LOL for sure! That was ownership refusing to go over budget for a single year to get another championship.
That's not just how the 70's Phillies were built, it's also how the 2008 Phillies were built.
The Phillies ownership likes to think of the organization as their big, happy family. They keep too many management guys and players past their expiration date, especially those they like. Even after they are gone, they linger as advisors. The Phillies haven't achieved sustained success -- ever, because they always accede to fan/media demand to reward the past their expiration date heroes. Daulton/Dykstra should never have been renewed. Killed the franchise for half a decade. The shift and a change to how the Dodgers learned to pitch him made Howard a dubious candidate for a big extension, even before the injury doomed the rest of his career. The Phillies ownership has always seen itself as crusaders against rising salaries/bonuses/deviations from what baseball should be. That's how we lost J.D. Drew, that's how we never took advantage of legal loopholes in what often wasn't more than the Commissioner's expression of how he wanted things to be in so many areas: exceeding lux tax, exceeding suggested draft bonuses, paying higher LA bonuses, blowing past the international bonus limit for a single season.
