First Down

SATURDAY’S BEST BET ON TELEVISION

After Thursday’s meltdown, the Rays turn to James Shields to try to put away the Red Sox and advance to the World Series. 8 p.m., TBS

ON WASHINGTON TIMES.COM • THE WORST OF THE WORST

The Cubs haven’t won a World Series in a hundred years.

The Red Sox and their faithful waited 86 years for a title.

And Cleveland hasn’t savored a championship of any kind since 1964.

Laudable examples of suffering, but they don’t match the pain endured by Philadelphia fans in the last quarter-century.

The names and venues have changed, but the results have stayed the same: no championships since the 76ers swept the Lakers in 1983.

Since the Sixers’ triumph, 98 full seasons have ended without any of Philadelphia’s four major teams holding a trophy.

In that span, city squads have been a championship runner-up seven times. What are the odds?

Yes, 100 calendar years is longer than 25. The Sox, for their part, did have many excruciatingly close calls (Bill Buckner, anyone?). Cleveland even has a name for its most notorious failures (the Drive, the Shot, etc.).

Those facts cannot be denied, but several factors mitigate Boston’s, Chicago’s and Cleveland’s “curses”:

Cleveland comes close, but it lacks a hockey team and therefore doesn’t quite make the cut. And heart-wrenching moments? Philadelphia has had those, from to Joe Carter’s homer in the 1993 Series to Eric Lindros lying lifeless on the ice in the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals to Donovan McNabb’s bad chucking in Super Bowl XXXIX.

Even worse is that those bursts of horror punctuated wastelands of futility. Philadelphia teams have finished .500 or worse 43 times since the Sixers’ parade.

As for the Sox and Cubs, only two teams from each league made the playoffs from the inception of the World Series until 1968.

Philadelphia’s skid comes in a different era, one in which it’s easier than ever to qualify for the postseason in every league. Cubs and Red Sox fans at least have had an entire offseason to recover. Not so in Philadelphia, where the frustation piles up as each season bleeds into the next. Other cities have had it rough, no doubt. But nobody has had it as bad as Philadelphia fans during their 25 years of misery.

- Jon Fogg