I, of course, blame Boston. If it weren't for the misery of freshman year at BU, I wouldn't even be in this mess. I wasn't even much of a baseball fan back then. I had a passing interest in the game, I suppose, but probably couldn't name more than a few players, and certainly wasn't emotionally invested in any meaningful way. But then I shacked up with a sociopath in a prison-cell like room on Babcock Street. A room which, incidentally, looked out over the highway that might deliver me back to the real world, as I then liked to call the NY/NJ/PA Tri-State area. It was 1993 and I was terribly homesick. Am I a pathetic whiner? Yes. But Boston also really, really, really sucked back then. It was brutal. I hear it's improved.
And the Phillies? Well, 1993 just happened to be one of those magical seasons, where all the stars align and it feels like the universe is having a little fun in your favor. The 1993 Philadelphia Phillies were a bunch of overweight, beer-guzzling, mullet sporting, blue collar nobodies that couldn't have been more "Philly" or less likely to succeed at the game of baseball. They were colorful, lovable, and perfectly summarized by first baseman John Kruk's immortal response to a woman who dared ask how an athlete could exhibit such deplorable personal habits: "I ain't an athlete, lady. I'm a baseball player." These Phillies drank, smoked, and gambled. They also won a lot of baseball games.
My best friend at BU grew up in Philly. He was also homesick, hated the dorms and the city and everything in between. We both had long distance girlfriends (a new and novel experience then), and though I'm not from Philly proper, south Jersey is close enough, and so these lovable losers somehow came to feel like home. The Phillies, to us, stood for everything we missed and had left behind. That sounds cheesy now, but when you're seventeen, away from home for the first time, and really really unhappy, you grasp at anything. It was the Phillies and Kurt Cobain, and both ended up pretty much the same.
When the Phillies beat the heavily favored Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series to advance to the World Series against Toronto (this was the final year, I believe, before baseball re-aligned and introduced the Wild Card), I'm not sure anything in my life has matched the sheer exuberation and jubilance of the moment. I can see Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams leap for joy like it happened yesterday. With that moment, I felt a bit better, like I could stick this whole college thing out. This was unbridled, pure and irrational happiness. I can barely even explain it.
But as life-affirmingly glorious as that moment was, this is still Philadelphia Phillies baseball we're talking about. Not only did my newly beloved Phils go on to lose the World Series, they lost in the most heartbreakingly dramatic, gut-punch fashion imaginable. Joe Carter's Series-winning homerun off Wild Thing (who'd soon be run out of Philadelphia and, not too longer after that, be gone from baseball altogether) has become one of baseball's all-time signature moments. It's the homerun every kid who's every pretended to be a baseball player has dreamed of hitting, has acted out hitting in the backyard. It's the Hollywood fantasy of what baseball, and sports in general, is. Any retrospective of indelible moments will include this homerun. It's magical, fantastical, and timeless. And we were on the losing end.
This was fourteen years ago. I'm 32 now, and the Phils have never recovered. They haven't been back to the post-season since (despite the Wild Card, which makes it much easier), and each season brings a new crop of overpaid, highly-touted saviors, all of whom flame out in spectacular fashion. The Phillies lose. This is what they do. And I'm still waiting, like I need to finish the narrative that began in my tiny room on Babcock Street. I want the ending that should have happened back then. I want to move on.
The Phillies, of course, have other ideas. With one more loss, they will reach an (admittedly arbitrary) nadir of futility. They stand perched on the precipice of historic incompetance. With one more loss, the Philadelphia Phillies will have lost 10,000 games. No team, in ANY sport, has lost this many games. Of course, no team has lost 9,999 games, either, so it's not like the Phillies are breaking someone's record. 10,000 is just a big round number, a symbolic monument to 124 years of losing. Since 1883, the Philadelphia Philles, the oldest single city team in baseball, has won the World Series a total of once. Think about that. 124 years. One Championship, in 1980. That is a dizzying achievement.
The Phillies, so meaningful in my life, are a national laughingstock. Their ineptness has transcended the sporting world and become something larger. Whether or not you have any interest in baseball, even if you hate sports, 10,000 losses is a noteworthy happening. My daily life has devolved lately into a series or articles, forwarded by friends and coworkers, detailing the depths to which the Phils are about to sink. Today it was Salon:
www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/07/13/phillies/
Last week it was Sports Illustrated and NPR. This story is everywhere and unavoidable. Do I find it amusing? Yeah. But I also sort of hate it. Why can't they just be good? Why is this so difficult? Why have the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Florida Marlins, two teams created IN THE 1990s (or thereabouts), won three World Series between them? Why does it have to be this way?
Earlier today, my friend Jim sent this missive from Philadelphia:
"This morning, WMMR dumped 10,000 marbles down the Art Museum steps to celebrate the Phils 10,000th loss."
That sounds about right. Time to stop typing...
That sounds about right. Time to stop typing...
5 comments:
I watched that season as well. The '93 phillies! What a great team. Jim Kruk looked like a deranged santa claus and was always chomping an enormous wad of chewing gum. And Jim Eisenreich who had tourette's and was thus a bit twitchy, but a great pitcher nontheless. Poor Wild Thing. He really got the brunt of it.
But as a person living in a baseball town, one with a similarly bad legacy (despite recent history), I advise you to walk away! no good can come from baseball fandom.
Judi, i never would have imagined in a million years, in my wildest dreams, that i'd witness you type the words "Jim Eisenreich." wow. i am stunned. good stuff. (i think he was an outfielder, though, no?)
wish i could walk away. this is why i need NJ to get a baseball team. that's the only way out for me, i'm afraid.
yeah, mom and I used to watch the games together. Aim was away at college so she missed out. Ask Mom about it sometime. I think you're right about Eisenreich -- it's been a while!
i'm still reeling from the fact that you know who jim eisenreich is...too soon to process the fact that you and your mom actually watched games...
oh, and i've been wondering how to spell "aim" for 5 and a half years. thanks.
Our (or my) fascination with Jim Eisenreich was based on a perverse desire to see him start helplessly spouting curse words during the game.
Judi and I watched the games on the TV in my bedroom with the sound off. The play-by-play guys just loused up the game. We did our own commentary.
That team was hilarious. I loved them because they were so counter-culture in the baseball world. They got the job done, then went home to drink, smoke and get into domestics (the wife-beating kind, not the dusting and waxing kind).
We met Mitch Williams at a Surf game a few years ago. He was their manager, and stepped in to pitch now and then. Such is the stuff of minor league baseball. Greg Lusinski was also with the team at the time. The experience wasn't at all what they had hoped, and they were gone after one season. I don't know what Mitch is doing now, but Lusinski has a barbeque joint at the new stadium.
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