Mike Celizic

So how are the Phillies going to blow it this year? With the losingest team in the history of baseball threatening to make the playoffs, it’s the dreaded question that looms large, like when you come home at dawn with your underwear on backwards and a navel ring stuck between your teeth and your wife asks where you’ve been.

You know there’s no answer that’s going to result in you being the happiest guy in creation. No matter which way you turn it, it’s going to end in misery.

A lot is made of the misery felt by Cubs fans, who are supposed to have suffered more than any on earth. And in Cleveland, fans think their misery is pretty special, it being 43 years since the Browns won a title, 59 since the Indians have won one, and forever since the Cavaliers have.

But has any city’s fans really suffered more than Philadelphia’s? There’s a reason that city’s fans are famous for booing everyone and everything.

They’ve been given cause.

Sure, by Cleveland standards, Philly looks like a dynasty. Why, the Phillies won a World Series a mere 27 years ago; the 76ers won their title in 1983, which is like yesterday; the Eagles won one as recently as 1960; and it’s not even 35 years since the Flyers won back-to-back Stanley Cups.

When you look at such a wealth of faded banners and dusty trophies and compare that to dearth of flags and hardware in other cities, you’d be forgiven for thinking Philly fans are lucky. Every one of their teams — even the Phillies — has won at least one championship.

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But it’s not losing that causes true misery, the kind that seeps deep into your bones and gnaws at your vitals. It’s the almost-winning that really hammers a fan’s heart into subatomic particles. Philly fans of every ilk, if they’re old enough, have had a taste of victory. And ever since it’s been a litany of woulda, coulda, shouldas.

The Eagles lost three NFC championship games before finally getting to the Super Bowl — and then losing that. The 76ers went to the NBA Finals and ran into Shaq and Kobe. The Flyers have had too many teams to count that were supposed to win another Stanley Cup only to lose in miserable ways, usually to the Devils, a team that calls New Jersey home, for pete’s sake.

The city’s most iconic sports hero was an actor, because to bring happiness to Philadelphia, you have to turn to fiction. In “Rocky,” the hero works his butt off, charges up the stairs in front of the museum, and dances at the top, arms raised in triumph. In real life, Philly teams charge up the stairs, start to raise their arms in triumph, then trip on the top step and do a face-plant in something a dog walker neglected to pick up.

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