The Phillies, as you likely learned in middle school, were not present at the first Thanksgiving, a holiday whose lore of pilgrims and Indigenous people sitting down to break bread is an aggressively glossed-over version of a more violent, horrific truth.
That said, you can’t bring up “horrific truths” without thinking of the Phils, and so as we bask in our long weekend, let us revisit a Thanksgiving 135 years past.
The Phillies had been operating for five years and shown remarkable growth, from 17 wins their first season in 1883 to 75 wins (and a second-place finish!) in 1887. In 1888, they’d only made it to third, but this was a team and a city on the rise.
Future Hall of Famer Sam Thompson of Detroit had been successfully wooed, and he rewarded the Phillies with 20 home runs (no one else on the team had more than six). Al Myers eventually took over at second base after being snagged from Washington for $4,000. Future Phillies manager Arthur Irwin got bumped from shortstop by Bill Hallman.
As ownership began writing down their opening day lineup, a mysterious benefactor appeared in the door with an offer that nobody wanted.
A.G. Christy was the manager of a local Philadelphia amateur team, the Young Americas. At some point in the prior year, he’d been stricken with the desire to buy a ticket to the professional baseball circus. The cost of that ticket, of course, was a major league franchise, and so Christy had taken to visiting teams, demanding to know their selling price, and then leaving after announcing he didn’t have that much.
Christy’s first stop had been in Washington, D.C., asking Nationals’ president Walter Hewitt how much the team would cost. Why? Hewitt reportedly inquired. Are you… interested in purchasing it?
Owners were busy. They couldn’t be bothered with maniacs walking into their offices, offering them money they didn’t have. The league was working to help the poor, beleaguered owners in their endless fight to not have to pay their players very much. The owners had just added some amendments to baseball’s contract rules, which made it so that every deal signed would lock in salary and prevent players from using a great season or winning a championship as leverage to earn more.
The league also gave the umpires the power to fine players and eject them from games, and force teams to remove an that player or forfeit. “IT WILL STOP KICKING,” read a related headline, foreshadowing an end to baseball’s apparently rampant umpire-kicking epidemic.
So it seemed merely a formality to ask Christy if his intention in learning the cost of purchasing the Nationals was to, indeed, purchase them. Why would someone appear and ask for such information if they weren’t planning on using it?
Upon Hewitt relaying the Nationals’ price tag, Christy nodded and said he could have the amount in question in three or four months.
But there the negotiations ended. “This man is a crank and has no money,” Hewitt later said.
So, Christy did what cranks do and headed back to Philadelphia. Phillies president Al Reach was the next to receive a visit, and this time, received an actual bid.
Christy said he’d pay $50,000 for the whole Phillies kaboodle. Reach listened long enough to hear the number, then took up scoffing in the usual manner, claiming he wouldn’t even sell the team for four times that price.
“I told him,” Reach proudly informed reporters, “that the club never had been and was not for sale. That ended my conversation with the gentleman. No offer has been made to me for the Philadelphia club.”
And, unlike the Athletics, who departed in the 1950s, the Phillies are still here!
As we bask in the thankfulness of the season, it’s satisfying to remember that. This is the time of year when baseball is most easily forgotten: Football is in full swing, and opening day is still a hundred and twenty-something days away. But one last time before the cold sets in, we can celebrate that the Phillies of today are a team that’s resoundingly returned to the postseason, that’s become a draw for free agents across the league, and that’s aggressive and prolific in their attempts to improve.
We can be thankful that, despite all the hitting they didn’t do in Arizona, the up-and-down past and next seven years of Aaron Nola, the fact that kicking umpires is still frowned upon, and owner John Middleton being one of those unanimous supporters of the A’s pending move, the Phillies have once more become a sizzling, unbuttoned, highly explosive presence in Philadelphia.
We can be thankful that the Phillies are here — and that they are not for sale.
