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What Does 10,000 Wins Mean to the Philadelphia Phillies?

On Tuesday night, the Philadelphia Phillies finally won their 10,000th game. 140 years in the making, what does this accomplishment mean?

Author:
Ben Silver
Aug 17, 2022 10:00 AM EDT

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Philadelphia Phillies

140 seasons of Philadelphia Phillies baseball. 79 losing seasons. 11,163 losses. 14 postseason appearances. Seven pennants. Two World Series champions. And 10,000 wins.

The Phillies were the first franchise to ever lose 10,000 games. Today, they still hold the world record for the most ever losses by a single franchise in any professional sport.

On Tuesday, August 16, 2022, the Phillies eclipsed 10,000 wins. Despite being the sixth oldest team in Major League Baseball, the Phillies will become the ninth to reach that threshold.

The San Francisco Giants, who were founded in 1883, the same year as the Phillies, lead all franchises with 11,359 wins. Philadelphia, meanwhile, has fallen so far behind the pack that they would need to win 100 games every season for approximately 30 years just to reach the .500 mark as a franchise.

It wasn't always like this. Back in the early days of the organization, during the late 19th century, the Phillies, or Quakers as they were sometimes called, were paragons of success.

Despite failing to win a pennant in the pre-World Series era, they finished below .500 only four times from 1885 through 1901.

It's hard to fathom what those men would have thought of the modern-day Phillies. They likely would have found the players effete and weak, unable to withstand the rigors of a hard life.

Ed Delahanty, Billy Hamilton, Sam Thompson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Sherry Magee, and Gaavy Cravath, could they have imagined 10,000 wins any more than they could have imagined 10,000 losses?

It likely would have been a concept foreign to them, just as Baker Bowl and Connie Mack Stadium are foreign to many of us. They are black-and-white images of a long gone time when baseball was a different, more innocent game.

Don't let that delude you into believing those times were less tainted by the problems of society. Even after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, baseball, and American life, were still racist institutions, flawed just as much then as everything is today.

One day, Citizens Bank Park will be viewed in much the same way Baker Bowl is in 2022. It will be a memory of a bygone era, as people imagine how naïve we were to think 10,000 wins was a milestone.

When all the stadiums of our modern age have either become ruins or turned into museums at which the people of the future may marvel, will baseball still matter?

It matters today. Not in the same way that the rights and individual lives of each Philadelphian matter, but the Phillies are an escape for millions.

They are here to make money in a society that values success, as all societies do. If you follow the Phillies to watch them succeed, then you've picked the wrong hobby.

But if for 162 days a year, you take in the Phillies as a part of baseball history and dip your toes in the running river of baseball's past, present, and future, then perhaps their 10,000th win will mean as much as their first.