The Philadelphia Phillies have been playing baseball for 142 years.
It’s a staggeringly long amount of time for one franchise to be playing a sport in the same city, and the history of the franchise is rich with memories and accomplishments, many of them good, some of the bad.
There were decades where it didn’t seem like the Phillies would ever be good again, while the last two generations of fans have had it better than any in the first century of the team’s storied history.
More than 2,000 people
have played baseball for this team and before last night, only one of them, Ryan Howard, had ever slugged 50 home runs in a season.
Kyle Schwarber is now No. 2.
Tens of thousands of players have played in the Majors over the 150+ years the game has existed, and only 34 of them have slugged 50 bombs in a season. Schwarber’s 50th of the season continues to pace the National League, and his 123 RBIs leads the Majors, providing the capstone to a four-year contract that will almost certainly seem him receive a significant raise in free agency this winter.
It may be the single greatest walk year in franchise history and, hopefully, it will be the Phillies giving him that raise.
Consider everything he’s done. He was the Phillies’ lone participant in the All Star Game and, after the game was tied after 9 innings, won the contest for the NL in a spine-tingling home run derby to win MVP honors.
He’s hit two grand slams at the Bank this year, his first just after the All Star Game against the Orioles…
Then a second a few weeks later against the Orioles, his 40th homer of the year.
And of course, Schwarber’s heroics go far beyond this season alone.
His 2022 postseason is legendary. Many don’t remember this, but he hit five home runs in the 2023 NLCS loss against the Diamondbacks. He has a career .906 OPS in the postseason.
He’s up to 181 home runs in his four seasons in Philly. He has cleared 45 home runs three times. Howard is the only other Phillie to do that, and there have only been 16 seasons in which a Phillie has hit more than 40 dingers, by seven different players: Howard (4x), Schwarber (3x), Mike Schmidt (3x), Chuck Klein (2x), Jim Thome (2x), Cy Williams and Dick Allen.
Schwarber’s path to 50 home runs over the last month has been a strange one.
From August 22 through August 27, Schwarber didn’t hit a homer in six straight games. He struggled through a dismal series in New York, came home and had his historic four-homer game against the Braves on August 28, then went 10 straight games before last night’s blast that all but guaranteed the Phillies would repeat as NL East champs.
Schwarber and Howard’s 50th homers both came with some flair.
Howard would eventually go on to slug 58 homers in 2006…
…and in order for Schwarber to catch him, he’d need to hit eight more over his final 17 games of the season, something he’s done, or come very close to doing, in three different stretches this season.
- From April 29 through May 14, Schwarber slugged eight homers in 15 games
- From July 8 through July 25, he bashed nine homers in a 12-game span
- From July 22 through August 11, Schwarber hit 10 in an 18-game span
When he gets hot, the dingers come in bunches. Schwarber had not hit a home run in 16 out of 17 games heading into last night, but his swings have been better in recent days, and Schwarber’s 50th home run may be just the start of a two-week hot streak that could see him make even more history.
Until then, celebrate 50. It only happens twice every 142 years.
