(Richard Mackson/USA Today)
One of the few benefits for a baseball organization with a long history of failure that has been interrupted only occasionally by brief fits of competence is that it is very difficult to set team records for futility.
God bless the Phillies, though. They're taking a run at it.
Since the team began playing, a stretch of a mere 133 years, the Phils have won two lonely championships and had only 58 winning seasons. That's a lot of losing. They lost at least 100 games 14 times, including 1941, when they set the franchise mark of 111 losses with a team that had Cy Blanton and Si Johnson in the starting rotation and nothing but sighs coming from the stands.