Home > Baseball > MLB Teams > Philadelphia Phillies

Philadelphia Phillies

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

As the 20th century dawned, the Phillies team had become one of the stronger teams in the National League with good reason. The team had three future Hall of Famers in the lineup with Ed Delahanty at first base, Nap Lajoie at second and Elmer Flick in right field. In 1900, Flick led the league in Runs Batted In and was second in batting average with a 0.367 mark. The series would be a popular attraction for Philadelphia baseball fans for more than 50 years.

Thirty-three years after their first National League season, the Phillies finally reached the World Series. They did it in 1915 with a powerful team led by first-year manager Pat Moran. The Phils swept to the pennant with a 90-62 record, leading most of the way and finishing seven games ahead of the defending world champion Boston Braves.

The name the club adopted as a takeoff on their hometown, Phillies, is now the oldest name in the National League. The team would become known more for its failures than its successes, so its first-season record of 17-81 was appropriate. The Phillies finished last in the National League East for three straight seasons from 1971-1973 The first good signs were the 1972 acquisition of Steve Carlton, who won 27 of the Phillies teams' 59 victories in 1972 and won the first of a record four Cy Young Awards and the emergence in 1973 of Mike Schmidt, the greatest third baseman of all time.

The Phillies went on to win three straight division titles and finally achieved what had eluded them for so long when they defeated the Royals in six games in the 1980 World Series. No other franchise has waited so long for its first World Championship. Schmidt was the Series MVP, Most Valuable Player. After the 1981 season the Carpenter family sold the club to a group headed by Bill Giles, who had been with the front office since 1969. The Phillies won another pennant in 1983.

Back to MLB Teams