The Losingest Team in Professional Sports

This week, the Philadelphia Phillies baseball will become the first professional team in any sport, any country to achieve their 10,000th loss.

How is this possible? Here are some facts:

• Since their founding as a professional team in 1883, they have experienced fewer than 50 winning seasons (a won-loss record about 50%). Do the math: In 124 years, they have had 75 LOSING seasons.
• The team won its first World Series Championship in 1980, its 98th season. (By comparison, the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, two dominant teams in the early 1900s have more celebrated streaks. The Red Sox's championship in 2004 came 86 years after their last. The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908, a 99-year streak.)
• The Phillies were the last team in baseball to integrate (add black players) in 1957, ten whole years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
• In 1960, their manager, Eddie Sawyer quit after ONE GAME, saying, "I'm 49, and I want to live to be 50."
• In 1964, they blew a ten-game lead in the last two weeks of the season, losing the chance to go to the World Series.
• In 1993, they lost the World Series to the Toronto Blue Jays on one of the most spectacular home runs in history: Joe Carter's 3-run blast in the bottom of the 9th of Game Six.

Of course, this makes it easier for me to stomach the last-place performance of my own Cincinnati Reds this year.