Philadelphia Phillies

The oldest name in the game

The Philadelphia Phillies were established in 1883, which makes theirs one of the longest continually used nicknames in professional sport by a team in the same city. The club is generally described as the oldest continuous single-name, single-city franchise in Major League Baseball. It has played at five homes: Recreation Park from 1883 to 1886, the Baker Bowl until 1938, Shibe Park (later Connie Mack Stadium) until 1970, Veterans Stadium from 1971 to 2003, and Citizens Bank Park since 2004.

For most of its first century the club was a byword for losing. The 'Phold of '64' remains the reference point: a team leading its league by six and a half games with 12 to play collapsed and missed the pennant altogether. The breakthrough came in 1980, when Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton and Tug McGraw took the Phillies past the Kansas City Royals in six games for the first World Series title in franchise history. Schmidt is widely regarded as the greatest Phillie of all, and his number 20 hangs alongside Carlton's 32 and Roy Halladay's 34 among the club's retired numbers.

The second golden period ran from 2007 to 2011, five straight division titles that included back-to-back pennants in 2008 and 2009 and a second World Series, won against the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008. In all the Phillies have two World Series titles and eight National League pennants, the most recent of them in 2022.

The Middleton and Dombrowski era

The current chapter is defined by principal owner John Middleton's willingness to spend and by Dave Dombrowski, the president of baseball operations he hired to spend it. Rob Thomson was promoted from the coaching staff on 3 June 2022 to replace Joe Girardi mid-season and took that team to the World Series. Under him the Phillies made four consecutive playoff appearances and won back-to-back NL East titles in 2024 and 2025, and his contract was extended through 2027 in the winter of 2025.

The 2025 season was, by regular-season measures, the best of the run. The Phillies went 96-66, clinched the division on 15 September 2025 with a 6-5 win over the Dodgers in ten innings, becoming the first club to clinch that year, and drew an average home crowd of 41,672, fourth highest in the majors. Kyle Schwarber hit 56 home runs and drove in 132, Cristopher Sánchez won 13 with a 2.50 ERA and 212 strikeouts, and Zack Wheeler posted a 2.71 ERA across 24 starts.

It ended, again, in the Division Series. The Dodgers beat the Phillies in four games and went on to win the World Series. It was the second year running that the club had been knocked out at that stage, and the sense of a window closing on an expensive roster followed the team into the winter.

Nine and nineteen

What followed in spring 2026 was the most abrupt reversal in the club's recent history. The Phillies opened the season 9-19, tied for the worst record in the majors while carrying a payroll of 317 million dollars, the fifth highest in the game. On 28 April 2026, 28 games in, Dombrowski fired Thomson. His overall record as manager was 355-270. 'This isn't a blame game,' Dombrowski said. 'We, collectively, are not doing well. I think we're a much better club than we've played, so you make some decisions that are tough at times.' Asked about regrets, he said he had none.

The succession had its own twist. Dombrowski telephoned Alex Cora on the morning of 27 April, the day after Cora had been sacked by the Boston Red Sox, and offered him the job. Cora declined, preferring to spend the rest of the season with his family rather than take an interim post. The role went instead to Don Mattingly, the former Yankees first baseman who had managed the Dodgers and the Marlins and who had been hired as bench coach only in January 2026. Mattingly is 65 and had said in January that he believed his managing days had 'passed me by'. His son Preston is the Phillies' general manager, which made the arrangement unusual even by baseball's standards.

The August that saved the season

The turnaround has been steady rather than instant. The Phillies went 21-7 in August 2026, the month that turned a lost year into a postseason push. On 13 August they beat Minnesota 7-1 in the Field of Dreams game at Dyersville, Iowa. The rotation of Wheeler, Sánchez, Aaron Nola, Jesús Luzardo and Andrew Painter has held up, and closer Jhoan Durán has 30 saves.

Schwarber remains the story of the batting order. On Wednesday 9 September 2026 at Citizens Bank Park he hit a 406-foot grand slam to right field off Houston's A.J. Blubaugh, a one-handed swing on a full count that capped a six-run sixth inning in an 11-7 win over the Astros. It was his 44th home run of the season, the most in the majors. Trea Turner also homered and Sánchez took his 17th win against five defeats despite giving up six runs on ten hits. 'It's not like you're going up there and think that you're going to be a hero,' Schwarber said afterwards. Mattingly's verdict on his slugger was simpler: 'The trait is nothing changes.'

As of 10 September 2026 the Phillies were 82-65, four games behind Atlanta in the NL East and three and a half games clear at the top of the wild-card standings. A third straight division title would require catching the Braves, against whom seven games remain. The run-in is three games in Atlanta from 11 to 13 September, two at Washington on 15 and 16 September, four at the Mets from 17 to 20 September, then home series against Milwaukee from 22 to 24 September and Tampa Bay from 25 to 27 September. The playoffs begin on 29 September.

The Bank

Citizens Bank Park opened on 3 April 2004 in the South Philadelphia sports complex, replacing the 33-year-old Veterans Stadium at a cost of 458 million dollars. It seats 42,901. The signature features are Ashburn Alley, the centre-field concourse named after Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn and lined with restaurants, games and a bronze statue of him, and a 52-foot mechanical Liberty Bell that rings and lights up after every Phillies home run and win. The food is defiantly local: cheesesteaks, hoagies, soft pretzels, Tastykakes and regional beers. The park is reached on SEPTA's B Line at NRG Station or by bus. The baseball attendance record is 46,575, set in the 2011 Division Series.

The building was reworked for 2026. The architects EwingCole described an expanded New Era team store, a reimagined Cooperstown Gallery with historic artefacts and the permanent display of the club's World Series trophies, an upgraded Cadillac Hall of Fame Club with new bars and bistros and reconfigured suites, a new open-air beer garden on the upper concourse, and grab-and-go concessions intended to shorten queues.

The showcase came in July. MLB awarded Philadelphia the 2026 All-Star Game to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and on Monday 14 July 2026 the Home Run Derby packed the ballpark hours before the first pitch, with crowds in the pro shop and Ashburn Alley. 'This is heaven,' one fan, Juan Namnun, told 6abc. 'This is baseball heaven tonight.'