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The New Stats Explained
by Ryan T. Campbell
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Johanna quoted in the Chicago Tribune about Fan Safety.
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This Month
Hunter Manchak reviews
Ron Green's 101 Reasons to Love the Phillies
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009 1:00pm
I suppose it's only natural that in a capitalist society people will attempt to capitalize economically during particularly historic, emotional and exciting times. Witness the surfeit of Barack Obama-themed books, magazines, and memorobilia that doubtless line the frontage space of your neighborhood bodega. It should come as no surprise, then, that a book celebrating the Philadelphia Phillies and their 2008 World Series Championship would be on shelves just 32 days after the final out was recorded. So it goes.
To be fair, Ron Green's book "101 Reasons to Love the Phillies" is not exactly about the 2008 season, or even about the World Series. It's part of a series of short books that chronicle various baseball teams' histories. (Others in the series have been published on the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and other "classic" baseball franchises.) Nevertheless, the book does contain portions devoted to the series and some players who participated in it, and alludes to the 2008 title throughout other sections as well.
Not a heavy piece of non-fiction by any account, the book takes a look at the Phillies' history through (as the title suggests) 101 different items, comprising events, players, coaches and other Philadelphia-specific notables. Considering the Yankees version, one wonders how Green was able to narrow the list down to 101—conversely, when it comes to the Phillies, it seems 101 might have been just an arbitrary number to select, and too high a number at that.
Indeed, the most striking aspect of the book was just how boring the Phillies' history really has been. Sure, they've had their runs of success and failure. They've had their Cy Young Winners and MVPs. But for the most part, the team's past is about as unremarkable as any franchise founded 125 years ago could possibly be.
Much of the 120 seven inch by seven inch pages (this gives you an idea of the depth we're talking about here) is devoted to the team's history of losing. However, this seems even more laughable than intended. Despite having over 10,000 losses (tops in Major League history) these weren't even stylish losses. This is not the Boston Red Sox whose failures were so notable only because of the proximity to success that they so frequently came. Nor is this the Chicago Cubs who were so bad that they became loved for their losing as much as they were despite it.
The Phillies, on the other hand, were "just okay"-- never really good or bad enough to be truly historic, World Series or no World Series. In a sense, even in attempting to be the biggest losers, the team was a failure.
It's telling that among the 101 reasons for us to love the Phillies we find: the commissioner banning a Phillies owner for life from baseball (two of them, actually), a woman getting hit by a foul ball off of Richie Ashburn's bat (two of them, actually), and of course, the litany of players who either hated Phillies fans, were hated by Phillies fans, or both (Curt Flood, of course, so didn't want to play the team that he requested that the United States Supreme Court intervene).
To be sure, "101 Reasons to Love the Phillies" is not the type of book that's going to make Phillies die-hards like the team more. Phanatics may take a gander and enjoy what they're reading as they wallow in their World Series crapulence, but they probably won't learn much that they didn't already know. Young Phans, on the other hand, may find out something new, particularly about the team's history (also, the short, declarative sentences and pretty pictures will make it easy to read). As for everyone else, I think I could probably come up with a better way for you to spend your $14.95 -- 101 ways in fact.
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