Americans love a good losing streak . We thrill at the improbability of it . We ogle the emotional wreckage like it was a 23 - car pileup . In a nation that usually roots for the underdog , sometimes we just need them to get pummeled – again , and again , and again . Until it seems they ca n’t perhaps turn a loss another , which of course they do , and then we softly cheer .
Baseballhas produced some monolithic and memorable losing streaks . Longtime devotee of the following team still transmit the retentivity of these streaks like cicatrix . World Series backing come and go , but the slow burn of a 20 - game losing bar is singe into the heart constantly . You ca n’t escape the shrewish fright that the out of the question will somehow happen again , and a month of summertime with pass without a " W. "
And now , our list of the five foresighted losing streaks inbaseball account , starting with a summer at the number of the twentieth one C that Bostonians would rather blank out .
5: Boston’s Twin Streaks
Boston is famously cursed as abaseballcity . The Curse of the Bambino , as it was known , hold the Red Sox without a waft from 1918 until 2004 . What make the curse so cursed is that before the 86 - year dry spell , the Red Sox were arguably the good team in baseball , winning the first World Series in 1903 and picking up four more title in 1912 , 1915 , 1916 and 1918 . The only truly miserable year was 1906 . And boy was it miserable .
In 1906 , there were two major conference clubs in Boston , the Braves ( aka the Beaneaters ) and the Americans , the squad that became the Red Sox in 1908 . Both team tallied phonograph record - break losing streaks in 1906 , making Boston the most joyless place to follow baseball alfresco of Mudville .
The Americans were the regretful of the worst that twelvemonth , with a 20 - game turn a loss streak and a phenomenal 49 - 105 record . The Braves put up a combat , though , with a 19 - biz losing bar and more than 100 losses for the time of year [ informant : Gonzalez ] .
Next on our leaning of the biggest loser is another double run , this time from the same team .
4: The 1916 and 1943 Philadelphia Athletics
Connie Mack is well one of the expectant managers in baseball story . The Hall of Fame skipper coached the Philadelphia Athletics to nine American League pennants and five World Series titles . Incredibly , his career in Philadelphia cross 50 age from 1901 to 1950 . Even more unbelievable , this gold - plated winner and baseball legend also hold the record for two of the longest losing streaks in the game ’s history .
In 1916 , just two days after he took the Athletics to the World Series , Mack preside over one of the most dreadful terminal - of - season performances by any pro baseball night club , before or since . The A ’s dropped 56 out of their last 60 games , including a 20 - plot losing run [ source : Gonzalez ] . The final 1916 record was 36 - 117 . It would signal the starting time of a seven - year slump in which the Athletics came in last in the American League every time of year .
While the rest of the country slogged through the Depression , Athletics buff had a lot to cheer for in 1929 and 1930 , when Mack direct his Athletics to back - to - back World Series rubric . But as Mack is excellently quote as saying , " You ca n’t gain ground them all . " And from the mid-1930s through the mid-1940s , the A ’s lose many more than they advance . In 1943 , Mack matched his 1916 time of year with another 20 - loss streak , ending the season at 49 - 105 [ source : Baseball - Reference ] .
3: 1988 Baltimore Orioles
Few people bear the 1988 Baltimore Orioles to be World Series contenders , but no one could have predicted their astonishingly defective beginning to the time of year . Cal Ripken Sr . was at the helm of the struggling Orioles franchise , which finish 13th in the American League in 1987 , ending the time of year with a dismal 42 loss over their last 56 game . That ’s impulse , all mightily , just the haywire variety of momentum [ source : Washington Post ] .
For the 1988 season untier , a crowd of 52,395 pack Memorial Stadium in Baltimore to take in their hopes of redemption crushed by a 12 - 0 slaughter at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers . The embarrassing loss included a bungled Tilletia caries , a discharge scored from second on an diamond strike , two wildpitches , two hit batsmen and even a rare stolen base by the Brewers : place [ source : Justice ] .
Somehow , things only got regretful from there . The Orioles recede their next game , then the next , then the next . After the seventh back-to-back loss of the season , the Orioles direction discharge Cal Ripken , Sr . , despite the awkward fact that Ripken ’s two sons were play shortstop and second fundament [ seed : Justice ] .
By the time the damned Orioles front the Minnesota Twins on April 26 , 1988 , they were a interior media sensation for all of the haywire ground . They had lost an unprecedented 19 of their first 19 plot . It seemed quite possible that they would never succeed , ever . Still , the Orioles kept hope active . compositor’s case of champagne were on methamphetamine hydrochloride in the locker room . President Ronald Reagan even call the team before the game to wish well them fortune . But did they gain one for the Gipper ? Nah .
The Orioles finally snap their newspaper headline - grabbing losing stripe with a 9 - 0 drubbing of the Chicago White Sox , 26 mean solar day and 21 going into the time of year [ source : Justice ] . The mood in the clubhouse was easing , not high spirits . No one even bother to crack enter the Champagne-Ardenne .
" The forged we could do is miss one more , " tell Orioles pitcher Mark Williamson . " I ’m free , but we have to keep it in perspective . It ’s not like we just won the seventh game of the World Series . perhaps we wo n’t be so much of a household name now " [ source : Justice ] .
To top the incredibly hapless performance of the 1988 Orioles , we have to travel back to the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies .
2: 1961 Philadelphia Phillies
In tardy July of 1961 , a very young Philadelphia Phillies squad went on a five - game losing streak before winning the second game of a treble - header against the San Francisco Giants on July 28 . A five - plot slump is n’t smashing news , but it ’s nothing to squall in your beer about . What come next , though , had Phillies sports fan sob into their Yuengling for three neat weeks .
From July 28 through August 20 , the Phillies lost 23 straight games [ source : Donaghy ] . If you command that lonesome " W " against the Giants , it was more like 28 games . The prodigious lose streak still stands as the longest in major league history since the advent of the World Series in 1903 .
The ' 61 Phillies were young , but they were n’t terrible . They just had a very , very bad run . During the streak , they bat a collective .248 and could n’t seem to convert with runners in scoring position . Many of the games could have gone either mode , though : Eight of the match , painfully enough , were lose by a single run [ source : Philly.com ] .
Phillies manager Gene Mauch loved his players , but hated losing . After one crushing expiration , he smashed the dugout lights . When they installed protective cages around the lights , he require them out with a bat . When one of his players was go after firmly at base , Mauch led the rest of the team in a judiciary - clearing do [ beginning : Donaghy ] .
Phillies sports fan can be cruel , but they are nothing if not truehearted . When the Phillies last violate the cursed streak , they room a lateflightback to Philadelphia , arriving close to midnight . From their window , the team saw a crowd assembled at the gate . A histrion jest that that someone was sell rocks to the crowd for a dollar sign a bucket .
To the Phillies ' great surprise , the crowd of 2,000 was there to cheer the return of their exultant heroes . A brass dance band diddle as the crowd lift the tortured Phillies manager Gene Mauch on their shoulders and march him for a long - awaited triumph lap [ source : Philly.com ] .
1: 1899 Cleveland Spiders
Baseballfans have terrific long - condition memories , particularly for the speculative team to ever fiddle the biz . It turns out that two of the longest losing streak in Major League Baseball history did n’t happen in this century , or the last one for that matter . The shame of the longest losing streak in baseball game ( 24 secret plan ! ) belongs to the atrocious Cleveland Spiders of 1899 , who broke the 23 - game record antecedently held by the miserable Pittsburgh Alleghenys squad of 1890 .
You might not recognize the name , but these two clubs were legitimate National League teams back in the late 19th one C . The Alleghenys earn the nickname " the Pirates " in 1891 when they " steal " ( signed , technically ) a prized 2d baseman from the Philadelphia Athletics [ source : Pirates ] . The Cleveland Spiders , however , did n’t develop into the Cleveland Indians of today . Instead , the Spiders were comport in 1879 and died in 1899 after play arguably the worst season of baseball in the biz ’s chronicle [ source : Indians ] .
The most important act here is 24 , which is the number of sequential losses that the Spiders endured during that fateful 1899 season . Equally telling in disgracefulness is the team ’s season criminal record of 20 profits and 134 loss . The blame for the appalling platter certainly rests on the players , but also on the team ’s owner , who gutted the club of its best players and sent them to his new team in St. Louis [ source : Indians ] .
The 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys suffered a like destiny . After the close of the 1889 time of year , an Alleghenys star topology player named Ned Hanlon defected for the Pittsburgh Burghers of the new created Player ’s League and took all but four of the Alleghenys ' roster with him [ source : Dreker ] . The desolate Alleghenys not only lose 23 in a course in 1890 , but pile up a deprave 23 - 113 record .
The Burghers fold up after only one season , and Hanlon and his fellow defectors live back to the Alleghenys and come back the club to its former pretty - good . The 1899 Spiders were n’t so lucky : After their record book - breakingly bad time of year , the National League squashed the lowly Spiders for good [ reference : Indians ] .
Lots More Information
I like a good losing streak as much as the next cat . Call me sadistic , but I love to see the Bob Hope in the eyes of the cursed squad as they take the field , confident that this will be the day that everything changes . I sleep together the stock quotes from the instrumentalist and direction after another personnel casualty . " We ’re just taking it one biz at a time . " " This team knows how to gain . We just need to make it happen . " peradventure we get it on losing streaks so much , because we make out they will end . They have to . In athletics , if not always in life , there ’s always hope for redemption , even during the worst of seasons .
