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They can hardly look at their fellow players in the eyes. The Phillies players hang their heads as they clock into the office on a muggy morning, June 19th. Men, I want you to go out there every day and squeeze as hard as you can!” They don’t know how much talent we can squeeze out of ourselves. As April turns to May, Steve Carlton’s message to the team is loud and clear: “Everyone thought we would just roll over and die like a orphaned puppy. Pitching is awful, but I don’t want to speak too much about the stats until more of the season has passed. Probably the most surprising thing so far is just how effective the offense has been. 9–15 is, objectively, not a good record, but Steve Carlton’s club has some solid wins and are competitive in most of their loses. But the Phillies are, actually, something of a pleasant surprise in the MLB to begin the year! And by that I mean, instead of being a human rights violation, the Phillies are merely a mediocre team that consistently fails to rise to the occasion. Not a good omen for the rest of the season. They are both terrible for about five innings before they are relieved, but whereas the Cubs’ relievers give up another four runs to the Phillies before the game ends, the Phillies give up eight runs in four innings while cycling through six relievers. The second game features an amusing pitching battle between the Phillie’s Mike Maddux and his baby brother, the Cubs’ Greg Maddux. Meanwhile, the Chicago lineup reaches base thirteen times and scores five runs against Howell, Don Carmen, and Greg Harris while only striking out five times. Once he is relieved in the middle of the seventh, the Philly side goes through the rest of game without reaching base again and strikes out an additional five times. At the top of the fifth, he only throws five pitches before the Philly side is retired. He allows all of two runs and seven runners to reach base while striking out seven. In the Phillie’s first game in Chicago, Sutcliffe goes six innings while working over the Philadelphia lineup. Before he even manages his first game, Carlton is already 1–0 in the fans’ eyes. Now, Workingman could go to the game and have enough left over to enjoy a cold one while he roots for the home team. $6.20 could buy the Workingman a week’s worth of groceries in 1989! Steve Carlton is nothing if not a friend of the Workingman.

The number-crunchers tell him that this will only lose the club money, but Carlton has never cared about any numbers other than strikeouts and wins. In first official move as the GM, Carlton lowers the ticket prices from $6.20 to $4. The Phillies will be trotting out Ken Howell, who was just signed this past off-season after five below-average years with the Dodgers, against a lineup that includes Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and a 24 year-old Mark Grace. Carlton tells his hitters that he is a well-rounded but beatable pitcher, though he isn’t holding his breath for an offensive explosion to start the year. The Red Baron himself, in his twelfth year, is starting for Chicago. The Phillies are not playing Opening Day, but the day after, against the Cubs, who are expected to be in the mix for the division title. They talk of the future while the younger players glance over in quiet reverence and solemnity. Mike Schmidt strolls to Carlton’s side - there is talk that this will be his last season. Today, he wants his players to concentrate on getting mentally prepared for tomorrow. The real-life 1989 Phillies went 67-95 anything better than that would be a success in his book. Carlton knows that isn’t going to happen, but he also doesn’t want to fulfill the computer’s conjectures. In short, it’s an all-around tragedy of a team that no one has any expectations for outside of their insane owner, who’s expecting a winning season. They are also predicted to have the league’s worst team ERA and batting AVG. They are one of only two teams predicted to lose more than a hundred games (the White Sox being the other, at 102). Philadelphia was dead last in the East by the end of Spring Training while looking fairly awful Preseason Predictions have the Phillies losing the most games in the entire MLB at 113. The outlook for the season is less than great.