I think Cleveland has surpassed Philadelphia as the losingest (is this a word, spellchecker says no) sports city in the country. Nothing, however, beats my sports memories of growing up in Philadelphia in the late sixties and early seventies. At around that time, Philadelphia had the worst professional sports teams ever.
After Wilt Chamberlain left the ‘76ers, slept with a couple thousand more women and appeared in the second Conan movie, the Sixers set the single season record for the least amount of wins with 9. According to Wikipedia, the Providence Steamrollers lost 6 back in the forties, but honestly I never even heard of that team before I read this. Wikipedia is somewhat haphazard with the facts, but even so, whenever a team challenges this unfortunate record, the Sixers are mentioned, not the Steamrollers.
In the early seventies the Eagles had three quarterbacks, John Reaves, Pete Liske and Rick Arrington, who collectively did not add up to one third rate quarterback. John Reaves was notable for something called the “Florida Flop”. (Look it up. No team could get away with something like that today. Only in the SEC.) The Eagles most popular player was Tim Rossovich, who did stuff like set himself on fire, jump naked out of birthday cakes and run motorcycles off of piers. Fun guy. He made the Pro Bowl once and later became an actor. Nuff said. Even bringing in hired gun/quarterback Roman Gabrial (who had seen better days with the Rams) couldn’t quite turn the Eagles around.
Which brings me to the Phillies. Every baseball fan is aware of the famous flop in 1964. They were in first place, up 6/12 games with 12 to play. They proceeded to lose 10 straight and ended up in second place (This record for futility was later surpassed by the Mets. Heh!). What makes this particularly devastating is that the Phillies had never won the World Series and up until that point had only played in the Fall Classic twice. At least the Sixers and Eagles won championships in the 1960’s. The Phillies, nada.
The Phillies best player Richie (sorry, Dick) Allen was difficult. He was reviled by the fans (not much of stretch there). He would draw cryptic messages in the dirt around first base. He injured his hand moving a boat. He got into fist fights in the clubhouse and was eventually traded. After that it was a steep decline downhill. When Roger Freed is your most feared power hitter, something is wrong. It wasn’t until Steve Carlton was traded to the Phillies (Curt Flood refused to be traded to the Phillies, whined to the United States Supreme Court and started this free agent thingy) that they started to bounce back. In Carlton’s first season, he won like 75% percent of the games (sorry 46%, I’m getting punchy).
Anyway, things did eventually turn around for Philadelphia. So take heart Cleveland and until you start winning some championships, you can at least root against Lebron James.
Maybe the Phillies needed Bo Belinsky "Mr. Party Guy" himself in 1964.
Jim Bunning is thinking, "Really, Mamie Van Doren?"
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