Philadelphia Phillies Books

The Phillies have won two World Series championships (against the Kansas City Royals in 1980 and the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008) and seven National League pennants, the first of which came in 1915. The franchise has also experienced long periods of struggle. Since the first modern World Series was played in 1903, the Phillies played 77 consecutive seasons (and 97 seasons from the club's establishment) before they won their first World Series—longer than any other of the 16 teams that made up the major leagues for the first half of the 20th century. The 77 season drought is the fourth longest World Series drought in Major League Baseball history. The longevity of the franchise and its history of adversity have earned it the dubious distinction of having lost the most games of any team in the history of American professional sports, and in fact was the first professional sports team in modern history to surpass 10,000 losses.