Phillies teams have shared many traits, generation to generation: scrambled infields. Weird lineups. Lack of minor-league help. That could be a scouting report on this year’s team, who will be playing in the MLB Field of Dreams game tonight in Dyersville, IA. But they’ll do it looking like the Phillies from 1939 to 1941, the era from which their very expensive throwback jerseys come.

This season, these Phillies have done several disturbingly good impressions of the 1941 Phillies, who never dreamed of insane futuristic concepts like a Wild Card spot or Netflix. But by wearing their uniforms, the 2026 Phillies will connect the present lineup with one that in all honesty probably would’ve been forgotten if people would just stop writing excellent books about them, like “Summer of the Cheap Wieners: What the 1941 Phillies Were up to while Joe DiMaggio was Making History,” a book purchased by any real baseball fan three or possibly even six times.

The truth is, the 1941 Phillies will go down as one of the hottest cultural entities of the summer, right up there with Spider-Man and the measles.