The famil­iar anguish of being a Phillies fan is back.

I felt it again this past week when I attend­ed two games between the Phillies and Nation­als in Wash­ing­ton.  Just three years ago, this ball­park tucked between the Ana­cos­tia Riv­er and the US Capi­tol was known as “Cit­i­zens Bank Park South,” as bus­es dis­gorged Philadel­phia fans by the thou­sands who had drunk their way down I‑95 to watch their beloved Phillies beat up on the hap­less Nats.  They seemed to out­num­ber the home­town faith­ful and always made their unwel­come pres­ence felt.  They were rau­cous, some­times coarse, and usu­al­ly left hap­py, if obnox­ious­ly so.

Between 2005, when the Nation­als arrived from Mon­tre­al, and 2011, the Phils were 38–26 in games played in Wash­ing­ton.  Since then, they are 6–15, and have lost 10 of their last 12 games there, includ­ing 3 this past week.

The Phillies’ sour­ing per­for­mance against the Nats coin­cides with a broad­er rever­sal of for­tune.  Their unchar­ac­ter­is­tic rise began in 2005; they began to revert to form in 2012.

Ryan Howard was Rook­ie of the Year in 2005, a sea­son in which he slugged 22 homers and drove in 63 runs in just half a sea­son.  He would hit 262 homers over the next 6 years, aver­age 132 RBI over that peri­od and win an MVP.  He joined Jim­my Rollins (who also won an MVP), Chase Utley, Pat Bur­rell and Shane Vic­tori­no on a team that was begin­ning to shed its peren­ni­al los­er image.  The Phillies fell just one game short of mak­ing the play­offs that year.  By 2007, they had begun their streak of 5 divi­sion crowns, a run that includ­ed two World Series appear­ances and one world championship.

They assem­bled an almost per­fect team in 2011, when they added sol­id start­ing pitch­ing to a potent line­up.  The 2008 cham­pi­onship team suc­ceed­ed in spite of its start­ing pitch­ing.  When the 2011 sea­son opened, they had the Four Aces – Roy Hal­la­day, Roy Oswalt, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels – all vet­er­an start­ing pitch­ers who had com­piled glit­ter­ing records over a peri­od of years.  They were not mere­ly good; they were dom­i­nant. The team won 102 games, the best in base­ball and a fran­chise record. Dis­ap­point­ment was not far behind.

Philadel­phi­ans are accus­tomed to fate’s abrupt and bit­ter twists.  In 1964, the Phillies seemed des­tined to win the NL pen­nant, hold­ing a 6–1/2 game lead with just 12 games to play.  They lost 10 straight games and fin­ished in a sec­ond-place tie.  No team has ever col­lapsed so quick­ly or so com­plete­ly so late in the season.

In 1993, the Phillies entered the last of the ninth inning of World Series Game Six with a 6–5 lead.  It all end­ed in a instant.  Phillies’ reliev­er Mitch Williams sur­ren­dered a Series-end­ing three-run homer to the Blue Jays’ Joe Carter.  The World Series has been played 111 times.  Nev­er before or since has it end­ed with a come-from-behind, game-end­ing home run.  Had Williams pitched for ear­ly four­teenth cen­tu­ry Flo­rence, Dante would have con­signed him to the ninth cir­cle of hell.

The Phillies’ most recent lurch toward obliv­ion came in a play­off game fol­low­ing their 102-win 2011 reg­u­lar sea­son. Roy Hal­la­day yield­ed just one run in the deci­sive fifth game of the divi­sion cham­pi­onship series, but it proved one too many.  In an omen for the ages, Ryan Howard hit a game-end­ing ground ball and crum­pled just a few strides from home plate.  He lay there help­less, his Achilles ten­don rup­tured, as the Car­di­nals cel­e­brat­ed around him.  It pre­fig­ured the col­lapse of a franchise.

Roy Hal­la­day would pitch only a hand­ful of qual­i­ty games after that night.  By May 2012, he was on the dis­abled list.  By 2013, he was out of base­ball.  Roy Oswalt’s career also took a fate­ful turn after 2011.  When he, like Hal­la­day, called it quits in 2013, he had an 0–6 record with an 8.63 ERA.

2013 also would be a fate­ful year for Phillies man­ag­er Char­lie Manuel, an affa­ble base­ball man who com­piled the win­ningest record in fran­chise his­to­ry.  On July 19, his team used a 7‑run 3^rd inning to pound the Mets, 13–8.  Manuel some­how had the dete­ri­o­rat­ing Phillies in sec­ond place and ahead of much bet­ter teams, includ­ing the under­achiev­ing Nation­als. His tenure would end less than a month lat­er.  In Manuel’s final weeks, his team went 4–19.  His fir­ing was a mer­cy-killing, spar­ing the 69-year-old the indig­ni­ty of watch­ing the team he’d built trans­form itself into one of baseball’s worst.

And then there was Ryan Howard.  In 2010, he signed a five-year con­tract exten­sion that would pay him a total of $125 mil­lion between 2012 and 2016.  In 2011, the year before the lucra­tive exten­sion kicked in, he hit 33 homers.  In the near­ly 2–1/2 sea­sons since, he has so far hit a total of 36.  The Yan­kees’ con­tract with Alex Rodriguez is baseball’s worst; Howard’s is not far behind.

Ruben Amaro, the man who signed Howard to that con­tract, shoul­ders most of the blame for the Phillies’ decline.  Amaro became the team’s gen­er­al man­ag­er – the man respon­si­ble for iden­ti­fy­ing and devel­op­ing tal­ent and build­ing the team for longer term suc­cess – after their 2008 World Series tri­umph, when his pre­de­ces­sor, Pat Gillick, retired.  Gillick assumed the reins in 2005 and fash­ioned the team that would take its place among baseball’s elite.

Amaro inher­it­ed Gillick’s suc­cess­ful project and served under an own­er­ship team that was will­ing to spend mon­ey.  Dur­ing his tenure, play­er salaries bal­looned (the Phillies have baseball’s third high­est pay­roll and its sec­ond worst record through June 7) as he refined the team Gillick built.  Roy Hal­la­day, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Hunter Pence were among his mar­quis acquisitions.

All of that worked well enough until the nucle­us of the Gillick team start­ed show­ing signs of age.  On Amaro’s watch the Phillies failed to recruit and devel­op fresh tal­ent and replen­ish an aging team in des­per­ate need of rein­force­ments.  So long as he remains gen­er­al man­ag­er, the Phillies will inhab­it the base­ball wilderness.

It is ter­rain to which its fans are accus­tomed.   The team’s his­to­ry began on May 1, 1883. They went 17–81 that year, set­ting the tone for most of the ensu­ing 130 sea­sons.  They became the world’s first team in any sport to lose 10,000 games on July 15, 2007, a dubi­ous mile­stone that only the Braves (in 2011) and Cubs (in 2014) have sub­se­quent­ly reached.  Their 10,000^th win remains on a dis­tant hori­zon.  Their record is 9,416–10,502.  To even their record, they would have to begin a win­ning streak this after­noon in Cincin­nati and con­tin­ue it through the next 1,085 games they play between now and ear­ly 2021.

This nar­ra­tive of fail­ure has been punc­tu­at­ed by spasms of suc­cess.  It took them 97 years to win their first cham­pi­onship (1980); they have since won just one (2008).  Short­ly after appear­ing in their first World Series (1915), they com­piled an inter­war record that the Base­ball Almanac describes as:

a dark and dis­mal peri­od vir­tu­al­ly unmatched in the game’s his­to­ry. Dur­ing the next three decades they would fin­ish last 17 times and next-to-last sev­en times, los­ing more than 100 games for five con­sec­u­tive sea­sons (1938–1942).

Their prospects bright­ened when a core of young play­ers – two of them future Hall of Famers – led them to the 1950 pen­nant.  But after being swept by the Yan­kees in the World Series, the team failed to live up to its poten­tial.  Years lat­er, Hall of Famer Rich Ash­burn explained why he and his fel­low “Whiz Kids” nev­er won anoth­er pen­nant: “We were the last to get any black ball play­ers.”

Revert­ing to form, the Phillies fin­ished in last place four straight years (1958–1961).  Eddie Sawyer, who had man­aged the 1950 team and then returned to the helm in 1958, quit after the first game of the 1960 sea­son.  “I’m 49,” Sawyer explained, “and I want to live to be 50.”

His deci­sion was a sound one.  The 1960 sea­son was dis­as­trous.  But not near­ly as bad as 1961, mem­o­rable not only for 107 loss­es, but also for a record of inep­ti­tude that still stands: 23 con­sec­u­tive loss­es.  They escaped the base­ment in 1962 only because the expan­sion Mets and Colt 45s joined the league and sank below them.

The Phillies final­ly field­ed a bona fide African-Amer­i­can star in 1964.  Richie Allen’s Rook­ie of the Year sea­son helped make the Phillies a con­tender but was not enough to fore­stall their epic collapse.

Ruben Amaro’s dad played short­stop for that star-crossed 1964 team.  The younger Amaro, for­tu­nate­ly, has no cog­niz­able mem­o­ries of that epic fail­ure, being a fetus at the time.  He was born the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary.  He hoped to fol­low in his father’s foot­steps.  He made it to the majors, but played in few­er than 500 games over an 8‑year career in the 1990s, most of them in a Phillies uni­form.  His roots with the Phillies run deep.

Which is what makes his fir­ing so dif­fi­cult and so nec­es­sary.  Emo­tion­al attach­ments and loy­al­ty have no place in rebuild­ing a fail­ing fran­chise.  The team needs some­one who will change every­thing – from its scouts to its coach­es to its play­ers, includ­ing ven­er­a­ble Philadel­phia insti­tu­tions like Rollins, Utley and Howard.  Above all, the team requires an exec­u­tive astute enough to exchange these stars for prospects who can form the nucle­us of a club that can con­tend in the future.  Ruben Amaro is not that guy.

The Phillies’ own­er­ship has nev­er­the­less cho­sen to retain him, mean­ing that even if they do deal some of their old­er play­ers, they are unlike­ly to get suit­able replace­ments in return.

Leav­ing the team and its fans in a dark, dis­mal but famil­iar place.