About Philadelphia Phillies
The franchise has been established in 1883 and was part of the National League. It is the longest standing same-named, same-city team in the history of all American professional sports.
Unfortunately the continuity doesn’t mean success as far as Philadelphia Phillies are concerned. In fact the franchise has had many years of bad luck, poor playing and general management. It holds the record for the most amount of losses than any other American professional sports team.
The Phillies had gone for record 92 consecutive years without winning a championship (surpassed in 2006 by the Cubs) but not all is lost.
The franchise first NL Pennant came in 1915 and it saw the Phillies against the Red Sox in the World Series where the Sox came out victorious.
Next trip to the World Series would happen 35 years later when in 1950 after winning their second NL Pennant the Phillies faced the Yankees who swept them in short four game series.
Another 30 years went by and the Phillies won their third NL Pennant and their first World Series title by winning against the Royals. The times have become kinder to the franchise as since then it added four more NL Pennants for a total of seven and a second World Series title, won against the Tampa Bay in 2008. The Phillies made to the World Series last in 2009 losing to the Yankees.
The franchise is a member of East Division and has had won 11 divisional titles to date making it second most after the Atlanta Braves with 12. Five of their titles came to Phillies in the last nine years, perhaps making it up for all those years without success. Their colours are red, white and blue and thief mascot is a large, green, bi- pedal creature that goes by the name of Philie Phanatic.
While the franchise lacked team’s success it was definitely making up in individual successes as the team had 29 Home Run Champions titles with Mike Schmidt claiming that title 8 times between 1974 and 1986.
Schmidt was one of the most notable players of the team having been also named the MVP of the league three times, contributing nearly half of the franchise’s 7 MVP awards.
Steve Carlton made his mark too with four out of seven CY Young awards and being the leagues Strikeout champion five times out of 18 titles claimed by the Phillies players.
It wasn’t until 1976 when the team recorded their first 100 win season and in total the team has three such seasons with 2011’s being the best with 102-60 record. On the other side the Phillies had thirteen 100 loss seasons but the last one occurred all the way back in 1961.
The Philadelphia Phillies will definitely try to come back to its recent winning ways as 63-99 record from 2015 season isn’t what the team is looking for.
