25 Incredible Philadelphia Phillies You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
February 2, 2012 by Greg Pinto
Filed under Fan News
The history of the Philadelphia Phillies is kind of like that gigantic history textbook that your teachers forced you to lug around in grade school.
That textbook covered an enormous amount of time and history, and frankly, it was impossible to get through the whole thing in one year. So, your teacher would have you skip around from chapter to chapter, reading the most “important” information but leaving some of the more interesting chapters and people out of the curriculum.
The history of the Phillies is very similar: It’s extremely long and very hard to cover in its entirety.
With just about 130 years of Phillies baseball in the books, scribes skip around from year to year to cover the greatest moments. The World Series teams of 1980 and 2008 are givens. We’ve all heard about the Whiz Kids of 1950, the first Phillies team to appear in the World Series in 1915, and the string of dominant clubs during the 1970s, led by Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt.
Those are a lot of great clubs, but generally speaking, barely a fraction of the history of this organization. Created in 1883 as the Philadelphia Quakers, hundreds of excellent players have worn the Philadelphia uniform in some way, shape, or form, most of whom are often forgotten about as time takes its toll.
Those players accomplished great feats; feats that will no longer go unnoticed.
The goal of this slideshow is to bring some of the greatest players in the history of the organization into the forefront of the minds of the casual Phillies’ fan. You diehard fans may have heard of some of these players, but I’m willing to be there are a few surprises.
Shrouded by recent accomplishments, the history of the Phillies has become somewhat of an uncharted territory, and there are still plenty of great names to uncover.
*All statistics refer to time spent with the Phillies’ organization alone, unless otherwise stated.
For up to the minute Phillies information, check out Greg’s blog: The Phillies Phactor.