Do or die

There’s something about the Texas Rangers spraying each other with ginger ale and Mountain Dew that made a lot of sense. Yeah, it was a nod to Josh Hamilton’s addictions and another unifying element for a team that looks like it cannot be beaten.

But there’s something about the entire process where the victorious ballplayers are handed the commemorative cap and t-shirt before they enter the clubhouse and can spray champagne and Budweiser beer. And yes, it’s Budweiser because they probably paid a decent chunk of change to sponsor the not-so spontaneous party with posters plastered everywhere.

Yet for the Phillies to get to do what the Texas Rangers did on Friday night, it’s going to take something the franchise has never done before…

Rally from a 3-1 deficit and force a deciding Game 7. The Phillies have been in a 3-1 hole four times starting with the 1915 World Series against the Red Sox. In the ’15 series the Red Sox closed it out at the Baker Bowl behind Rube Foster’s second win. It was the first World Series ring for Babe Ruth, a Red Sox pitcher who batted just once in the series.

Other names to emerge from the Phillies’ misfortune from trailing 3-1 were Rick Dempsey, Joe Carter and Hideki Matsui. Dempsey and the Orioles ended the ’83 World Series at the Vet in five, disappointing games where the Phillies batted .195 and scored nine runs.

Everyone in Philly already knows all about Joe Carter, Mitch Williams and what happened in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, and Matsui capped off his MVP run with a homer and a double in Game 6 of last year’s World Series at Yankee Stadium.

Needless to say, the 3-1 deficit and the aftermath haven’t been too kind to the Phillies. When a Game 7 has been needed, the Phillies have not been able to do their part.

“As long as I’ve been here, we haven’t had to,” said the potential Game 7 starter, Cole Hamels. “We’ve been fortunate every time we’ve been in the postseason — we’ve been able to, I guess, get the series done and over early. But in this case, we’re playing a very good team on the other side and they’re doing everything they possibly can.”

Before there was such a thing as a best-of-seven LCS, the Phillies did make it to a do-or-die, winner-take-all game in the playoffs. In 1981 they rallied from a 2-0 deficit in the first-ever NLDS against the Montreal Expos only to lose the fifth game when Steve Rogers out-dueled Steve Carlton at the Vet.

But the mother of all do-or-die deciding games was the fifth game of 1980 NLCS at the Astrodome where the Phillies fell behind 2-1 in the series before taking the final two games on the road. That series featured four extra-inning games, 15 lead changes and one game where the Astros won 1-0 in 10 innings.

The Phillies forced Game 5 by scoring two runs in the 10^th inning, the memorable one coming when Greg Luzinski hit a two-out double where Pete Rose bowled over Astros catcher (and current Giants manager) Bruce Bochy to score the go-ahead run. Actually, the Phillies were two outs away from winning Game 4 in the ninth inning, but reliever Warren Brusstar couldn’t stop Terry Puhl from driving in the tying run.

Puhl went 10-for-19 in the series and if the Astros would have advanced to the World Series, his performance would be more than a footnote of the series. Four of Puhl’s hits came in the deciding fifth game where ace pitcher Nolan Ryan—the current owner of the Texas Rangers—carried a three-run lead into the eighth inning.

Before the eighth inning began Rose told leadoff man Larry Bowa that if he could get on base, the Phillies would “win this thing.” So Bowa singled to center and Bob Boone, perhaps the slowest runner in Phillies history, beat out an infield hit back to Ryan. Still with no outs, pinch-hitter Greg Gross (now the Phillies’ hitting coach) dropped a bunt up the third-base line to load the bases for Rose.

Seven pitches after digging in, Rose forced home a run with a walk and forced Ryan out of the game.

Against lefty Joe Sambito, rookie Keith Moreland grounded into a force to plate another run before Mike Schmidt, in his biggest plate appearance to date, struck out looking on three pitches. But Del Unser followed with a two-out single to tie the game, setting the stage for NLCS MVP Manny Trillo to clear the bases with a triple.

Just like that, Ryan’s lead was gone…

Only to have the Phillies lead wiped out by Tug McGraw.

This was back in the days when the closer would come into the game as soon as possible and since the Phillies grasped the lead with six outs to go, manager Dallas Green turned the game over to McGraw even though he had used his ace in every game of the NLCS, including for three innings in Game 3 and two innings in Game 1, as well as three of the final four games of the regular-season when the Phils were trying to fend off the Expos in the battle for the NL East.

McGraw worked a lot in 1980 with little or no rest. Of the 57 games he appeared in that season, 16 were part of back-to-back games and another 12 were with one day of rest. McGraw also finished 48 games, piled up more than 92 innings and missed most of April and July with injuries.

But when September rolled around, McGraw pitched in 16 games for 26 1/3 innings allowing just one earned run. Moreover, when pitching in back-to-back games, McGraw held the opposition to a .092 batting average. Better yet, 11 of McGraw’s 20 saves in 1980 came when he pitched more than an inning.

In other words, going with Tugger, despite the taxing workload, was the move to make.

In the eighth, the Astros rallied with a one-out single from Craig Reynolds, and a two-out single from Puhl. But after Enos Cabell whiffed for the second out, back-to-back singles from Rafael Landestoy and Jose Cruz knotted it up again.

Green also lost McGraw for the ninth for a pinch-hitter, but Game 2 starter Dick Ruthven was as rested as any pitcher available, so it looked as if the right-hander was in for as long as he could go.

Why not? Ruthven piled up 223 innings, six complete games and 17 wins in 1980. He also pitched eight games on just three days rest in 1980, too, making Green’s choice elemental. Ruthven was going to pitch all night if need be.

Fortunately for the Phillies he only needed to pitch two innings.

That’s because Del Unser came through with a one-out double after Mike Schmidt struck out for the third time in the game. When Manny Trillo flied out for the second out, Garry Maddox belted a first-pitch double to center to drive in the run to send the Phils to the World Series. In the bottom of the 10^th Ruthven needed 12 pitches to retire the side in order.

One more caveat about Game 5… the starter for the Phillies that day was rookie pitcher Marty Bystrom, a September call up only because Nino Espinosa got injured just before the playoffs.

Yes, a September call up with just five big-league starts on the mound in the biggest game in franchise history against Nolan Ryan.

Strangely enough, Bystrom said he didn’t know he was going to start the deciding game until the Phillies won in Game 4.

“I hadn’t pitched in nine or 10 days and Dallas came up to after Game 4 and said, ‘You got the ball tomorrow, kid,’” Bystrom said. “I said, ‘I’m ready.’”

Bystrom called that NLCS finale “the toughest game I ever pitched.” More than just the pressure of a game with the World Series on the line, Bystrom recalled that the noise from the fans in the Astrodome was deafening.

“I took a suggestion from Steve Carlton and put cotton in my ears,” Bystrom said, adding that pitching with Rose, Schmidt, Bowa and Boone on his side in the field made things a lot easier.

Green later tabbed Bystrom to start the pivotal fifth game of the World Series in Kansas City – a game best remembered for the Phillies’ ninth-inning rally and McGraw’s heart-stopping pitching to win it.

“It was a moment I dreamed about since I was five or six years old,” Bystrom said of pitching in the World Series. “Then, all of sudden, it was today is the day – this is the day I was dreaming about all of those years.”

Now if the Phillies can force the Game 7…

“We’re going to get to tomorrow,” Manuel said. “I don’t want to say if we get there, because we are going to get there.”

Phillies' struggles stretch to manager, too

SAN FRANCISCO — We like to give credit where it is due. After all, it’s much more fun to heap praise and be positive than it is to whine, complain and sulk over things that can’t be controlled. Then again, that’s pretty obvious.

As a manager of the four-time defending NL East champion Phillies, positivity is Charlie Manuel’s best tactic. He builds up his players by telling them how good they are and always filling their heads with thoughts that the hits and/or great pitches are going to be there when needed the most.

In fact, Manuel says that before Game 5 he’s going to walk through the clubhouse, look each of his players in the eyes and have a little chat. It won’t be anything as extreme as a pep talk, but maybe just a few words with each guy on the team.

“I don’t know if it will be about baseball or not,” Manuel said.

So yes, Manuel is great at keeping his guys loose as well as gauging the mood of the club. It’s probably the not-so secret to his success.

But as far as the managerial battle of wits with Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy, Manuel is about to get swept out of the series. Indeed, some of the in-game decisions from Manuel have not gone down as his best work and that has been exposed during the first two games played at AT&T Park.

When a manager consistently makes the same types of decisions and they work out, it’s difficult to blame it on luck. Oh sure, it might seem like he’s falling backwards only to nimbly land on his feet like a cat at the last second, but there is a fine line between instinct and luck.

However, in Game 3 and 4 of the NLCS which finds the Phillies on the brink of elimination, Manuel’s instincts have not been at his best. In fact, the choices Manuel made with his bullpen in Game 4 began with seeds sown in Game 3 when he used right-hander Jose Contreras for two innings and 24 pitches. That would have been a fine move had the Phillies been in position to actually win Game 3 rather than be shut down by starter Matt Cain.

Nevertheless, when Contreras went to the mound for a second inning in Game 3, it didn’t take much of a hunch that it would come back to haunt Manuel. As fate unraveled in Game 4, every button pushed seemed to be the wrong one. Knowing that he had starter Joe Blanton for five innings… six if he was lucky, it didn’t seem too well planned out that Contreras finished the previous game. That was evident when Blanton was removed from the game with two outs in the fifth when he was due to bat third in the next inning.

Instead of double-switching or using another reliever, Manuel burned Contreras again when he promptly finished the fifth and then was pinch-hit for.

Perhaps the move in the fifth inning could have been lefty Antonio Bastardo on lefty hitter Aubrey Huff with two outs and the speedy Andres Torres in scoring position?  But we’ll never know because Manuel left Blanton in for one hitter too long and then wasted his most effective setup man.

As it turned out, Manuel called on Chad Durbin to give him an inning or more only to have it explode on him like one of those trick cigars from the old cartoons. The problem with asking Durbin to give some innings in a pivotal game is he’s more than a little rusty. In his lone postseason performance, Durbin walked the only hitter he faced with two outs in the sixth inning of Game 2 of the NLDS against the Reds, only to end the inning by picking off the hitter to end the inning.

Until Game 4, those six pitches and the pick-off was the only work Durbin had in 17 days. Knowing this, why didn’t Manuel divide up the work to close out Game 3 instead of burning out Contreras? Can’t pitching coach Rich Dubee elbow Manuel in the ribs while on the bench to remind him to give his relievers some work?

From there, Manuel used Bastardo and Ryan Madson for the seventh and the eighth, which worked out. Bastardo retired the lefty Huff (two innings too late) and then gave up a double to Buster Posey before Madson closed out the inning with a walk and double play.

If that would have been the end, it was enough. But then the hit… er, misses, kept coming. Like in the eighth when Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth led off the inning with back-to-back doubles to tie it up, it was reasonable to expect a big inning. Except when Jimmy Rollins came up with Werth on second and no outs he didn’t get the runner over to third. Worse, he popped up to third baseman Pablo Sandoval without even a pass at a bunt or a pitch pulled to the right side.

According to the manager, the idea was for Rollins to pull the ball even though he had explained his shortstop was struggling to hit from the left side.

“Rollins usually pulls the ball. If he hits the ball to the right side of the diamond, that’s one of his strong points, he'’ got a short quick swing to the left side that he usually pulls the ball,” Manuel explained after the game. “Not only that, if he pulls the ball, he also has a chance to get a hit or drive the run in, and that's how you play the game. And we do that a lot with Rollins. We let him hit there because that’s one of his big strong suits from the left side is pull the ball.”

It was a strong suit when Rollins was healthy. But in the NLCS when there is a chance to avoid going down 3-1 in a best-of-seven series, it’s the wise move to bunt the runner over when the hitter has struggled and been injured.

Finally, the choice to put starter Roy Oswalt in the game on two days rest after he had iced down following his 20-minute side-day session wasn’t the type of out-of-the-box thinking that Manuel is known for… and it wasn’t this time, either.

Oswalt saw the way the game was unfolding and figured if he didn’t step up, Kyle Kendrick would have started the ninth inning of a big playoff game with the score tied.

Then again, that all would have been avoided if Contreras had not been misused in Game 3. It also would not have been as magnified if Bochy had not been on top of everything. If the Giants finish it off, the manager should get a lot of the credit…

And the blame.