10,000
Growing up in South Jersey, the daughter of a sportswriter and athletic mother, sports was a big part of my childhood. Baseball was my first love in those early years. Because of our geographical locale, I had two choices for my favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees. Being an astute baseball fan, I picked the Yankees as my favorite team at age 7. In 1963, the team, including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Bobby Richardson and Elston Howard, went 104-57 to win the American League pennant. That year in the World Series, they played the L.A. Dodgers with the magnificent pitching duo of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.
In a shocking development, the Dodgers beat the Yankees 4-0 with Koufax winning the first and last games 5-2 and 2-1 respectively. Johnny Podres won game 2 by a 4-1 score and Don Drysdale pitched a 1-0 shutout in game 3.
Sandy Koufax broke my heart. I was so disappointed, I switched my allegiance to the Phillies the next season. Yes, folks I became a Phillies fan in 1964!
Now at the more mature age of 11, I decided no more switching back and forth when it was convenient, despite the agony I can still feel thinking about the most famous collapse in baseball history. Yet, I loved those players: Cookie Rojas (pictured above), Johnny Briggs, Johnny Callison, Chris Short, Tony Taylor, Rick Wise, Clay Dalrymple.
So, no matter if they are in the race or sitting at the bottom of the standings, the Phillies have been my team ever since. When it comes to 10,000 loses, oh well, but my loyalty remains with a franchise that thrilled me in 1980, produced a bunch of blue collar crazies in 1993, and have been flirting with the post season in the last few years just to torture their fans. They have thrilled me and killed in the past 43 years.
Yet hope springs eternal. How can you not love Chase and Ryan and Aaron and Cole? Rookie Kyle Kendricks has given my hope a little boost, although I can’t see my team getting to the post-season without more pitching.
Pitching wins in the end. Just ask Sandy Koufax. One of my biggest thrills about fifteen years ago was getting a chance to meet Koufax at a memorabilia show in Atlantic City. I told him my sad story about how he broke my heart. He smiled in a way that let me know he understood the agony of being a baseball fan.