The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League
Baseball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United
States. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major
League Baseball's National League. From 2004 to the present, the
Phillies have played their home games at Citizens Bank Park in
the South Philadelphia section of the city. The organization is
tied with the San Francisco Giants as the fifth-oldest team in
the majors, behind the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati
Reds and St. Louis Cardinals.
The "Phillies" name originates
as a shortened version of the "Philadelphias", as the
convention at the time was to call the team by their home city.
They are nicknamed the Fightin' Phils or simply the Fightin's.
In Phillies culture, it is not unusual to replace an "f"
with a "ph" in words, such as the Phillie Phanatic,
or the "Phold" of '64.
One of the 19th century "Classic Eight"
National League franchises, the club was founded in Philadelphia
in 1883 as the "Quakers". The team adopted "Phillies"
the following year and used it concurrently with "Quakers"
until 1890, when they dropped the "Quakers" name. In
an attempt to change the team's image, they added Philadelphia
Blue Jays as a second nickname in 1943, but it only lasted two
years.
At the outset of the 20th century, the
team made its home in the Baker Bowl. After much fighting to get
out of their lease and the badly aging stadium, they moved into
Connie Mack Stadium (then Shibe Park) in 1938, home of their American
League rivals, the Philadelphia Athletics. The A's would move
in 1954 to Kansas City, Missouri, eventually moving to Oakland
to become today's Oakland Athletics.
The Phillies have won one World Series
Championship in their history, against the Kansas City Royals
in 1980. In addition to their 1980 World Series victory, the Phillies
have made four other World Series appearances, losing in 1915
to the Boston Red Sox, in 1950 to the New York Yankees, in 1983
to the Baltimore Orioles, and in 1993 to the Toronto Blue Jays.
Of the sixteen original American and National
League teams (i.e, those in existence prior to the 1961-1962 expansion
of the two leagues), the Phillies were the last team to win their
first World Series, with their 1980 defeat of the favored Kansas
City Royals in six games being their only World Series championship.
Due in part to the age of the club, the Phillies became the first
team in the four major sports to surpass 10,000 losses in franchise
history in 2007.