Eagles the last hope to revive Philly sports

The professional baseball franchise of Philadelphia has just concluded yet another lamentable season - you may have noticed - and now slinks off stage and into winter hibernation, dragging behind them a number most foul:

99.

That is the number of defeats rung up by the Fightin's.

99.

They felt it worth mentioning that they managed to avoid triple digits.

99.

When you're this desperate, you take your wins where you can find them.

99.

The Phillies have the winter to ruminate and regret, and from afar track the fortunes of their brethren, the other three professional franchises in town.

But they will, alas, find only slim pickings and sparse solace, because, folks, in case you haven't noticed, the current state of pro sports in our city is tattered and torn and afflicted with dry rot.

The 76ers have pledged to continue their egregious campaign of tanking, which is a gussied-up version of consumer fraud.

The Flyers have pledged to not rebuild, which of course is precisely what they should do.

And the E-A-G-L … are, well, no one is quite sure what they are, neither fish nor fowl.

***

The Phillies seem to be waving the white flag. Wasn't it just yesterday they were parading down Broad Street, Mummer strutting and certain this would last forever? And forever turned out to be only a few flips of the calendar.

They spent when they were flush and succumbed to loyalty and got caught holding contracts that could choke a horse … So long, Jimmy Rollins. See ya, Cole Hamels. Happy trails, Chase Utley. Don't slam the door behind you, Ryan Howard…

What is also unsettling: Is there any reason to think they have hit bottom yet?

They were picked to be dead last in all of the pre-season polls and they did their level best to live down to those expectations, and now they start over young and innocent, hoping to build a base with some promising arms. Also, they hold the hard-won No, 1 pick in the next draft. If they would somehow manage to approach respectability next year, it would represent a stunning achievement. Anything to avoid another:

99.

***

Speaking of gruesome numbers, try these on for size:

19-63.

18-64.

Those represent the last two seasons of your Seventy-Sixers and you know what? They aren't ashamed. Or apologetic. They launch a new season the end of this month and they fully expect to, in the words of an insanely rabid fan, "stink on ice again."

Really, we are assured, they are trying. Well then, more's the pity. But then that is how the game is played these days. Incompetence is rewarded. Defeats are celebrated and stashed away for future draft picks. Patience is preached. But there is patience and there is patience, and what the 76ers are asking from their fans — all 23 of them — is patience of biblical proportions.

They admit this is a long-term project, with the end about as far off as that first check you wrote for that 30-year mortgage. Complicating matters is the Sixers' disturbing lack of luck with draft picks, especially of the 7-foot variety, who have an alarming habit of showing up with limps that never seem to heal.

They seem to be afflicted with buzzards luck — can't kill anything, can't find anything already dead.

***

How's this for an omen: The Flyers, in the first week of the new season, got blown out, 7-1 …

… and the very next game won 1-0.

If that is a trend, it suggests that the Blade Runners will be taking you on one of their patented fasten-seat-belts rides. Entertaining but also frustrating because they always seem to come up short.

They begin this season haunted by this number:

40.

The number of years since they last drank from Lord Stanley's Cup.

Only the most rabid of the Flyers loyalists - and there are always an abundance of them - foresee a championship this time around. The media are less gentle.

True to their roots, they have changed coaches. Yet again. Three in three years. They could borrow a dollop of patience from their neighbors next door because Lord knows the Sixers have, to a ruinous fault, plenty.

The Flyers bristle when it is suggested that they, after all these years of predicting Cup Or Bust, only to be turned away, still won't relent in their approach. Some habits die hard.

***

All of which brings us to the last chance to salvage something, anything, from our dismal situations.

The Eagles.

They dare you to explain them. After their first five games they sit at 2-3. A win Monday night gets them to even. Which is unacceptable, albeit better, though not by much, than 2-4.

The quarterback is scatter shot - Sam Bradford is lights out one half, and what-the-hell-was-that the next. They say he is a notorious slow starter. They can only hope.

At the moment, this season has the feel of a road lined with potholes. It still has three months to go. That may be the good news. Or not.

Bill Lyon is a retired Inquirer sports columnist. lyon1964@comcast.net