If ever there has been an inexplicable triumph of heart over head, of passion over reason, this is it.

Oh, to be sure, for a time the camp followers of the Boston Red Sox could blather on and on about their luckless misery, delivering self-flagellating monologues about their suffering. Woe is us, woe is us. Now, of course, with two championships in this century alone, such indulgent posturing rings hollow.

Same for those who have found it chic to claim to be fans of the Cubs of Chicago. But in fact, compared to the Fightin's and their rooters, they are mere Johnny-come-latelies to this business of consistent, persistent losing.

No, the Phillies stand alone. Unequaled at being inept, they have compiled more losing seasons than anyone else, and subjected their followers to agony of biblical proportions. And still the people come.

In 125 years of attempting to commit baseball, they have won one championship. One. And still the people come.

This season just past, they became the first team in any professional sport to rack up 10,000 defeats. And still the people come.

Upwards of 125 million - million! - have passed through the turnstiles. Who knows how many times that - 10, a dozen, a hundred? - have followed the Phillies by car radio, by TV, by transistor, from bars, from recliners, from porches front and back?

This Trail of Tears has meandered through parts of three centuries, and still the people come. Ironic is their fealty because, like many Philadelphia fans, they can be acid-tongued, rashly judgmental and blindingly fatalistic.

And yet their loyalty to their baseball team is handed down, almost reverently, generation to generation to generation to generation. To be a Phillies fan is to hear what you want to hear and, sometimes, to see what you think you hear.

I submit this as proof: Some years ago, the late Bus Saidt, a sportswriter who chronicled the Phillies, was listening to their game on a car radio. It was close and tight, with the winning run on base when the umpire rang up strike three. Fightin's lose. Bus, apoplectic, leaned down until his chin was almost touching the radio and snarled: "That pitch was way outside. You are pathetic!"

In every pew in the Church of Baseball, they nod their understanding. When the game gets its hook into you, you are gaffed forever.

Of all our sports, baseball gives us the most to work with. It is awash in statistics, new numbers invented almost annually, and the game has become so filled with minutia that it is possible to decipher so much information from a box score that you can all but re-create each game, pitch by pitch.

And the game bridges past with present. At my grandfather's knee, I learned about baseball. We would sit in the shade and listen to whatever game was on the radio, and he would draw up his own box score and then, with the stub of a pencil, with loving care, he would enter the numbers. He might as well have preserved them in amber.

Baseball is rife with rituals, and each game is played to a sedate, familiar rhythm. Football captivates because it is played on a visceral level and satisfies the recommended daily allowance of what the American appetite craves - speed, collisions and blood. The formula is simple but brilliant: Mass times speed equals dents in your fender.

But the pace of baseball is more measured. There is a pitch-pause-pitch tempo. The game is meant for savoring, not inhaling. That is probably why it is such a hard sell to the young of today, who are busily occupied with surfing the Internet in search of porn to download.

Baseball has nature on its side. The season begins when the calendar has flipped over to the time of rebirth and renewal, when all things are fresh and new and burgeoning with promise, when nothing seems beyond our reach. In the spring, hope springs.

Even for Phillies fans.

Especially for Phillies fans.