Will Phillies top Eagles sellout streak?

Tuesday's rapid sellout of the coming Eagles season raised a question:

Who has the longest string of capacity crowds in town - the Birds or the Phillies?

True, it's like comparing apples and Snapples - the season lengths and venue sizes are radically different - but hey, scratch a sports fan and you're likely to find a numbers junkie fascinated by rivalries.

Turns out the Phils trail, but are closing in.

Both, however, are blown away by the run of regular-season sellouts once racked up by the Flyers.

Last Thursday, the Phillies sell out streak reached 71 straight regular-season games. The last sub-capacity crowd at Citizens Bank Park was July 6 - a Monday night game with no giveaway that turned into a 22-1 drubbing of the Cincinnati Reds.

The Eagles streak stands at 80 - 10 straight full seasons.

The last Eagles blackout on local TV was Jan. 2, 2000 - the final game of coach Andy Reid's first season. Not even the return of former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil with the championship-bound St. Louis Rams could fill Veterans Stadium.

The Phils seem poised to make a run. They're bound to hit at least 74, since the next series - Friday through Sunday against the Twins - has no untaken seats (just the 500 standing-room tickets that go on sale before each game).

Then come three-game sets against the Indians and the Braves. (No fair counting the Blue Jays series in-between. Moved from Toronto for summit-security reasons, it wasn't announced until last month and the Jays are officially the home team.)

If the Phillies sell out Cleveland and Atlanta and get to 80, they'll get an automatic surge. The next six games are already filled - four against the Reds starting July 8, and two against the Rockies starting July 23.

That would bring the streak to 86, easily surpassing the Eagles.

Unless you count Tuesday's sale of Eagles tickets. Include them, and the Eagles have 88 straight sellouts.

Counting playoff games only tweaks the picture, since the Eagles have nine straight postseasons sellouts since 2000, whereas the Phillies had eight last fall.

So, however you add up the games, the Phillies could own the current sellout-streak crown by early August - and 100 in a row, counting playoffs, is a possibility that month.

Sounds impressive, but not to Flyers fans.

The hockey club sold out every game at the Spectrum from Feb. 15, 1973, to Oct 11, 1981.

Checking schedules, that works out to 332 sellouts in a row, which the Flyers confirmed. (Some sources say the streak was 319, but that's just for the eight full seasons - one with 39 games, seven with 40. It overlooks 11 games at the end of the 1972-73 season and two at the start of 1981-82.)

That's no all-time U.S. streak, however.

One list puts the Flyers mark at No. 14 for the four major leagues.

The longest streak was 814 games, set by the NBA's Portland Trailblazers from 1977 to 1995.

In baseball, the Boston Red Sox keep adding to their streak, which reached 587 Wednesday night. It began in 2003.

The Colorado Avalanche sold out 487 straight games from 1995 to 2006, setting hockey's longest streak, according to the Denver Post. Claims that the Toronto Maple Leafs sold out every game for decades seem to be suspect.

And in pro football, the Washington Redskins have sold out every home since 1968 - 348 in all. Unclear is whether Packers could claim a longer streak if dozens of games played in Milwaukee were included.