The road to 10,000

The Philadelphia Phillies are on the verge of a record.

PHILADELPHIA - The only number that's important to the Phillies is the length of their winning streak. Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard and Aaron Rowand homered, Pat Burrell added four RBIs and Philadelphia avoided its 10,000th loss again by beating the St. Louis Cardinals 10-4 on Saturday.

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The six-run cushion was enough for Hamels. Ryan Madson and Antonio Alfonseca finished up and delayed Philadelphia's inevitable 10,000th loss for at least one more game. If they win the series finale, the Phillies could reach the mark on their seven-game West Coast trip.

Philadelphia would be the first professional sports team to lose 10,000 games.

If not for the American League not starting up till 1901, I wouldn't be surprised if the Phillies former Shibe Park co-tenant The Philadelphia A's would be far off from 10,000 losses either. The A's were almost as dismal as the Phillies for many years.(From 1934 to 1967 the team only had a couple of winning seasons.)

Jim at Bright and Early pointed out the Phillies date with infamous baseball history. In the process, I learned the baseball franchise doesn't even know its own history.

No one could have realized it at the time, but when the Phillies were formed in 1883, history was in the making. Now, as the 21st century begins, the Phillies are the oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional sports.

In the 1940's the Phillies were owned by Robert Carpenter. During that ownership period, the team changed names.

Carpenter's first act was to try to change the team's name to "Blue Jays." However, "Phillies" continued to appear on the team's jerseys. Students at Johns Hopkins University, whose teams have long been known as the Blue Jays, vehemently protested the change. They claimed that the Phillies' attempt to use the name was an insult to their school, given the team's reputation as a chronic loser. The experiment was dropped after only two seasons.

Only a hard core old Baseball nut would remember this name change. I doubt many living Phillies fans do.

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