Baseball Team is the Very Best at Being Bad
Team's next loss will be their 10,000th -- a first for any sports franchise.
July 12, 2007— -- Philadelphia Phillies fans are counting down to an eagerly awaited, unprecedented benchmark. Their baseball team is just one game away from achieving a record that no other team in professional sports has ever reached.
T-shirts have been made, signs have been printed and now all the Phillies "Phans" can do is sit and wait to make their mark on sports history. If they get that 10,000th ... loss.
Americans are obsessed with sports and arguably more so with the statistic of sport than the game itself, and baseball, America's pastime, is the most saturated with numbers.
Everything from necessary statistics (how many times a player scores a run) to excessive statistics (the number of times a player has been hit by a pitch) has been carefully calculated. So it's not surprising that baseball fans across the country are well aware of the proximity of the 10,000 mark. But why are Phillies fans so eager to celebrate a less than flattering milestone?
Unwavering support of the Phillies has something to do with Philadelphia pride said Robert Ruck, a professor of sports history at the University of Pittsburgh.
"What I love about the Philadelphia story is there's this gritty persistence in sport," Ruck told ABC News. "I come to see sport as a story that not only people but sometimes cities use to tell about who they are."
And Phillies fans know who they are. On a busy Tuesday night at Cavanaugh's Restaurant and Sports Bar, fans were eager to talk about their team, and despite the fact that the Phillies weren't even playing that night, shouts of "Go Phillies" still filled the room.
"When they're doing bad, I still watch them," said Kris Phillips, a lifelong Philadelphian and Phillies fan. "I still go to the games, because it's a long season and everything's going to be bad sometimes."
Phillips' attitude is representative of most Phillies fans who support their team through both thick and thin.
"There are certainly some passionate and committed fans in Philadelphia," said Ruck.
