Sawyer could see it coming, quitting only one game into the 1960 season and delivering his classic line: "I'm 49 years old, and I want to live to be 50."
This is the franchise that constructed the worst collapse in baseball history, under Gene Mauch in 1964, at least until last year's New York Mets surpassed them.
The Florida Marlins, whose born-on date was 1993, have won twice as many World Series as the century-old Phillies (of course, the Phillies do lead the Marlins in former-pitchers-turned-U.S. Senators, 1-0, with Jim Bunning).
"You've got to be at the right place at the right time, I guess," Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins sighs. "They had veteran guys in '97. And a former Phillie behind the plate."
Darren Daulton helped catch the '93 Phillies into the World Series, but he earned his ring with the '97 Marlins.
"I wasn't here for a lot of those years," says Rollins, the 2007 NL MVP. "This is my eighth year, and my first time (in the NLCS).
"I don't know a lot of Philadelphia's history because I grew up on the West Coast (see, there we go again). I can tell you about the A's. I can tell you about the team right now.
"We're trying to build a legacy in this building. The Vet was the '80s. I can tell you that was Schmidt and Bowa and The Bull (Greg Luzinski) and Tug (McGraw, the late, great closer)."
Rollins was very eloquent over the weekend after the Phillies eliminated Milwaukee to clinch their first NLCS appearance since '93 in discussing how this current team is talented enough and aware enough to add to the surprisingly small legacy.
Back when Veterans' Stadium closed in 2003, Rollins told Bowa, "This is the house you helped build. The one across the street is the one that we build."
Williams, for one, applauds Rollins' determination.
"I think it's great," he says. "I think he's exactly right. The Vet is gone. Some good teams played in that stadium. This is a new era. This club will define it, the core of this club: Jimmy, Pat Burrell, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard. They're the ones who are going to make this place what it is.
"Win the World Series and it's going to be their house."
The '93 club that fell just short remains wildly popular. Not surprising when the cast of characters is as colorful and diverse as Williams, Daulton, Lenny Dykstra, Curt Schilling, Milt Thompson, John Kruk and Dave Hollins.
But it is the '80 team, featuring Bowa, Schmidt, Luzinski, Boone, Carlton, McGraw, Pete Rose, Bake McBride, Manny Trillo and others that remains set apart from every one of the other 100-plus Phillies clubs over the years. After dropping the NLCS to the Dodgers in 1977 and 1978, they finally got it right two years later.
"I'm very proud, and our team is very proud," says Dallas Green, manager of that '80 Phillies world championship club and currently a senior adviser to Phillies general manager Pat Gillick. "But we're also disappointed.
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"I've lived in Philadelphia all of my life, and it hurts to see us struggle year after year. This club is as close to anybody, in my opinion, to winning.
"The '93 team came out of nowhere. They were a great bunch, but they couldn't repeat. This team repeated (this is their second consecutive postseason) and now, hopefully, we'll go to the next level."
Says Bowa: "I guess it was so special because we had come close all those years. We got in the playoffs. And something always happened. And finally getting over the hump.
"In fact, before the season started, it was more or less told to us that this was the last time they were going to keep us together if we didn't win this thing. So we knew going in that it probably was the last hurrah because we came so close and couldn't get over the hump."
With a classic old nemesis in town, the quiet guy from the office is out from behind his desk, actually threatening to be noticed.
Against baseball's hottest team (the Dodgers have won 22 of their past 30 games), the Phillies again are positioned to attempt to become the first Philadelphia baseball team since 1980 to get over that hump.
"We're not even close to where we want to be," Rollins says. "Hopefully, we end up with a parade down Broad Street."
