The Phillies attendance here in 2018 reminds me a lot of 2001 when they emerged from years of bad baseball to become a contender. Despite having a good team that was in the running for the NL East title until the third to last game of the season, the Phillies attendance stunk and, in the NL, only outdrew the perennially attendance-derelict Marlins and Expos. It took a couple of years--and the Thome signing--for Phillies phandom to buy in. Of course, there were differences to the current time as well. The post-'93 letdown, the '94 strike, the Phillies being left out of the fun with new ballparks emerging, a cheap ownership which cried poverty, the organization's falling out with Schilling who was popular with the fans at the time and the seemingly endless and bumbling effort to build a new ballpark created a pretty poisonous PR atmosphere.
On the contrary, there still is some residual goodwill from the last golden age now. But, there is also a perception, fairly or not, that the Phillies became arrogant and incompetent. First, there was Amaro who exuded smugness while he ran the team into the ground and now, there is Kapler who, again fairly or not, has come to be perceived as a baseball version of Chip Kelly--a weird guy and a mad scientist who thinks he invented the game and is oblivious to the realities of the game and the athletes who play it (so the perception goes). Those feelings have not been overcome. And, as Jim Salisbury pointed out last night in an article on this subject, for all of the Phillies' success this season, there have been quite a few noteworthy spectacular defeats (Opening Day, the Neris blown saves in May, the Heyward grand slam game at Wrigley, this past Sunday in Washington, among others).. This creates the perception that this team isn't really all that good and, sooner or later, is going to completely unravel and therefore, it's best to not invest your energies in them (again, so the perception goes) Plus, the Phillies have a lot of competition now. The Eagles are Super Bowl Champions and the Sixers are trendy, so it's tough for the Phillies to get any oxygen.
