Scott Eyre is living the good life

When talk first surfaced about the prospect of Scott Eyre making a mid-season comeback—talk that was nothing more than hot air—the over/under was set at 30…

As in the amount of pounds he gained since “retiring” after Game 6 of last season’s World Series.

But when Eyre showed up at Citizens Bank Park on Tuesday afternoon, presumably to warm up before throwing the ceremonial first pitch before Game 1 of the 2010 NLDS, all he could do was laugh at the little joke about his presumed fitness (or lack thereof) and his penchant for having fun. However, it turns out that “real life” is far more taxing than the life of a Major League Baseball pitcher and Eyre will go to the mound on Wednesday for his pitch a good 10 pounds lighter than he was when he last wore the Phillies uniform.

“For a while I couldn’t keep weight on,” he said with a laugh and a smile. “I’m always busy now. There’s always something to do. When I was pitching I was sitting around and eating three times a day because I was bored. If I got into a rhythm or got into a role, I went with it. ‘Hey, what did I do yesterday?’ Oh, I just sat here. I guess I’ll do that again.”

Though his waistline has diminished, his quick laugh, wide smile and zeal for… everything, has not. Retirement at age 38 has been good to Scott Eyre. Hell, life in general has been good to Scott Eyre. Drafted in the ninth round after a solid (but not earth-shattering) career at Cyprus High, a brisk jog from the Great Salt Lake, and the College of Southern Idaho, Eyre turned his left-handedness and his ability to get quick outs into an 18-year pro baseball career that lasted 13 seasons in the big leagues and got him into the World Series three times.

Nope, Eyre isn’t waiting for the phone call from the Hall of Fame or, frankly, a call from anyone. But when MLB.tv called asking him to provide some commentary, he took the call. The same goes for an RV trip over the next 60 days or when his pal Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine sent him an autographed guitar to give as a gift to his buddy, Brad Lidge. Eyre was ready for those calls.

But the one that made him dash north to Philadelphia wasn’t one asking him to pitch, per se. It was the call asking Eyre to throw the ceremonial first pitch before the first game of the 2010 playoff chase that seems to have gotten Eyre the most excited.

“I was here a year and two months and now I’m back throwing the first pitch,” he said with an unbelieving shake of his head. “What did I do to deserve to come here and throw out the first pitch?”

Well, where do we start?

See, Eyre isn’t too different from the hardcore baseball fans sitting in the stands with a beer and a dog while rooting for the Phillies. So it seems as if Eyre is living the life that everyone blessed with a certain extraordinary skill would live if given the chance to collect a big league paycheck before taking on the vested pension. Oh sure, he could have pitched another season, but when Phils’ general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. downplayed Eyre’s promise that he would pitch for the Phillies or retire, the lefty had to climb into the cab of his RV and drive into the sunset.

Still, there was that itch to play. Eyre had surgery to remove bone chips from his throwing elbow during the winter and then spent the off-season pitching more bullpen sessions than in any off-season he can remember.

However, when it came down to it, the pitcher was happy at home and his wife, Laura, and his two sons, Caleb and Jacob, were happy to have him home, too.

Yes, retired at age 38.

“I don’t know how close it was,” Eyre said about coming back in 2010. “You know what the funniest question I’ve gotten is? It’s not, do you miss it, it’s when they look at my wife and say, ‘What’s it like having him back home every day. Do you like it?’ We’re happily married. She tells them that she loves having me home every day and it’s true.

“The transition was smooth, it wasn’t easy. Because in here I still wanted to play,” he said, tapping on his heart. “But in my head I was OK. I was home, I was a dad, I was taking the kids to the bus stop every morning. But in here [tapping his heart again], I just wasn’t ready.

“Phillies or nowhere else. I shouldn’t have said it out loud.”

Then again he probably didn’t have to. The 2009 season was a tough one for Eyre off the field. Aside from the elbow full of bone chips, he also pulled his calf badly during a game in New York. Then there as the incident where his assets were frozen because of an investigation into the Stanford Financial fraud case. The Phillies had to front him a couple of bucks so he could get by until the issue was straightened out.

Yet when Eyre pitched, he pitched well. A 2-1 record and 1.50 ERA in 42 games for a lefty specialist is exceptional. Mix in two runs over 12 playoff outings during two Octobers with the Phillies and Eyre went out on top.

Now he gets one more pitch.

“I thought [they were calling to ask for me] to walk it to the mound and give it to some deserving person,” Eyre said before turning excited. “What if I bounce it! What if I throw it over his head! Crap, what if I trip on the way out there! If I throw it hard they’re going to get excited, and if I lob it they’re going to boo me.”

No, don’t expect Eyre to get booed. It’s kind of tough to boo the everyman laughing and smiling his way through life. Call him a Philly guy by way Utah, Idaho, the White Sox, Giants, Blue Jays and Cubs before he landed with the Phillies for the last year and two months of his career.

Eyre was guy who got it the second he arrived and picked up a win after facing just one hitter in his Phillies’ debut.

“Philadelphia was not a fun place to come play as a visitor. But when I got here and got a one-pitch win in my first game—I threw a bad fastball, got a popup and a win—the next day at the Residence Inn in Deptford, someone came up to me and said, ‘Aren’t you the new guy who threw one pitch and got a win?’ I got treated so nice for just doing my job. I got a left-hander out here or there and did whatever Charlie asked,” Eyre said.

Maybe that was the thing? Eyre liked to see himself as a guy doing a job instead of a “big leaguer.” He was one of those guys that slipped in and out of any clique simply because he liked to get to know people. Just a guy doing a job, he reasoned. There was no reason to get too excited over that.

“See, to me I don’t look at it like that. The other day my dog had surgery for a dislocated hip and after I left and came back the doctor said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know who you were. I looked it up and saw your stats and you were pretty good,’” Eyre said. “I told him he wasn’t supposed to know who I was. I appreciate it, but I always took it as this is a job and it’s what I do, but I’m still a fan. I’m a big kid when it comes to this stuff. I still get excited when I see some players. I felt like I did a good job and I got to three World Series. I pitched good in the World Series—I was good in the playoffs—but I just like keeping myself as a normal person.”

Eyre told a story about a time on his summer RV trip where he and the family took 10 weeks to drive all over the country and just blended in. That was even the case when he befriended people.

“I used to tell everyone. ‘Hey, I’m a big leaguer!’ But now I don’t tell anyone,” he said. “I want to get to know people for who they are. We met a couple—a family—on an RV trip and we spent three days with them and they didn’t know I played baseball until the last day when we were leaving. My kids were wearing t-shirts everyday and they have so many that the guy finally said, ‘Are you guys Phillies fans,’ and my oldest son said, ‘Well, my dad played.’ So yeah, there you go. Thirteen years.

“How do you think I retired and bought [an RV]?”

He’s just a regular old dude traveling in a big RV and wearing an inscribed Rolex that was a gift from Brad Lidge after the 2008 season. A guy who gets excited telling a story about his kids getting to shake hands with Jim Thome and can’t wait to pitch batting practice to the kid’s little league team.

A guy who gets to live the good life with nothing but time.

“Why me? I know why,” Eyre said, genuinely befuddled by his good fortune. “For me, for what my job was in the big leagues, to have people still say, ‘Oh man, we needed you,’ that’s the most flattering thing I’ve ever been told. To still be wanted, but not necessarily needed, is so unbelievably flattering.”

Almost as much as being asked to throw out the first pitch before a playoff game. Yes, it’s tough not to like the guy living the good life and recognizing just how lucky he is.

“Most people inquire and ask what’s a 38-year old doing retired and traveling around in an RV,” he said. “I tell them I’m retired. That’s it.”

Legends, legacies and Game 162

If you look at baseball from the rosy, plastic view of Ken Burns or producers those ridiculous aggrandizing odes to the game as if it is some sort of complex metaphor for life on the Upper East Side, the final day of the Major League Baseball season is nothing to get worked up over. No, that’s stuff is saved for Opening Day where they blather on wide-eyed and sappy-like as if they just walked out of the cornfield in Field of Dreams.

Look, that romanticizing about baseball is fine and it sells a lot of books, but for the hardcore baseball fan there is nothing like Game 162.

Opening Day is for renewal and hope and promise. It’s when everyone starts fresh and there are no limits on success. But rarely is Opening Day memorable or the purveyor of significant, meaningful action. It’s the first one of 162 and there will be another game in the days to follow.

Oh, but Game 162 is about blood and guts. It’s where heroes, goats and legends are made and where legacies are cast in concrete. Game 162 is about the pros even if the team is just playing out the string. There is a real dignity in seeing the race all the way to the end even if it was lost long before the trading deadline. A baseball season truly is like a marathon the ballplayers liken it to, and that being the case, Game 162 is like running the last 385 yards of the marathon. Anyone can do the first 26 miles, but it’s that last stretch that separates the champs from the chumps.

So with Sunday’s slate of Game 162s that last sprint for a bunch of teams, the final day of the season is shaping up to be one of the oddest in recent memory in the National League. Yes, the Phillies are in and will have home-field advantage the entire length of the postseason, but rarely is there an opportunity for the top-seeded team to also be the spoiler.

In fact, the Phillies have played that spoiler role perfectly during the first two games of the series in Atlanta where they have helped monkey wrench the entire season for the Braves, Padres and Giants simply by winning games. At 97-64 (the best record in the majors), the Phils sent Kyle Kendrick and Vance Worley to the mound against the Braves and walked away with lopsided victories. The strange part is that the Braves needed to win just one game to sew up the wild-card berth in the playoffs while the Padres would have to settle on sweeping away the Giants—in San Francisco—to force a one-game playoff on Monday.

But the Phillies’ victories and the Padres’ refusal to go away in San Francisco leaves the scenarios like this:

• Wins by the Phillies and Giants: The Giants get the NL West and the Padres and Braves tie for the wild card. The tie-breaker game would be played on Monday in Atlanta. If the Padres win, they get to fly to Philadelphia for Game 1 of the NLDS on Wednesday. If the Braves win, Cincinnati heads to Philly for the NLDS and the Braves go to San Francisco.

• Wins by the Phillies and Padres: The Braves are done and the Giants and Padres finish tied for the NL West. Based on the tie-breaker, the Padres become the NL West champs because they had a better record head-to-head against the Giants. It also means the Giants face the Phillies in the NLDS.

• Wins by the Braves and Giants: The Padres are done. The Giants win the NL West and the Braves get the wild card. The playoff matchups from this scenario are Reds vs. Phillies and Braves vs. Giants.

• Wins by the Braves and Padres: This is the oddest of all the circumstances. It means the Padres and Giants leave San Francisco to play one game in San Diego on Monday. The winner is champion of the NL West and the loser of that game jets to Atlanta for a one-game playoff on Tuesday to determine the wild-card winner.

If it were to come to this, and the Giants or Padres escaped with a win in Atlanta, they could play four games in four consecutive days in four different cities in two time zones.

The question that must be asked is if Game 162 ever presented so many different scenarios in baseball history and the knee-jerk answer has to be, no. The fates of five teams all come down to two games played on the very last day of the season and even then there’s a chance the picture will become even more muddied. However, before the advent of divisional play and the league championship series, the 1967 season came down to the very last day of the season where three teams—the Red Sox, Twins and Tigers—were separated by one game. And just to make it even more crowded, the White Sox came in fourth place just three games behind the Red Sox.

The final day of the 1967 saw the Red Sox beat the Twins to take a one-game lead while the Angels beat the Tigers in the second game of a doubleheader to give Boston the pennant. Game 162 of 1967 was most notable for the Tigers and Angels playing two doubleheaders on the last two days of the season, as well as Carl Yastrzemski’s 4-for-4 to cap off a 7-for-8 with six RBIs and a homer in the last two games to boost him to the Triple Crown.

Aside from the 1967 pennant race, the Padres’ run against the Giants most resembles the Orioles’ frantic comeback in the last four games of the 1982 season against the Brewers. Leading the AL East by three games with four to play, Milwaukee needed to win one game to sew it up and go to the playoffs for the first time. But in the opener, the Orioles won with Dennis and Tippy Martinez on the mound. Then the Orioles swept a Saturday doubleheader by a combined score of 18-4 to make the last game of the year a do-or-die situation.

Considering that the Orioles trailed the Brewers by four games with five to play, by seven games in late August and by 10 games in May, one had to wonder if the Orioles were surging or the Brewers were choking.

That was all settled on a sun-soaked Sunday afternoon at Memorial Stadium on 33^rd Street where future Hall-of-Famers Jim Palmer and Don Sutton took the mound with future Hall-of-Famers Cal Ripken Jr. and Robin Yount at shortstop.

But what any self-respecting Milwaukeean will tell you that it wasn’t so much Sutton’s solid eight-innings or Yount’s two homers and a triple (well, maybe it was Yount… he was pretty spectacular that day) as it was Ben Oglivie’s sliding catch on the gravel warning track in left field to end the eighth inning and ruin the Orioles’ last rally that could have tied the game.

Instead, the Brewers hung on in Game 162, rallied from a 2-0 deficit against the Angels in the ALCS and went to Game 7 of the World Series against the Cardinals in a season that was pushed to the limits. Better yet, it was because of Game 162 that Yaz, Sutton, Yount and even Ben Oglivie are discussed with reverence saved for TV documentaries so many years later.

You can have Opening Day, we’ll take Game 162. That’s baseball.

“Somebody's going down,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said about the odd final day of the season facing the National League. “There’s three teams in there. Somebody’s going down, man.”

Very true. But somebody is going up, too.

And the winners are... (please hold your applause to the end)

WASHINGTON — We all know that art and athletic performance are subjective in nature and just because one person thinks Dadaism best expresses the human condition or Adrian Gonzalez’s performance can be measured by newfangled metrics, doesn’t mean that everyone has to appreciate it.

That’s what makes the world go around.

Nevertheless, since the regular baseball season is all over except for a couple of playoff teams and the ledger sheets are all but balanced, it the perfect time of year to submit a non-voting/non-BBWAA submission to the post-season award discussion. That is, if I were allowed to vote, this is the way it would go. 

We can debate the works of Marcel Duchamp in a post to come. For now, the arts (National Leaguers only):

MVP

1. Joey Votto, Reds
2. Albert Pujols, Cardinals
3. Carlos Gonzalez, Rockies
4. Troy Tulowitzki, Rockies
5. Roy Halladay, Phillies
6. Adrian Gonzalez, Padres
7. Matt Holliday, Cardinals
8. Brian McCann, Braves
9. Aubrey Huff, Giants

10.  Ubaldo Jimenez, Rockies

Generally when selecting these types of awards I prefer to eschew the stats and focus on the best player on the best team. As my good friend and producer of the Daily News Live program on CSN, Dan Roche, says, “Wins are a fancy metric that explains which teams gets to go to the playoffs and which does not.” So based on that astute (and right) point, Joey Votto is the MVP over Albert Pujols in the National League.

Of course it helps that Votto also rates in the top three in the Triple Crown categories and has the best OPS in the league, but simply, Votto’s team was much better than those of Pujols and Carlos Gonzalez of the Rockies.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m a sucker for a good story and Votto and the Reds are all of that. Last season Votto went on the disabled list for clinical depression brought on by the sudden death of his father, a condition that inflicts many but is still kind of a taboo issue in the slow-to-change world of baseball. Meanwhile, the Reds ran away with the NL Central just a season after their ninth straight losing season. The Reds success comes from their improved hitting, which paced by Votto, led the National League in batting, runs, slugging and homers.

So Votto is the MVP because winning matters.

Cy Young

1. Roy Halladay, Phillies
2. Ubaldo Jimenez, Rockies
3. Adam Wainwright, Cardinals

Go ahead and rate the No. 2 or No. 3 finisher wherever you like, just put Halladay at the top of the Cy Young list. Indeed, the winning argument plays big here since Halladay went 21-10 and had just two no-decisions, which means when the game was on the line he was in there.

Then again, with 250 2/3 innings and the league leadership in complete games, shutouts, wins and walks per nine innings stand out, too. But here are some other interesting stats on Halladay’s season.

• Halladay walked just four batters in four pitches in 2010. That’s up from one in 2009.
• 26 percent of the hitters Halladay faced in 2010 fell into an 0-2 count.
• Nearly 70 percent of Halladay’s first pitches were strikes.

Obviously, Halladay’s command and repertoire of pitches plays well. So too does his standing as the ace amongst aces on the Phillies staff. Not only was he the first Phillies pitcher to win 20 games since Steve Carlton in 1982 and the first righty in club history to win 20 since Robin Roberts in 1955, but also no Phillies pitcher has sniffed at 250 innings since Curt Schilling tallied 268 in 1998.

Meanwhile, Halladay should be the first Phillies pitcher to win the award since Steve Bedrosian in 1987 and the fourth different Phillie to do it (Bedrosian, Carlton, John Denny).

Rookie of the Year

1. Buster Posey, Giants
2. Jason Heyward, Braves
3. Jaime Garcia, Cardinals

Wait a second… where’s Stephen Strasburg? Perhaps he’ll return to battle for the Cy Young Award in 2012 after a partial rookie season ended with an appointment with the orthopedist. Nevertheless, the 2010 rookie class in the National League is pretty solid. Gabby Sanchez and Mike Stanton of the Marlins had strong seasons, but didn’t make the list. In the NL Central Neil Walker of the Pirates, Chris Johnson of the Astros, and Starlin Castro and Tyler Colvin of the Cubs, should be mainstays.

Still, the Giants Buster Posey can hit, and better yet, he’s a catcher who can play some first base when he needs a break from squatting. Really, it’s a pretty crowded field where six or seven different guys could win and no one should complain.

Manager of the Year

1. Dusty Baker, Reds
2. Charlie Manuel, Phillies
3. Bud Black, Padres

One of these years Charlie Manuel should win the manager of the year award, and if there was ayear to do it, 2010 seemed right. After all, Manuel might have done his best skippering this year, keeping together the team as it busted at the seams and fell to 48-46 shortly after the All-Star Break only to go 47-18 the rest of the way. But Dusty Baker gets it since the Reds had nine straight losing seasons and haven’t been to the playoffs since 1995.

Plus, Dusty is just so cool, isn’t he? With the always-present toothpick, fashionable glasses and wristbands it’s hard to deny Dusty’s style. Why would a manager need wristbands? Really, Dusty… wristbands? Does Ttto Francona even wear a jersey under his windbreaker?

Besides, who didn’t want to see Dusty smack up Tony La Russa during that brawl between the Reds and Cardinals last month? Come on… admit it. You wanted to see Dusty put him in a figure-four leg lock.

The 2010 Phillies: The greatest team that nearly wasn't

WASHINGTON — Although the Phillies have done nothing more than guarantee three more games on the schedule, there is already a buzz whether the 2010 team is the best in club history. With 94 wins and a chance to be the first National League team since the 1942-44 Cardinals to make it to the World Series three years in a row, the Phillies aren’t flirting with just franchise greatness… this is all-time stuff.

Of course the hyperbole alarm sounds whenever anyone puts out the “best ever” line, and even in this case the players are leery of celebrating anything more than what has already been accomplished. In fact, Jimmy Rollins said for this Phillies team to be considered great they have to win the World Series.

However, in the same breath Rollins says the 2010 team is the best he’s ever played on.

“Definitely. We’re better all around—less question marks. Not that question marks ever bothered us because we like to prove skeptics wrong, but coming into this year there were only one or two things people were iffy about,” Rollins said. “Then we had a great acquisition in little Roy [Oswalt] and that took the pressure off of Cole [Hamels], and then Roy [Halladay] took the pressure off of everybody. He just came in and shut the door. Lights out.”

The weird part is general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. says there were internal discussions with the team’s brass over whether or not it was time to cut bait. Struggling to score runs during an extended stretch in July where the Phillies lost three out of four in Pittsburgh and Chicago, Amaro said the idea of trading some of the integral pieces to the fourth straight NL East title had been broached.

“There was some concern that maybe guys were getting older, less productive,” Amaro said. “If you look up and down our lineup, I don’t know if there is any guy, other than maybe Carlos Ruiz, who is having a career year. We talked about this internally and yet we still are creeping up on 95 wins, which is amazing to me. I would have been the first to be able to tell you that I didn’t think we were going to get to 90 wins when we were right around the middle of July. So for us to kind of turn on the way we’ve turned it on, is even surprising to me. 

“What’s great about this is that, one, we really haven’t had the kind of production that we typically would have from even the guys in the middle [of the lineup]. Chase Utley hasn’t had his typical year. Ryan Howard hasn’t had his typical year. Jimmy Rollins obviously hasn’t had a great year, he’s had injury issues and such. We’ve got a lot of down production from a lot of guys and hopefully they can turn it on and come up with some offensive production as we get into the postseason.”

So call it the great break up that wasn’t. Following the team’s fourth straight loss and sixth in seven games to send its record to 48-46, the Phillies won eight in a row and 13 out of the next 15 games. They also made a deal to add Roy Oswalt to the rotation and became even more fearsome.

From that low point of 48-46 and seven games out in the NL East, the Phillies have gone 46-17 and six games up and winning games at a .730 clip. There was a game after a Friday afternoon loss in Chicago where Manuel sat at his desk in the cramped office and went over the math in his head while wondering aloud if his team could get it together. Less than a week later, hitting coach Milt Thompson was fired then, for whatever reason, the Phillies began winning at a rate that exceeded the more modest numbers Manuel charted in his head.

Yet paced by pitching with the hitters beginning to find their way, the Phillies are peaking at the right time. Still, the team knows that none of it matters unless they go the whole way. The great lesson learned during the current run is winning has a way of changing the way people look at things.

For history to judge the Phillies most favorably, they have to win.

After all, does anyone remember much about the Oakland teams that went to the postseason in four straight seasons but never made it past the ALDS? How about the Indians of the 1990s that made it the playoffs for five seasons in a row and the World Series twice, but never wore the ring?

Of course there are also the Braves that dominated divisional play for 14 years in a row, but have just one title—against the Indians in ’95—to show for it.

Going back a bit, the Orioles made it to the World Series three years in a row (1969, 1970, 1971), but won it once. The same thing happened with Oakland in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Those teams are remembered as dynasties that might have been had it been able to finish the deal.

Are the Phillies worried about how history might judge them?

“You play this game to try and win championships and that’s our focus,” Howard said. “We stay focused on the task at hand and let you guys tell us where it fits into the history books. That will sort itself out.”

Like Howard, Rollins isn’t ready for reflection. Just winning.

“I haven’t thought about it like that, but it’s something I’ll go through when it’s all said and done,” Rollins said. “It’s hard to do. Everything has to go your way, you have to have a good team, you have to have great pitching, you have to have timely hitting, you have to have guys who are having career years who are coming together where things are going your way. You don’t think too far into the future. You just try and blaze your own trail right now. And when the light is out, then you look back.”

Phillies take celebrating seriously

WASHINGTON — Sometimes life’s moments are fleeting. They pass by without pausing ever-so slightly to allow someone to run out to the car to get the camera or go to the Men’s Wearhouse for the proper costume.

Of course if a person has to abide by a dress code to properly commemorate anything, it probably isn’t worth it.

Nevertheless, with folks in the regular, old square world, certain passages of time are celebrated. Only instead of reveling when the moment actually occurs, we plan parties, send out invitations, order a cake and drinks, establish a dress code and then allow everyone to come over and treat their space like it’s a hotel room.

But major league baseball players don’t live like the rank-and-file. No, they live in the moment, take them on day at a time and don’t go planning for big events down the road when games remain on the schedule. They don’t dance if there is no music and don’t party if there is nothing to celebrate. More than keeping it real, ballplayers simply do not sweat the small stuff.

Isn’t that a good way to be? Sure, baseball players are blissfully ignorant and live life inside an insulated cocoon, shielded from such scary things like the news or weather reports and ushered from city to city via a cortege of busses, shuttles and chartered flights where only suckers stand in line or can’t get after-hours room service.

Hey, that $81 per diem isn’t going to spend itself.

But there is something pure about living in the moment. It’s a lot like baseball before the American League instituted the designated hitter and Tony La Russa began batting his pitcher in the No. 8 spot. It’s very real and in the workaday world where we’re continually told what we’re supposed to like and what we have to consume in our diets—media or otherwise—it’s refreshing to know that ballplayers still no how to party.

Sure, the Phillies’ goal is to sew up the NL East as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, the team’s Amtrak train was probably just outside of Baltimore on Sunday night when they learned they were eligible to advance to the postseason. Seeing as the iPad has rightly surpassed the Bluetooth ear piece as the must-have bit of uncommon man, geek couture in the Phillies’ clubhouse, the ballplayers likely knew instantly when the Reds sealed the deal by beating the Padres and secure a spot for the local nine in the playoffs. As such, Brad Lidge said he and his teammates thought about adjourning to the club car for a tall, cold one and raise a glass to leaping over the first hurdle, but once the moment came it was a little too anticlimactic.

“We didn’t do anything,” Lidge said with a shrug. “I suppose another team would be doing back flips, after all, you want to just get in the dance.”

But?

“You know…”

It’s not quite a been-there-done-that jawn for Lidge and some of the team’s veterans, but at the same time, it is. This ain’t the first rodeo for most of these guys so if they are going to dance, there better be some music. Besides, it’s important to take the time and celebrate manager Charlie Manuel says.

“If you go all season and you win your division you should celebrate,” Manuel said. “I think the team should have some free time—cocktails, a little drink or whatever else you want to throw in there. I think it’s a time to celebrate and rejoice. You did something and it’s been a long year. You’re fighting to get to the World Series, but I call it the first step. There are four steps to it and the first one is to get in.”

But what about the guys who haven’t been there before?  Every season there are a few new guys who are integral to the success of the team, but haven’t danced the dance before. This year it’s Roy Halladay and Mike Sweeeney ready to make their first ever playoff appearances. Only the interesting thing with Halladay and Sweeney is they have played a combined 29 seasons without so much as a sniff at the postseason.

Needless to say, after 16 years in the big leagues to finally sew up a playoff spot while riding an Amtrak train to Washington, was a bit anticlimactic to say the least.

But no worries there, says Sweeney.

“It was a bit anticlimactic, but over the past few months my goal has changed,” Sweeney explained. “It went from, ‘Golly, I’d really like the chance to play in the postseason.’ And now that it’s becoming a reality, my goal has changed because of my teammates in this locker room. It’s no longer, ‘I just want to play in a playoff game.’ It’s, ‘I want to win the whole darn thing.’”

With Halladay pitching on Monday night with the chance to seal it, Manuel expects him to amp it up a notch. Oh, he won’t let on that anything is different, but Manuel knows better and it appeared as if Halladay and his catcher Chooch Ruiz spent some extra time going over the Nationals’ hitters before the game.

Hadn’t they already seen the Nats plenty of times this year?

No way… Halladay isn’t leaving anything to chance.

Neither is Sweeney, who is solely focused on the task at hand.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet, so hopefully we win tonight and get to splash some champagne and it feels like a reality,” said Sweeney, nothing that he and his high school teammates sprayed apple cider after a schoolboy championship. “I hope we can get the win tonight so I can really embrace that emotion.”

It's a clincher! Looking back at party time for the Phillies

Baring a collapse of New York Mets proportions, the Phillies will clinch the NL East for the fourth season in a row. This will likely go down as early as Saturday and as late as next Monday or Tuesday in Washington.

Nevertheless, we are riding on unchartered waters here in Philadelphia. The Phillies have never been in the playoffs for four straight seasons, nor had Connie Mack’s Athletics ever been to the postseason in four straight seasons. For the A’s, they had to move twice before pulling off such a stunt.

Now here’s the crazy part… since the Phillies won the NL East in 1993, only the Braves and the Mets have won the division. In other words, the NL East resembles the NBA Finals during the 1980s when only the Celtics, Sixers, Rockets and Lakers ever got there. Eventually the Pistons and Bulls broke through, but for a long time it seemed as if only a handful of teams ever made it to the big dance.

But like a team that has been there before, the Phillies aren’t getting too worked up over their fourth straight title. At least not yet. In fact, last season the Phillies seemed a little unnerved about going into Miller Park in Milwaukee to find protective plastic sheeting above the lockers ready to be pulled down like a cheap shade.

It never happened. By the end of the series in Milwaukee, the plastic was gone from the clubhouse and packed into a storage closet somewhere in the bowels of the ballpark.

Nevertheless, if the Phillies can get it done on Saturday with a win over the Mets coupled with a loss by the Braves, it will go down as the earliest clincher in terms of games played in team history. To capture their first playoff berth in 26 years in 1976, the Phillies wrapped up the East in Game 155 and their 95^th win.

As it stands, the Phillies are 93-61 heading into Game 155 this season.

Meanwhile, if the Phillies clinch before Sunday, it will be the earliest the team ensured a playoff berth ever. Even in 1950, before the advent of divisional play, the Phillies needed the full slate of games to get to the postseason.

Anyway, here’s a look at the playoff-clinching games since Major League Baseball started divisional play.

 ***

2009

Game 158 vs. Houston at Citizens Bank Park (Sept. 30)

Box score

This should have gone down in Milwaukee, but the job got done just as well. Nevertheless, the clincher in a 10-3 rout over the Astros was all but over in the fourth inning when Pedro Feliz cleared the bases with a two-run, one-out double off of Brian Moehler. From there, the Phillies piled on with back-to-back triples in the fifth inning from Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino, a triple in the sixth from Chooch Ruiz, and a two-run bomb in the seventh by Raul Ibanez.

However, the best parts about this one was that Pedro Martinez started the game and ran onto the field after the third out, bouncing like a kid with his arms raised in the air.

Apropos of nothing, how much fun would the 2010 team be with Pedro as the teams’ fifth starter?

The best part was when Charlie Manuel waved in Brad Lidge with two outs in the ninth inning. It was a classy move by Manuel for a classy ballplayer like Lidge. Moreover, Lidge has been on the mound to throw the last pitch in seven straight clinching games… a streak that still lives on.

 ***

2008
Game 161 vs. Washington at Citizens Bank Park (Sept. 27)

Box score

Remember this one? Remember how you felt when Brad Lidge loaded the bases with one out and the go-ahead runs in scoring position and how the shot by Ryan Zimmerman looked like it was going to ruin the closer’s perfect slate?

Aside from Jimmy Rollins’ heroic diving stop to spin the game-ending double play, this one is remembered for Jamie Moyer’s second straight win in a clinching game. Aside from his effort in Game 3 of the World Series, the finales in 2007 and 2008 will be the old lefty’s legacy with the Phillies.

 ***

2007
Game 162 vs. Washington at Citizens Bank Park (Sept. 30)

Box score

The fact that the Phillies were even in a position to win the East took an unprecedented collapse by the Mets. Couple the huge comeback (down 6½ games with 17 to go) with a 14-year playoff drought, and the clubhouse scene was one of the all-time great parties in the history of Philadelphia clinchers.

The truth is a lot of us never saw such a thing. Champagne corks popping and flying all over the room. Beer spray dousing everyone and anything that moves. Pharmaceuticals and English bulldogs show up and drag low-end celebrities and political chaff around, too.

In other words, it’s no different than the parties you threw in college only without the bonfire. Where this party had it over those from back in the college days is that Jade McCarthy and J.D. Durbin made it to this one, and, well… when Jade and J.D. show up then it’s a party.

Of course by the time the fog cleared and the playoffs began, the Phillies were gone in four days.

 ***

1993
Game 157 vs. Pittsburgh at Three Rivers Stadium (Sept. 28)

Box score

Get a load of this… I watched this one from the balcony at the Troc at a Fugazi show. Some guy sitting in front of me had a Sony watchman TV and we got to see Mariano Duncan crush the game-winning grand slam before the band took the stage.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Commonwealth, Harry Kalas was singing High Hopes after the Phils finally wrapped it up. But since this was the Macho Row era of club, the party didn’t end with the sing-a-long. Oh no. Check out the box score for the day after the clincher and check who IS NOT in the lineup.

That oughta tell you how long into the night this one went.

 ***

1983
Game 160 vs. Chicago at Wrigley Field (Sept. 28)

Box score

Who would have guessed that there would have been just one more clincher for the Phillies in the next 24 years after this one? Sheesh.

Regardless, this one was in the days before there were lights at Wrigley Field so it’s likely that Larry Andersen took the guys over to The Lodge after the clubhouse celebration ended.

Here’s what I remember from this one – Mike Schmidt hit his 40^th homer of the season and Bo Diaz clubbed two of them all off ex-Phillie Dick Ruthven. The last out was caught by Greg Gross in left field with Al “Mr. T” Holland on the mound. I guess Holland looked like Mr. T to get a nickname like that. Seemed like a fun guy.

 ***

1981
Won first half

This was the strike year so by virtue of being in first place by the time the work stoppage occurred, the Phillies went to the first-ever NLDS. They lost in five games to the Expos, though St. Louis had the best overall record in the NL East.

***

1980
Game 161 vs. Montreal at Olympic Stadium (Oct. 4)

Box score

If we were ranking the best regular-season games in Phillies history, this one would have to be in the top three. Maybe even the top two. Frankly, it had everything. Comebacks, drama, suspense, crazy manager moves and then Mike Schmidt’s home run in the 11^th to give the Phillies the lead they never gave up.

Oh, but if Schmidt’s homer were the only highlight.

• Bob Boone laced a two-out single in the top of the 9^th to tie the game and force extra innings.
• Tug McGraw pitched the last three innings allowing just one hit to go with four strikeouts to get the win.
• September call up Don McCormack came in to catch in just his second big league inning in the ninth when Dallas Green yanked Boone for a pinch runner. McCormack got the first of his two Major League hits after Schmidt’s homer in the 11^th. From there, McCormack went on to play in just 14 big league innings the rest of his career over three game.

How the hell did Don McCormack get into that game?!

• The top four hitters in the Phillies lineup (Rose, McBride, Schmidt, Luzinski) went 11-for-19.

 ***

1978
Game 161 vs. Pittsburgh at Three Rivers Stadium (Sept. 30)

Box score

Here was the scenario for this one – if the Pirates won, then Game 162 would decide the NL East. Instead, the Phillies wrapped up division title No. 3 thanks to a clutch three-run homer from Greg Luzinski in the sixth inning.

The game started rather inauspiciously, too. Willie Stargell hit a grand slam in the first inning to give the Pirates the quick lead, but pitcher Randy Lerch made up for his pitching with a homer in the second and another in the fourth to cut the deficit to a run and set the table for Luzinski’s homer.

The game was not without drama at the end, either. Tug McGraw game on in the seventh and was within two outs of closing it out until the Pirates rallied for four runs and had the tying run at the plate when manager Danny Ozark went to Ron Reed to get the last outs.

 ***

1977
Game 157 vs. Chicago at Wrigley Field (Sept. 27)

Box score

I don’t remember this one, but from a look at the box score it looks like one of those old fashioned Wrigley Field games that used to be unique. Now those Wrigley Field games can break out anywhere in any ballpark. And since they play mostly night games at Wrigley these days, those wild games are a thing of the past.

Still, the second clincher for the Phillies featured five RBIs and a homer (and seven solid innings for the win) from Larry Christenson and a homer from Mike Schmidt in a 15-9 final.

***

1976
Game 155 vs. Montreal at Parc Jarry (Sept. 26)

Box score

The was the first and maybe the best of the Phillies clubs that won all those division titles. The Phils won a franchise-record 101 games, but they didn’t quite match up well enough against The Big Red Machine, who were on their were to becoming the last National League team to win back-to-back World Series titles.

Anyway, this clincher was the first game of a doubleheader, highlighted by a complete game from Jim Lonborg. So needless to say the nightcap had a slightly different lineup after the Phillies wrapped up their first playoff berth since 1950. In fact, John Vukovich started in the second game for his season debut. Vuke went on to start in 13 more games over five years for the Phillies – all but three came in 1980.

So there it is… looking forward to adding the new one at the top of this list over the weekend. The good part is the Phillies are old veterans at this and Charlie Manuel promised to make sure the scribes covering the team would be brought champagne.

Everyone loves Big Jim Thome

Not to sound too sappy, but whenever Jim Thome hits a home run, the world actually seems like a better place. Maybe someday we’ll learn that Jim Thome’s home runs cure certain infectious diseases, or, like something from Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, “angels get their wings.”

That would only make sense. In fact, try this experiment some time…

Go to a ballgame. Or hell, go to a movie, a show or the store. Anything. Just go some place where you will be surrounded by people you know. Now when you’re going through the rite of watching a game, shopping, etc., make sure to keep close tabs on the Twins game so that when (if) Big Jim goes deep you can announce it to your friends.

Big Jim just hit a home run!

After making this declaration, run to a mirror and look at your face because there is a 99.999 percent chance that you will be smiling. Ear to ear, baby.

In 20 years of hitting baseballs, Jim Thome has made a lot of people smile. Sure, there is the 589 home runs he’s belted in his career, which is the fifth-most in the asterisk era. Baring a historical hot streak, Thome will join Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. as the only players to unsuspiciously bash 600 homers, next season. That’s a long shot for this year, however, there weren’t too many people in baseball who thought Big Jim would turn in the type of season he did in 2010.

In fact, even though he has played in just 105 games as the DH in his first season with the Minnesota Twins, he should tally a vote or two for AL MVP. Interestingly, Thome’s 25 homers this season are the same as the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, and he also leads the AL Central champion Twins in the category. It has been Thome, even more than reigning AL MVP Joe Mauer and 2006 MVP, Justin Morneau, who has most turned the team into a serious World Series contender.[1]

But it’s not just the home runs that make people smile. No, that’s barely scratching the surface. Everything about the guy is smile –inducing. Shoot, just say his name… Jim Thome… maybe it ought to replace the word, “cheese,” before pictures get taken.

OK, everyone look here and say, “Jim Thome!”

People just love Jim Thome. Actually, they just don’t love him as much as they celebrate him. That’s pretty much a universal sentiment in the baseball world where folks can get pretty jaded and cynical rather quickly. In a business that only goes deeper into the corporate abyss filled with hypocrisy, double standards and a dog-eat-dog mentality, it’s the genuineness of Thome that stands out. And the thing about that is all Big Jim does is subscribe to a theory concerning basic decency.

Joe Posnanski, the Sports Illustrated writer, dropped a cover story on us in the latest issue of the popular magazine that should have been delivered to mailboxes stuffed with gumdrops and lollipops, nailed it. The stuff about the guy we tried to convey to readers during his three seasons in Philadelphia only to figure out that Thome’s kindness wasn’t just relegated to those in baseball, is now available to a mass audience. Folks that might not otherwise know about Big Jim are greeted with passages like this one:

"I really do try hard to be a good teammate," Thome says. "I can't run very fast, but I try to always run hard. I may strike out a lot, but I try to walk to set up the guys who are hitting after me. The other day I didn't score from first on a double. I cost my guy an RBI. I felt terrible about that. I told him, 'Look, I really tried, but I'm old and I'm slow. I hope I can make it up to you in another way.'"

Teammates know he is sincere, and they love him for it. No, he can't run. He has played all of eight innings in the field (at first base) since 2007. His defense was the main reason the White Sox decided not to re-sign him. "[Manager] Ozzie [Guillen] wanted flexibility in his lineup," general manager Kenny Williams says. Guillen himself says, "Go ahead, blame me... . But I'll tell you I love Jim Thome. I wish I didn't. I wish I f------ hated the guy. But I can't hate him. Nobody can hate him."

Ex-teammates still talk about Thome lovingly in Cleveland (he does get booed a bit by Indians fans, but that's for leaving in the first place) and in Philadelphia and Chicago. He is relentlessly positive. Perkins remembers his first or second day back with the Twins this year after a long stretch in the minors. He was walking by Thome, who was taking his slow, methodical phantom batting practice. "And suddenly, he just stops," Perkins says, "and he smiles and gives me a fist. I mean, it's not like I'm Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau. He barely knows who I am. But that's the kind of guy he is. He's the best teammate I've ever had... . I think everybody thinks that."

Thome smiles in his sheepish way when the story is recounted to him. "I think you just want to be a good person," he says. "I'm getting to do what I've wanted to do my whole life. I'm getting to do what millions and millions of people would like to do."

Quick story: a few years back when Aaron Rowand was still playing for the Phillies (he was traded for Thome, of course) and holding court in the clubhouse, he told a story about the first time he ever met Big Jim. At the time Rowand was still playing for the White Sox and finally coming into his own as player. So there he was on the field before a game, stretching and doing some calisthenics when suddenly, a man snuck up on him and wrapped him up in a vice-like bear hug.

When Rowand finally was let free by Thome, Big Jim launched into a stream of consciousness in which he heaped piles of praise on Rowand. But that wasn’t the part of the story that send folks into a gigantic smile… that comes with the kicker.

“I had never even met him before,” Rowand said with a fake incredulousness.

And, of course, a gigantic smile.

From Posnanski’s latest:

Jim Thome holds out his left hand toward the umpire as he asks for a second to gather himself. He digs his cleats into the dirt, steadies himself. And then, like Robert Redford in The Natural, he points his bat past Thornton, toward the centerfield bleachers.

No, really, like Redford. Roy Hobbs was his inspiration. When Thome was a minor leaguer, he could not quite open up his hips when he swung. He was a 13th-round pick of the Indians in 1989; nobody saw all that much in him. His first year in the minors he batted .237 in rookie ball, and he did not hit a single home run. Then—"because I'm the luckiest guy in the world," he says—he happened to run into a hitting guru named Charlie Manuel. Manuel, who was Thome's manager in Triple A, told the kid that he had to open up his hips to power the ball to all fields. Thome tried, but he didn't really know how to do it.

"He saw something in me I didn't," Thome says. Manuel kept hammering away at him—open those hips, open 'em up—until finally they were in the clubhouse in Charlotte one day, and they were watching The Natural, and they saw Roy Hobbs point the bat toward the pitcher. "Let's do that," Manuel said.

Life is not often like the movies, but the Roy Hobbs gesture worked. It reminded Thome to keep his stance open and to drive the ball to left center. His power emerged. His strikeouts emerged. Jim Thome the slugger emerged.

Here’s another quick one on Big Jim:

It’s a common rite in baseball circles for players to quietly ask each other for autographs. What happens is one player on an opposing team gives a shiny, new baseball to a clubbie and sends him over to the other clubhouse to have it signed by a certain player. Players love signing those baseballs, too. It’s a huge thrill to sign for another player and a true sign of respect if a peer asks for an autograph (without actually asking).

Nevertheless, it’s usually something reserved for the big-time players. Word is Cal Ripken Jr. used to make special time just to sign items from the other team. All opposing team requests had to be made before the series against Baltimore began and Ripken would honor them before the opponent left town. But that was nothing like the one request I actually witnessed with my own two eyes and ears.

Sitting with Red Sox old-time legend Johnny Pesky in the home team clubhouse at Fenway Park, ol Mr. Red Sox summoned a clubbie to fetch two brand new balls to have signed by Thome. No big deal, right? Well, when the clubbie returned no more than 10 minutes later with two signed balls from Thome along with two more clean ones with a counter request.

“Jim would like you to sign these for him,” the clubbie told Pesky.

Pesky took a long moment, clearly taken aback by the request. Then, exhilarated by the fact that Jim Thome had sent two baseballs to have signed, Pesky looked at the clubbie before fixing a stare on me and asked:

“Are you joking with me,” Pesky said, amazed that Thome wanted the balls signed. “Jim Thome wants me to sign these?”

Needless to say, Pesky had the biggest smile on his face…

And Big Jim had just hit another home run.

He's 40 now. For a ballplayer, that's the age when everyone officially looks at you as ancient. Age 40 means the end is days away instead of years.

Still, based on a conversation with Thome in Clearwater, Fla. this spring, and reiterated in Posnanski’s story, Thome warns that there is still plenty of baseball left for him to play. For now at least, Thome says he isn’t taking one last lap around the track.

“I don’t think so,” Thome said when asked this spring if 2010 will be his last season. “For me, not yet. Maybe soon. I have kids and I want to be with my kids, but I think you know it [time to retire]. When the time is right maybe I’ll wake up and say, ‘You know what, maybe this is it.’ It’s not there yet. I love the game and I have an appreciation toward the game and I respect what’s been given to me.”

The 600 homers is looking him right in the face, but it still takes a lot of effort to get his body pieced back together to serve as a big league DH. But you know what, if there was ever a guy who has accepted his place in the game and is the personification of aging gracefully, it’s Thome.

“I think it’s difficult, but sometimes it’s the reality,” he said. “I don’t want to say you aren’t young forever, but you play the game and you work hard and you do what you gotta do to prepare, but there is a time you’re body feels different. My body doesn’t feel the way it did when I was 30. I’m going to be 40 this year and I’ve come to grips with that. I’ve had to work hard to stay where I’m at, but you try to approach it as it comes.”

Then again, Thome always says things like that. It’s why he’s been beloved wherever he’s played and why everyone will miss him when he’s gone.

But he’s not gone yet. Soon, yes. But the Twins are headed to the playoffs marking the third year in a row for Big Jim, with three different teams. Amazingly, Thome has gone to the playoffs with every team he has played for, except for one…

Philadelphia.

Crazy, right?

“You try and look at your career and you realize you’ve played a long time. It’s one of them things that you want to keep playing and your heart is there, but this is probably going to be a little bit of a different role for me,” Thome explained that day in Clearwater. “But I still wanted to play. I still wanted to go out and compete. It’s a great situation, it’s a great organization and it has great people — the manager is great. I’m happy. I’m really just happy.”

---

[1] Can you imagine a World Series in Minnesota? In the first season in an open-air ballpark since leaving the Met for the Metrodome in 1981, the Twins could host Games 3, 4 and 5 of the World Series, which would be played on Oct. 30, 31 and Nov. 1. The average high temperature during the daylight hours in Minneapolis in late October/early November is 40 degrees. With the games slated to start long after the sun goes down, a Minnesota World Series could be quite chilly to say the least. 

Halladay lucky and good to get to 20 wins

A couple of years ago, the media grabbed onto the Phillies’ 10,000^th loss as way to prove the futility of a ballclub that had captured just one championship in 124 years to that point. Missing from all the point-and-laughter over the milestone loss, of course, was any semblance of context. Yes, the Phillies were a flat-out dreadful baseball club throughout the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, most of the 1950s, a majority of the 1960s, the first half of the 1970s, the latter part of the 1980s and all but one year of the 1990s.

But really… that’s just nitpicking.

Seriously, if we have said it once we’ve said it a thousand times: stick around long enough and your team will lose some games. And as one of the older clubs in the history of Major League Baseball, the Phillies have lost more games than any other team in professional sports history.

Hey, there always has to be a loser, right?

But during this portion of franchise history, the Phillies are on an unprecedented run. They are about to lock up a playoff appearance for the fourth straight season for the first time in club history, and baring a seismic collapse the Phils should finish the year with a win total that rates in the top three or four in club history.

Indeed, these are heady times for the Phillies. That’s especially the case considering the team has had just one losing season since 2001[1], a streak only surpassed by the run the club had during its first Golden Age during the mid-1970s and early 1980s.Considering the Phillies have an excellent shot to become the first National League team to make it to the World Series in three consecutive years since Stan Musial’s Cardinals did it in 1942, 1943 and 1944 (they made it back in 1946, too), we’re going to be talking about these Phillies for decades.

So why is it that until Roy Halladay finished the deal on Tuesday night that the Phillies had not seen a pitcher win 20 games in a season since 1982? Or, better yet, how come a right-handed pitcher hadn’t come close since Robin Roberts did it in 1955?

Maybe if folks were looking for something to grab onto to personify the amount of difficulty winning games the Phillies have had historically, perhaps the dearth of 20-game winners is the trenchant caveat. After all, since Steve Carlton last did it in ’82, 20 games had been won 98 times in the major leagues. In fact, three men in the Phillies clubhouse—Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Jamie Moyer—did it a combined six times during the Phillies’ drought.

Hell, Joaquin Andujar, the flakey right-hander with the Cardinals, won 20 in consecutive seasons in ’84 and ’85. Other infamous notables to win 20 games between Carlton and Halladay are pitchers like Lamar Hoyt, John Smiley, Jose Lima, Ramon Martinez (Pedro’s brother), Richard Dotson, Esteban Loiaza, Jon Lieber, Mike Hampton, Matt Morris, John Burkett, Rick Helling, Scott Erickson, Bill Gullickson and Danny Jackson.

Meanwhile, the Phillies had one pitcher win 19 games in a season (John Denny in ’83) and another lose 19 games in a season (Omar Daal in 2000). Otherwise, few, if any, Phillies pitchers even flirted with winning 20. Lieber got to 18 in 2005 and Curt Schilling won 17 games once. During the 1987 season, Shane Rawley was 17-6 on Aug. 31 then proceeded to lose his next five decisions while the Phillies went 2-5 in his final seven starts.

Look, we all know that wins is hardly the most important stat to determine the ability of a pitcher. After all, Nolan Ryan went 8-16 with a league-leading 2.76 ERA and 270 strikeouts during that odd 1987 season and finished in the top five in the Cy Young Award balloting.

But as manager Charlie Manuel tried to explain after Tuesday’s game, there’s something magical about a pitcher who wins 20 games.

“To me, 20 wins in the sign of an exceptional season,” Manuel said. “It'’s a prestige thing. People remember when you win 20 games.”

Still, that doesn’t explain why the Phillies have not been able to have a 20-game winner until now. Halladay says typically a 20-game winner pitches for a good team and that it is a “team accomplishment” where the pitcher often doesn’t have much control.

“I think it says more about the team than anything,” Halladay said. “In the past when I had done it, the team played well when I pitched, but not so well the other times.”

Nevertheless, how does a team like the Phillies go 28 years without a 20-game winner? Better yet, how does a team go 55 years without a right-handed pitcher getting 20 wins in a season? It has to be some sort of a freak thing, right…

“I would think so,” Halladay said. “Based on the teams they’ve had here it’s just a matter of time before Cole [Hamels] does it. I think that with a little bit of luck he probably could have done it this year. There’s definitely a lot that goes into it, but there are a lot of guys here who are capable of doing it.”

Halladay explained it perfectly. To win 20 games in a season a pitcher has to be both lucky and good with an extra serving of lucky. Think about it… Halladay has 20 wins this season, but he also has 10 losses. In those 10 losses Halladay’s strikeouts-to-walks ratio is actually better than it is in his wins. Plus, six of his losses have come in games where he received two runs or less in support. Strangely, Halladay has a losing record (8-9) when the Phillies score up to five runs for him.

Along those lines, Hamels has suffered eight of his 10 losses in games where the Phillies scored two runs or less and he’s 9-2 when he gets at least three runs.

So let’s chalk it up to 28 years of weird luck as the reason no Phillies’ pitcher has broken through the 20-win barrier. It’s just one of those baseball things that can be explained to a point and then everything just falls apart.

Kind of like a calculus class.

As for the 10,000-plus losses since 1883, talent, more than luck, ruled there.

---

1 The Phillies went 80-81in 2002, a fact that drove then manager Larry Bowa insane. The record was one thing, but the reason why the Phillies lost the last game of the season to the Marlins might be something that ends up causing the stress that finally kills the man. Locked in a tie game with one out in the 10^th inning and the speedy Luis Castillo on third base, Juan Encarnacion lifted a pop up in foul territory that first baseman Travis Lee would have been wise to let drop. But Lee had a plane to catch in order to get home for the off-season. If the game lasted too much longer, he would miss that flight. So he caught the ball with his back to the infield and his momentum carrying him away from the action. Castillo easily scored on the sac fly, the season ended and Lee caught his flight.

Health and confidence have brought Brad Lidge back

Crank up the time machine for a moment and contemplate this scenario for a moment:

Let’s say it’s 2009 again and the Phillies are headed to the World Series to play the Yankees. Rather than make things too complicated, let’s just say everything has remained the same. Instead of Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt, the Phillies still have Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez. Otherwise, everything else is the same except for Pedro Feliz is the third baseman and Placido Polanco still is in Detroit.

Not imagine if the Phillies went against the Yankees with Cole Hamels and his new-found focus and maturation and Brad Lidge with his current Zen-like feeling of healthiness and effectiveness.

If we could put the 2010 version of Hamels and Lidge in the time machine and go back to last year’s World Series, does anyone think the Yankees still win? Does anyone think it lasts six games?

This little exercise is just for us, though. After all ballplayers don’t think about time machines or what could have been. In Major League Baseball, a player is only as good as his last swing or his last pitch. In other words, there’s no sense worrying about what happened in 2009 when a ballclub as good as the Phillies is tearing through the NL East in 2010.

Living in the now, as they say, Lidge paused ever-so slightly to ponder the idea of transporting his current pitching ability to last October. That’s what polite people do even when they are trying to be diplomatic. However, based on how well Hamels and Lidge performed during the 3-1 victory over the Braves in the first game of the September showdown between the NL East frontrunners, the Phillies’ chances look pretty good going forward.

“I don’t know if I would say I’m different,” Lidge answered when asked the difference between last September and this September. “I would say I’m healthy and because I’m healthy, my control is better. Because my control is better, my confidence is better.”

And because Lidge has that confidence the 2010 Phillies just might be the best team Lidge has ever pitched for.

“If I played on a better team than this I don’t know who it would be,” he said. “In a roundabout way I guess I’d say this is as good a team as I have ever been on.”

Lidge has played a pretty significant part in the team’s success, too. Interestingly, it seems as if he has quietly slipped out of the spotlight, too. Last year, on the heels of his epic, 48-for-48 saves season which culminated with the closer dropping to his knees on the grass in front of the pitchers’ mound after dusting Eric Hinske with a light-s out slider, Lidge went the other way in 2009. In fact, if there were two seasons more diametrically opposed that Lidge’s first two seasons with the Phillies by any other player in baseball history, then report that guy to the circus.

In 2009 Lidge had the worst season in baseball history by a pitcher who recorded at least 20 saves. In that regard, the thoughtful righty notched 31 saves in 42 chances to go with a 7.21 ERA. He also led the league in cortisone shots and after an appearance in Game 3 of the World Series where they Yankees rallied against him in the ninth inning to take a 3-1 lead in the series, Lidge went back under the knife during the off-season.

Blown saves, shots, surgeries and foolhardy contract extensions are what people mentioned when Lidge’s name was bandied about.

But these days no one really even talks about Lidge much at all. Even after taunting the Braves with his devastating slider for two strikeouts in a perfect ninth to notch his 24^th save in 29 chances, Lidge smiled when told that he was quietly having a solid season. Then again, his is the type of job that people only talk about when it isn’t going well. When a closer has a season like the one Lidge is wrapping up behind a trio of ace pitchers like Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Hamels, relative anonymity can provide calming reassurance.

“I had two surgeries and the one I had for my knee it got better right away. The one I had on my elbow it just took longer. There was more scar tissue and it took longer to get the muscles working around that,” Lidge explained. “Fortunately, it has. Better late than never, but obviously, if I’m feeling good at the end of the year that’s where I want to be.”

Still, things were just so… bad.  Not just bad, but frustratingly ugly bad where every single out recorded was a war.

“It was frustrating because I was expecting to have that feeling a lot sooner than I did,” Lidge said. “I was working hard on my rehab and figuring it has to come back eventually. Then all of sudden it would come back and then things would swell up again and I’d go get another shot. But fortunately your arm gets into the rhythm of the season again. It was like I was having interrupted spring training for a long time.”

But since the All-Star Break, Lidge has converted on 18 of 20 save chances and after giving up a walk-off homer to Ryan Zimmerman in Washington on July 31, Lidge has gone 14 of 15 in save opportunities, allowing just two earned runs in 19 2/3 innings. During that span he has allowed six walks—three of those in one game—with 22 strikeouts with just eight hits.

Better yet, he’s regained numbers similar to his 2008 season by making some big adjustments… or maybe just reverted back to a familiar pitch.

In ’08, Lidge threw his fastball only 43 percent of the time, opting mostly to go with his slider on 56 percent of his pitches. Actually, those two pitches were enough, considering the fastball barreled in around 94-95 mph and the slider had the look of a changeup until it dived off the table.

But in 2009, Lidge threw his fastball more than half of the time, often using it interchangeably with his best pitch. Hitters battered him at a .306 clip as his strikeouts per nine innings dropped to an all-time low.

So partially out of necessity, mixed with ability, Lidge made big adjustments. Like in 2008, he’s relied more on the slider this season, throwing it at a rate of nearly 60 percent. Meanwhile, his fastball rarely lights it up over 92-mph these days, which means he has to be that much more cognizant of his command.

Still, the metamorphosis is simply the mark more of a guy who gets it as it is someone understanding his health, body and abilities.

“I think the adjustment part, for sure, I can relate to. My adjustment was trying to get out there healthy. I feel like when I am, and I know what I can do but we had to take the steps to make sure I was healthy first,” Lidge explained. “I missed the first two months of this year, and the next two months were back and forth and getting cortisone shots here and there. But then, all of a sudden, you’re arm gets into the rhythm and back into the groove and you’re back into it.”

Around the All-Star Break is when Lidge started feeling better, then he started throwing better. Soon, without much fanfare, things started falling back into place.

“I felt that way in July but I was throwing inconsistently. Toward the end of the month I was throwing better and I know for the last two months when August rolled around I was healthy and knew I was going to start throwing good,” he said. “I just needed to get chances and fortunately I got to in August and that really helped.”

The results have been somewhat similar to the way they were in ’08. Opponents his .204 against him two years ago, compared to .205 this season. He walked 4.54 per nine innings in ’08 and exactly that same rate so far through 2010. Strangely enough, Lidge’s WHIP in 2008 and 2010 are the same at 1.23.

Is he back?

Just as strange as the rollercoaster ride of emotions and statistics, so too is the notion that Lidge has regained his form. Is it too early to tell, or have folks still not accepted the reality of the past two months of performances?

That’s one to ponder. In the meantime, jump back in that time machine and plop Lidge into some historical perspective….

For instance, Lidge has saved 30 games in four of his six full seasons with two years where he got more than 40 saves. Comparably, Goose Gossage only got 30 saves in a season twice. The same goes for Rollie Fingers. Bruce Sutter, the other closer in the Hall of Fame, notched four 30-plus saves seasons just like Lidge.

Of course, 30 saves doesn’t mean what it did in the old days. In fact, of the five closers in the Hall of Fame—Gossage, Sutter, Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and Hoyt Wilhelm—only one has put together more 30-plus saves seasons than Lidge. Certainly that will change when guys like Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman get in the Hall, but if he were able to get into a time machine and transport his stats to the 1970s and early ‘80s, Lidge would be on the path to a Hall-of-Fame career.

For what it’s worth, he’s prefer a path back to the World Series for now.

“It’s been a fun year,” Lidge said. “The last couple of months have been going really well for the bullpen, and if our starters keep going eight innings we’re going to be looking really good—everyone is going to be well rested down there.”

Chooch turns in a most valuable season

It was as poignant a moment a collision at home plate could be. Not quite a passing of the torch or a gathering of great baseball minds, but something deeper than that. It was as fleeting as any pitch in a game, but no less trenchant.

There, piled in a heap in front of home plate on a bang-bang play to end the visiting half of the fourth inning during Friday night’s game between the Phillies and Nationals were two catchers. There was Pudge, the veteran from Puerto Rico, often regarded as the best backstop of his generation in a line of great catchers with fantastic nicknames.

There was Buck, Gabby, Mickey, Yogi, Campy, Johnny, Kid, Pudge Fisk, Piazza, Joe Mauer and Pudge Rodriguez. A 14-time All-Star, one-time AL MVP and probable first-ballot Hall of Famer, modern catchers don’t come any more esteemed or well-rounded than Pudge Rodriguez.

Yet there he was being helped up off the ground by an up-and-comer from Panama nicknamed, Chooch. In his fourth full big-league season after being converted from the infield, Chooch Ruiz isn’t any threat to Pudge’s 10 seasons in which he batted .300 or his 13 Gold Glove Awards, but when it comes to October there are very few catchers in baseball history as good as Carlos Joaquin Ruiz. In 11 World Series games, the .353 batting average and 1.194 OPS is nothing to sneeze at. Mix in 10 games in the NLCS and Ruiz’s average holds steady at .349 with 10 of his 22 hits going for extra bases.

Not even the great Johnny Bench’s postseason stats would be nearly as good as Ruiz’s if his 1976 World Series performance hadn’t skewed the numbers.

So yes, Pudge Rodriguez knows all about Chooch Ruiz. Helped off the ground after Friday night’s collision, the future Hall of Famer took a long second to give his counterpart a tap on the head and a few kind words of respect.

That pause and acknowledgement from Pudge played louder than any “Choooooooch!” cheer from the fans at Citizens Bank Park.

“He’s a popular player because he plays the game hard,” Rodriguez said. “He calls good games and he does the job every day. He’s a fan favorite because he plays hard and does the things he needs to do. He’s being playing great since he got to the big leagues and he’s also doing a tremendous job in the playoffs.”

Pudge shrugged as if this was all common knowledge around big league clubhouses. But often overlooked in the Phillies lineup because of his better known teammates, the fact that Ruiz, 31, is flirting with batting .300 and reaching base at a .400 clip is a bit of a surprise. However, to those familiar with Ruiz’s role with the Phillies, to call him the MVP of the 2010 regular season is not really as outlandish as it sounds.

Sure, there are things that fans grasp onto like Ruiz’s serious demeanor, earnestness and unquenchable desire to win baseball games. He talks to his mother at home in Panama every day often about his hopes for his teammates. Ruiz is like the fans in that he is selfless in his desire for the Phillies to do well.

Who doesn’t like a serious man?

But who can fault Ruiz for taking it so seriously? It’s always big deal to Ruiz. Bullpen coach and catching instructor Mick Billmeyer says if there is one fault Ruiz has in his game it’s that he cares a lot. If a pitcher has a bad outing, Billmeyer says Ruiz looks at it as a reflection on him. Even when pitchers shake him off, Ruiz takes it seriously.

Even though Phillies pitchers have held the opponents to a .250 batting average with Ruiz behind the dish, including a miniscule .198 in 10 games by newcomer Roy Oswalt, it’s those 849 hits in more than 900 innings behind the plate that Ruiz takes to heart.

In fact, pitching coach Rich Dubee says Chooch takes hits by the opposition as a personal affront.

“He takes it very personally,” Dubee said. “In the three years here he has grown so much as a catcher it’s phenomenal. He’s the leader of our club back there defensively. He takes charge and he’s not afraid to sell his case and explain to pitchers what he’s seeing and they have great trust in him.”

The main reason why the Phillies have a three-game lead over the Braves in the NL East is because the team’s pitching has been so good. With guys like Oswalt, Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels heading up the starting rotation, the Phillies’ pitching is as deep as any team in the majors. But it’s not like Ruiz squats behind the plate and waits for the ball to arrive. No, he’s an active participant in the team’s pitching success.

The truth is Halladay, Oswalt and Hamels might not be as good without Ruiz back there.

“He has a lot of intangibles. One is he has really good vision back there. He has a great sense of where hitters are trying to go and what hitters are trying to do. That’s vitally important for a front-line catcher,” Dubee said. “Another thing he does is he puts a lot of energy into whatever he puts down for a pitch.”

Most telling is how much credit Halladay gave Ruiz after his perfect game last May, as well as the fact that in his second start with the Phillies Oswalt put all his faith in his catcher and allowed Chooch to guide him through. In the nine starts since Ruiz has been Oswalt’s wingman, the pitcher has gone 7-0 with a 1.55 ERA.

Hey, Ruiz is a catcher first so the fact that the Phils’ pitchers have a 3.37 ERA with him back there and a losing record when he is not is significant. Plus, his hitting prowess is not just an October thing either. No, Chooch is not quite the new Pudge, but the Phillies would be hard pressed to find a better big-game performer in franchise history...

Or a more valuable player to the team this season. 

Rebuilding in Birdland?

Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

—     Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City

BALTIMORE — There is a classic moment in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises when someone asks the protagonist, Mike Campbell, how he went bankrupt, and all he can say in response is, “Gradually and then suddenly.” That’s kind of the way it happened with the Orioles, too. One minute they are a couple of pitches away from going to the World Series during a 98-win season, the next they are fighting to climb over .500, and then…

This.

The Orioles, once the Major League Baseball franchise that did everything right, has not had a winning season since going to the ALCS in 1997 when general manager Pat Gillick and manager Davey Johnson designed a two-year run that put the club one step shy of the World Series.

But then just like that… poof!... it ended. Only the Pirates have a greater streak of losing seasons than the Orioles, which for those of us who remember the epic 1979 World Series, is simply unfathomable. Moreover, aside from the Blue Jays and Royals in the American League and the Nationals/Expos and Reds in the National League, no team in baseball has had a longer absence from the playoffs than the Orioles.

And no, this simply isn’t a case of bad luck or outside forces conspiring against Baltimore. It’s not like in 1980 when the Orioles missed the playoffs even though they won 100 games. The Orioles seemingly have everything in place, too. Their ballpark is still the crown jewel and the standard of the retro stadium age, the facilities for the players and workers remain top-notch, and the strong history of winning and fan support is well documented.

More obvious was the fact that the “Oriole Way” worked. With Hank Peters calling the shots as the long-time general manager and Earl Weaver and Cal Ripken Sr. schooling the players, Baltimore players came to the club young and stayed until they were old. Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, Al Bumbry, Cal Ripken Jr. … the list goes on and on. Even players that came from other organizations like Frank Robinson, Ken Singleton, Lee May, Scott McGregor and Rick Dempsey, quickly caught on.

The results? Three straight trips to the World Series from 1969 to 1971, five 100-win seasons between 1969 and 1980, as well as trips back to the World Series in ’79 and ’83.

Then gradually and suddenly it all went away.

Why?

The easy answer is to blame the new ownership led by famed litigator, Peter Angelos. Certainly the charges against him as a poor owner have been written about ad nauseum and don’t need to be rehashed here. A quick Google search using the terms “Peter Angelos” and “worst owner” turn up a trove of stories for those so inclined.

It’s also easy to look at the list of bad moves and busted drafts and point a finger of blame. For every Markakis and Wieters there is an Adam Loewen or Chris Smith to throw back out there.  

But from all reports, Angelos has allowed his new GM Andy MacPhail to run the team unimpeded since 2007 and he swiftly changed the direction of the club. Gone was malcontent staff ace Erik Bedard in a deal that landed the Orioles All-Star Adam Jones and pitching prospect Chris Tillman. The team also didn’t jerk around with top draft picks Matt Wieters and Brian Matusz. In fact, Wieters is finishing off his second season as the Orioles catcher, while Matusz has gone 8-12 with a 4.68 ERA in 29 big league starts this season.

Better yet, the Orioles also signed mainstays Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis to long-term extensions and tabbed big-name manager Buck Showalter to guide the club. Since taking over for Mike Trembley and Juan Samuel, Showalter’s O’s have gone 26-15 and the starting pitchers have remarkably turned in a 19-11 record with a 2.93 ERA in those 41 starts.

“If you sit around and think about what happened yesterday, you won’t think about what you have to do today,” Showalter said in preferring to leave the past behind.

So maybe things are looking up for the Orioles? Sure, they play in the toughest division in baseball where moving the Yankees, Red Sox or Rays out of the top spot will take a little more than finding young talent to develop, but it’s tough for things to get any worse in B’more.

Until then the attendance likely won’t get much better at ol’ Camden Yards. On Wednesday night they announced a crowd of a little more than 13,000, though Eutaw Street was hardly abuzz and there were barely lines at any of the concession stands. No, Wild Bill Hagy is long gone noting that the Orioles rank 10th out of 14 teams in attendance in the American League. Through the early part of Wednesday's game, one could hear the sound of the gloves popping and bat rattling against the ground when it was dropped.

Yes, things are still quiet at Camden Yards, but nothing lasts forever. Not even losing.

As Halladay wins again, Drabek quietly makes his entrance

BALTIMORE — Kyle Drabek spent the afternoon before his first big league start walking around the streets near Camden Yards, the memories flooding back like faded, old pictures. Then again, the last time he walked around these streets he was 10 years old and his dad was winding down his major league career with the Orioles.

“I remember the Astros, White Sox and Orioles and I do remember coming here,” young Drabek said about life growing up with a dad working as a big-league pitcher. “Today, when I was walking around the city I was able to point out to my mom things that I could remember.”

Strangely enough, the very first start of Doug Drabek’s big league career came in Baltimore when he was coming up with the Yankees. In a perfect bit of symmetry, the elder Drabek’s final game in the big leagues came when he was pitching for the Orioles.

It’s also a fun, little coincidence that Kyle Drabek, the Phillies’ much-ballyhooed first-round draft pick in 2006, made his major league debut on a night when Roy Halladay sewed up his 19th win of the season for the team that drafted him. The differences, of course, are vast. While Drabek was taking the ball in a September call-up for the Blue Jays who were playing out the string against the Orioles at Camden Yards, Halladay was in Florida helping the Phils display their dominance over the rest of the NL East.

At Camden Yards, Drabek lasted six innings where he allowed nine hits, three runs, three walks and got five strikeouts. Four of those whiffs came during the first two innings and the young righty pitched from the stretch to 16 hitters. In other words, Drabek had his back against the wall quite often, yet displayed some big-time maturity in a game that lasted just one-hour, fifty-five minutes.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Drabek said after the game. “I felt like I was taking more time between pitches. It wasn’t moving too fast.”

So even in Toronto, Drabek is a piece of the puzzle for the Phillies. After all, Halladay would not be in Miami solidifying his Cy Young Award credentials if it weren’t for Drabek potential and polish. It’s also doubtful that Drabek would be pitching in a major league game at this stage of his career if it weren’t for general manager Ruben Amaro Jr.’s obsession with acquiring Halladay. After all, Drabek appears to have the inside track for a spot in the Blue Jays’ rotation in 2011and that’s without spending a single day at Triple-A.

Talent, of course, wins out. At least that’s what Phils skipper Charlie Manuel always says. And in that regard Drabek is one of a kind. Just 22 with five pro seasons and a Tommy John surgery already under his belt, Drabek is wise beyond his years on the mound. Mix in the fact that his dad, Doug, spent 13 seasons pitching in the big leagues and won the NL Cy Young Award in 1990 and the young Drabek has a pedigree better than most Kentucky Derby winners. 

In other words, the kid knows how to pitch. So much so that Manuel didn’t compare him to his dad when discussing Drabek before the trade, but to another hard-throwing right-hander…

Yeah, try Tom Seaver.

“It'd be tough for me to trade Drabek,” Manuel said last year when the Phillies were talking about dealing the kid. “I like Drabek because he’s strong in his legs and his hips and he’s a drop-and-drive kind of pitcher. I’m not a pitching coach, but I like his mechanics and I like where he comes from and he’s a strong-bodied kid, like a Tom Seaver type or a Bartolo Colon, and he’s got that kind of stuff. And he’s young, and I think he has a big upside to him.”

His stuff is pure power pitcher. Drabek throws a fastball in the upper 90s and a hard slider that looks like it’s going to kneecap the hitter before it takes a hard left to the opposite corner. It’s a repertoire that is rarely learned and seldom taught. It’s force of nature stuff.

But like any kid his age with a right arm touched by the baseball gods, Drabek just shrugs when asked about the nuances of the game. He was simply happy to be pitching and having fun with his family making the trip from their home near Houston, Texas to watch him play. He couldn’t stop smiling when talking about how his dad must feel watching a second generation of Drabeks make it to the majors.

“The main thing I wanted to do was finish the whole season without any injuries and I was able to do that,” the kid said. “Then, getting called up was just icing on the cake.”

Big-time potential
Drabek’s current skipper, the well-regarded Cito Gaston, sees something different in Drabek that most doe-eyed kids stepping into a major league clubhouse don’t possess. It’s self-assurance that he belongs in the big leagues, as if a birthright. Moreover, unlike most of the entitled elite class, Drabek has paid some dues. He’s been smacked around and he’s had to go through seasons of rehab. In Drabek, Gaston sees something that he has seen in other sons of big leaguers he worked with.

“They have been around the park and they have been around the game. I think they have some of that bloodline in them so most of them know how to stay calm and cool,” Gaston said. “Kids of major leaguers, you can tell, they’re different. … They have been a part of this for a long time.”

So in his debut in the big leagues, add another bit of wisdom to the young Drabek’s development. After throwing a first-pitch strike to Brian Roberts and waiting for a new ball to replace the one tossed aside for a keepsake, Drabek’s second pitch was laced to left for a single. His third pitch was also smacked to left for a single, too, before he settled in and retired the next three hitters in the one-run first.

For Drabek, the first outing in the big leagues opened with three pitches, two hits, two stolen bases, one run and one loss.

“Good damage control,” the beaming dad Doug said as his son walked out of the third-base dugout to the mound during the third inning. “It could have gotten bad, but to get out of it with just one run he had good damage control. Probably on my report it would say, ‘Good damage control in the first inning.’”

Drabek continued the damage-control theme in the third and fifth innings, too, but it was the fourth inning that sealed his fate when the Orioles cobbled together two runs on three hits. In six innings Drabek pitched to eight hitters with runners in scoring position, but still managed to keep the Blue Jays in the game. That’s where the pedigree comes in, says Gaston.

“That’s part of him growing up in a family of baseball players,” Gaston said afterwards. “Guys that know how to stay calm in tough situations end up staying up here and guys that can’t stay calm, don’t. He showed a lot of poise when he got in trouble.” 

Cool and calm
The son probably showed more poise than the father. In fact, it will probably take a chisel to remove the ear-to-ear smile off the elder Drabek’s face that was put there with equal parts nervousness and immense pride.

But rather than act like an overbearing stage dad, the elder Drabek said he just wanted his son to enjoy the moment. Careers in baseball don’t last too long, and even though the father spent 13 years in the majors, he was gone from the game when he was still a relatively young man. He was actually two years older than his son is when he broke in and spent six years as one of the best pitchers in the National League. However, after he signed a big free-agent deal with the Astros, Drabek won just 42 more games in the big leagues and by 1998, the career was over.

He was just 35.

“The only thing I told him was not to change anything – it’s still the same game,” Doug said. “I just want him to soak it all in and enjoy it.”

That’s what the old man did.

“My first start was [in Baltimore at] the old stadium,” he remembered, smile plastered on his face. “My first game was in Oakland and I remember my first two pitches were two sliders to [Jose] Canseco and I got a popup. Then Dave Kingman was next and then [Mike Davis] was after him. That’s three big guys. That’s what I remember the most.”

Kyle, on the other hand, faced a team headed for 100 losses while the team that dealt him was increasing its lead on the way to a fourth straight playoffs appearance. But Kyle didn’t care much about the Phillies. Not anymore. Sure, they helped him get started, but figured they didn’t need him to get another trip to the World Series.

Maybe in time the Phillies will kick themselves for trading away Drabek, but for now it’s working out pretty well for both sides.

“It kind of felt like any other day. I got a few more texts than I normally get, but it was a lot like any other day,” the rookie said.

“I was glad that my whole family was here.”

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 17

Sometimes the best laid plans aren't planned at all.

At least that's what we'll tell ourselves about this episode of The Podcast of Awesomeness. I was anticipating a show toward the end of the week, but Sarah Baicker strutted over to where I was sitting in the office at CSN and said, "Let's do a podcast."

It sounded like a good idea until our intern, Cori Egan, said, "Pleeeeeeeeease."

Then it sounded like trouble. Almost sinister. When Dennis Deitch responded to a text that he was hopping on his bike and would peddle down to the Wells Fargo Center (or whatever its called), it looked like it was on.

And here it is:

No. 17

With no agenda or planning, we came up with what you hear on this MP3 file. Better yet, we had Tom Finer back on the wheels of steel like in the old days, which was fun. 

So here we chatter about baseball, the Eagles, advanced metrics, the Flyers pre-season camp for and rookies, interns with a death wish, and old episodes of Diff'rent Strokes.

We are on Facebook

check us out on iTunes, too.

Oswalt pushes the pace

NEW YORK — To call Roy Oswalt quiet is a disservice to the word. Tranquil might be a better description. Maybe understated, unflashy, unpretentious fit in there, too. After all, when Oswalt speaks with his soft, Mississippi drawl, it’s best to move in close or risk a chance at not hearing anything.

His body language is the same way, too. When Oswalt walks on (or off) the mound, it’s placid, efficient and light. It’s almost as if his feet glide over the grass on his way to the dugout and he shows no emotion with eyes focused and posture as straight as a country mile.

But don’t mistake Oswalt’s quietness for shyness and don’t think that because he’s a kind sort that he is soft. Considering that his goal is to make hitters look dumb whenever he throws a baseball, Oswalt has a sadistic side. Affable off the mound, Oswalt is nasty on it and if there is one pitcher opponents have struggled with lately, it’s been the quiet kid from Weir, Mississippi.

There were 32 kids in Oswalt’s high school class where he was a pitcher for the baseball team and a defensive back on the state championship football team at Weir. His dad, Billy, is a logger and served in Vietnam, and his grandfather, Houston, was a logger, too. Logging is tough work and a hard way to make a dollar with injuries, and worse, a regular occurrence. But as the story is told, when Astros owner Drayton McLane asked Oswalt what his goal was in baseball it was related to a life spent on the stark and austere land near the gulf coast of Mississippi.

“I want to own a bulldozer,” is what Oswalt reportedly told McLane.

So maybe that’s why Oswalt carries himself the way he does. Knowing how harsh the land can be he chooses to show respect until he has to go to work. Then, like logging and pitching, he attempts to decimate wood. Perhaps that’s also where the rumors indicating that Oswalt preferred not to play for Philadelphia came from, too. Long since denied, those reports about a pitcher from a town with a population of 553 not wanting to pitch in Philadelphia are missing the point. Philly is a blue-collar city only different from Weir, Mississippi as it relates to population, area and types of industry.

In both places they appreciate people who have a strong work ethic and they really like to win.

“I feel like I got a new life coming over here,” Oswalt said with his soft, Mississippi drawl. “I’d been out of playoff contention for five years and now we’re trying to get back into the playoffs. (Most of the guys) got a ring. I don't. Hopefully I can push them to get another one.”

And since joining the Phillies at the end of July, Oswalt has had an impact not just in the game he’s pitched, but on the entire rotation as well. In nine starts since the trade from the Astros, Oswalt is 6-1 with a 1.98 ERA. Take away his debut against the Nationals that came not even 24 hours after the trade went down, and Oswalt is 6-0 with a 1.56 ERA.

More importantly, he has been the catalyst of a friendly competition between fellow aces Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels, as well. Since arriving in Philadelphia, Halladay solidified his Cy Young Award credentials by going 6-2 with a 3.12 ERA to boost his wins total to 18. But of The Big Three, Halladay is actually the worst of the trio, statistically speaking. Over the same span, Hamels is 3-3 with a 2.09 ERA and 60 strikeouts in 56 innings. The lefty is also riding a scoreless innings streak of 25.

It’s the damndest group of pitchers, according to manager Charlie Manuel. Not only are they at the top of their games, but not one of them has an ounce of hubris.

“[Oswalt is] quiet. Between those three, Cole talks the most, but he’s not what anyone would call [talkative],” Manuel said. “All of them work hard. You don’t see [Halladay] around much because he’s always doing something. He’s always working or looking at videos or something. All three of them have the same work ethic and they sit there together a lot. I’m sure they’re talking about pitching.”

Nevertheless, Oswalt’s arrival begs the question… if all three pitchers are rested and ready to go in a Game 7 elimination game, which one gets the ball?

(You hesitated before answering, didn’t you?)

“Halladay and Cole are tremendous pitchers,” Oswalt said. “They go out there and compete every day. It’s a friendly competition with each other—at least I try to treat it that way because it pushes me even more, makes me try to go deeper into games. And I'm trying to push them a little bit, too.”

It’s worked. In fact, it’s worked in a manner similar to how it was in Houston when Oswalt was the third wheel in the bulldozer driven by Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Not exactly the most demure guy on the planet, it would seem as if there would be some personality conflicts in the Astros’ trio that went to Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS and the World Series in 2005. However, to see Oswalt tell the stories it seems as if he enjoyed the wildness and the antics from his better-known teammates.

“Roger was kind of standoffish. He had something written into his deal that he didn’t have to be there every day because of his family, but when he was there you couldn’t ask for a better teammate,” Oswalt said with a smile that seemed to indicate that there were stories he couldn’t tell in polite company. “He still keeps up with me and will probably send me a text today. He has a great presence and pushes guys.

“Pettitte was the same way. He had a demeanor where he didn’t think he ever should lose. These guys are the same way. When Halladay gives up a hit he looks like it’s the end of the world. So you have to have to have that competitiveness.”

Oswalt’s demeanor always stays the same. He doesn’t fluster easily, not even when a tornado touched down in Weir last April and destroyed his boyhood home where his parents live, barely a mile away from Oswalt’s current home. But having acquired that bulldozer long ago, Oswalt simply had the house rebuilt. His parents moved back in just last week.

Philadelphia's First Dynasty: 100 Years after the A's ruled

Third story in a series

Before there was Babe Ruth and the Yankees, the 1910 Athletics set the standard for which all Philadelphia baseball teams are based. That was the season Connie Mack guided Philadelphia to four trips to the World Series in five years, capturing three championships. In ’10, the A’s rolled over the Cubs in five games, six games over the Giants in ’11, a five-game victory over the Giants in ’13 before it came to an end in four games to the Braves in 1914.

The first dynasty of baseball history came to a crash landing in 1915 when Mack sold off his great players or they jumped to the upstart Federal League as the A’s spent the next seven seasons in last place.

Could you imagine what we would have written and said about Mack in this day and age if he sold Home Run Baker, Eddie Collins and Chief Bender to make a little cash though it meant a decade in the second division? That would be like David Montgomery being told by the Phillies’ partners to dump Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay in order to line the team’s coffers.

Strangely, Mack chose to sell out when his core group of stars were just coming into their primes and it’s not far-fetched to think that the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies could have played in the 1915 World Series. The first two games would have been played at the Baker Bowl on Broad and Huntingdon in North Philly, packed up the gear after the games, and walked down Lehigh for five blocks to Shibe Park.

Forget a subway series; Philadelphia could have hosted the Lehigh Avenue series.

Anyway, over the next few months we will write about the 100 years since Philadelphia started baseball’s first dynasty. Look for some stylings about the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics here over the next few months. We’ll revisit the “Deadball Era” where Frank “Home Run” Baker hit just two homers in 1910, but he led the league the next four straight years with totals of 11, 10, 12 and 9.

So here’s a little slice of the Deadball Era for the Digital Age.

Frank “Home Run” Baker

To just look at the stats, it seems like a joke. A guy with 96 career home runs and a season-high of 12 and they called him, “Home Run,” is like calling a bald guy, “Curly.”

But until Babe Ruth came around, Frank “Home Run” Baker was as big a slugger as any in the game. After all, this was an era where until Ruth hit 29 homers in 1919 (as primarily a pitcher), the single-seasin record for the past 35 years had been 27.

Besides, Baker didn’t get his nickname because he led the American League in homers for four straight seasons, a feat matched only by Ruth and A’s teammate (and Philly city councilman), Harry Davis. He was called “Home Run” because of two homers he hit during the A’s reign atop the baseball world.

First at Shibe Park in Game 2 of the 1911 World Series of Hall of Famer Rube Marquard, followed by another off the great Christy Matthewson at the Polo Grounds in Game 3, Baker’s homers in back-to-back games were the decisive blows in the A’s six-game victory over the New York Giants.

And as far as clutch performers during the Deadball Era, Baker was a veritable Mr. October. In the A’s World Series victories in 1910, 1911 and 1913, Baker batted .409 with three homers and 16 RBIs. Oddly enough, Baker’s on-base percentage in the 1913 World Series was lower than his batting average, but he still had a 1.077 OPS during his first 16 appearances in the Fall Classic, not that anyone in baseball had any inkling about advanced metrics.

Nevertheless, Baker, along with Stuffy McInnis, Eddie Collins, and Jack Barry, formed Connie Mack’s famed, $100,000 infield[1] in which Baker was the oldest of the bunch at 24 in 1910. With a well-paid quartet of ballplayers not quite in their athletic prime, it’s understandable how the A’s won the World Series three times in four seasons and made it to the World Series four times in five years.

If only Mack could have kept them together…

When the upstart Federal League formed in 1915 and attempted to sway major leaguers with high salaries, Baker didn’t jump. Instead, he honored the three-year, $20,000 deal he signed with Mack with a clause that allowed him to quit after the 1914 season. Still, because Baker made $10,000 in the final year of his contract and was due a raise since he was coming off his fourth straight year of leading the league in homers while finishing in the top 10 in runs scored, hits, doubles, total bases, extra-base hits and RBIs. But Mack and the A’s could no longer afford the high salaries of the $100,000 Infield and began selling off players. Before the 1916 season, after sitting out in 1915, Baker was sold to the Yankees.

But Baker really could never quit playing. He never battled Mack over salary because the way he saw it, he got paid more playing baseball than he could from farming. As a result, when Baker “sat out” in 1915, he ended up playing for an amateur team in Upland, Pa. in the Delaware County League. He returned to play for Upland in 1920, skipping the major league season after the death of his first wife.

Regardless, Baker just might be where the stereotype of the slugging third baseman came from. Raised on a farm in Maryland’s eastern shore in a town called Trappe (two hours southeast of Washington, D.C.), Baker was a strong, lefty pull hitter who used a 52-ounce bat. There are mixed reports on his glove work, and he made 35 errors in 146 games during the 1910 season as well as 51 over the next two seasons, but that was overlooked because he batted better than .334 from 1911 to 1914, and led the league in RBIs in two straight seasons beginning in 1912 when he had 130.

As his career wound down in the early 1920s, Baker was a bench player with the Yankees where the home runs were hit by Babe Ruth.

Mostly, Baker was a quiet man and popular with the Philadelphia sports fans. Mack liked him, too, even though he gave him up before the 1916 season. He loved baseball, too, but not more than his farm in Maryland. Though he managed in the minors for a couple of seasons, Baker preferred spending time in Trappe where he could duck hunt near the Chesapeake Bay, work for the local bank and fire company, and tend to his asparagus plants.

He also is credited for “discovering” another eastern shore Hall-of-Famer, Jimmie Foxx, and enjoyed participating in old-timers games and signing autographs. When asked about playing during the time of Ruth instead of the Deadball Era, Baker figured he would have adapted quite well to the newer game.

“I'd say fifty,” he said when asked about how many homers he would hit. “The year I hit twelve, I also hit the right-field fence at Shibe Park thirty-eight times.”

In 1955, Baker was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee, and said: “It's better to get a rosebud while you're alive than a whole rose garden after you're gone.”

He lived eight more years, dying at age 77 in 1963.

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[1] The $100,000 Infield adjusted for inflation would come to approximately $2.2 million in 2010. That’s roughly the average major league salary now.

Pete Rose gets just one night

The anticipation had been building for weeks during the summer of 1985 and as the new school year started, 44-year-old player-manager Pete Rose had chipped away at Ty Cobb’s all-time hit record. Maybe Pete got there a little slower than our young minds thought, but with a pair of hits on a Sunday afternoon game at Wrigley Field, Rose and Cobb were tied with 4,191 hits.

Clearly at this point of his career Rose was just hanging on for the record. We saw it when he was winding his way through his last season with the Phillies in 1983. A staple at first base for a full 162 games in his first four seasons with the Phillies, Rose often split time with Tony Perez and an aging prospect named Len Matuszek, who hit 27 homers in Triple-A in ’83. As a result, Rose was the Phillies opening day right fielder that season and did not regularly play first base until the end of June.

When the World Series shifted to Philadelphia for Game 3, manager Paul Owens kept Rose on the bench a pinch-hitter. In Game 5, Rose went 2-for-4 as the right fielder. Three days later, the Phillies released him, just 10 hits short of 4,000.

There was nothing as odd as seeing Rose at age 43 with his hair graying, dressed in the gaudy Montreal Expos uniform. Fortunately for the fashion police, Rose was traded from the Expos to the Reds where the Cincinnati kid returned to be a first baseman and manager, all at once.

Rose will be in Cincinnati tonight for a ceremony to commemorate the 25^th anniversary of his 4,192^nd hit. After all, it was Sept. 11, 1985 at Riverfront Stadium, now leveled and turned into a parking lot, where Rose had his last moment in the sun. Despite all those hits, all those records and a burgeoning managerial career that resulted in a World Series title for the Reds 13 months after his suspension, Rose likely will never stand in front of the masses at Cooperstown and be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

His reward was a bad movie produced by ESPN where Tom Sizemore stumbled through his depiction of Rose. It might have been better to get Ted Sizemore.

Nevertheless, Rose broke Cobb’s record on a school night, but I can remember being out in front of the house when word filtered out that hit No. 4,192 had fallen. There were no cut-ins to the regularly-scheduled programming, no big national celebrations and no buzz outside of folks who followed baseball religiously. For Rose, though, it was the culmination of a life’s work and the definition of his legacy. In fact, he has trademarked the phrase, “Hit King,” which along with his career hit total (4,256), he writes onto every autograph he signs at the memorabilia shop in Las Vegas. Sorry, the “Charlie Hustle” inscription costs extra.

Coincidentally, Cobb played his final game on Sept. 11, 1928, though he was the Hit King since 1923 when he passed Cap Anson with his 3,436^th hit[1]. So Cobb held the record for 63 years—24 years after his death—before Rose grabbed a hold of it. And with his 70^th birthday coming up next April, Rose could hang onto the record for the rest of his life, and maybe even as long as Cobb.

Couldn’t he?

A couple of years ago I met with Rose in Las Vegas and I asked him if he thought anyone could break his record. The answer, of course, was a blunt and resounding, “No.”

But I pressed on anyway, ticking off names as if we were a couple of baseball fans talking about the game in a bar or wherever. Only in this case it was Rose, me and the workers at a memorabilia shop in Caesar’s Palace where the all-time hit king was signing autographs and posing for pictures.

“Alex Rodriguez?”

“No.”

Even though A-Rod averages 190 hits per 162 games, his tendency to hit homers and standing in the middle of the Yankees’ offense might make it difficult for him to get beyond 3,800 hits.

“Ichiro?”

“If he would have started out playing in the U.S., maybe. But he lost all those years.”

Yes, that’s true. Ichiro would have the best chance if he hadn’t spent the first half of his career playing in Japan. He is 36 and has nearly 3,500 hits between both Japan and the U.S. and needs just 16 more hits this season to break Rose’s record of 10 seasons with at least 200 hits.

Regardless, Ichiro’s nine “lost” seasons in Japan cost him.

However, the way Rose so quickly dismissed the next name was kind of surprising.

“Derek Jeter,” I said.

“No,” said Pete.

“Really? Why not? He gets 200-hits a season and hits at the top of a lineup that needs his to get hits. Ten years worth of 200 hits or close to it is nearly 2,000 hits. That adds up.”

“Yeah, but he’s 35,” Pete said.

Actually, Jeter is 36 now and in the throes of his worst season in the big leagues, batting just .260 with 152 hits in 138 games. Heading into this season, Jeter averaged 208 hits per 162 games. At that rate, he would need to play seven more seasons to end up with nearly 4,200 hits.

Sure, Jeter plays a demanding position, but he will be younger than Rose was when he gets his 3,000^th hit next year. This is all some rudimentary and basic math and it’s probably not likely that Jeter will be pounding out 200 hits when he is 40, especially considering his contract is up at the end of the season. However, maybe Jeter will move to first base or DH a few games a week instead of playing 150-plus at shortstop every year?

Besides, when Rose was 40 he led the National League in hits, and the first four seasons he played first base when he joined the Phillies, Rose got 705 hits. Make that 705 hits in 594 games from the ages 38 to 41. That comes to an average of 193 hits per 162 games.

Not bad for an old guy.

So could Jeter get close to Rose’s record? Perhaps we should save this for 2017 if Jeter is still around. That will give Rose 32 years with the record and 28 years into his banishment from the game. In the meantime, Rose gets a special dispensation on Sept. 11, 2010 to celebrate what he did 25 years before in an actual, major league ballpark. Yes, Major League Baseball will allow Rose into Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati tonight. Whether or not he’ll get another visit remains to be seen, but what is definite is that Rose should be able to last as long as humanly possible.

Rose’s career and his record took durability. So too does his banishment from baseball. He played for 24 years and he’s been banned for 21.

What’s going to give first, the record or the ban?

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[1] Cobb broke Anson’s record with a four-hit game on Sept. 22, 1923 at Fenway Park while playing for the Tigers. Interestingly, the Tigers were wrapping a stretch where they played 12 games in six days… yes, six straight doubleheaders against the Philadelphia A’s and Red Sox. He had a chance to set the record at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, but got just four hits in six games against the second-division A’s. He fared much better in Boston, going for 11 hits in the first five games and tied the record with a homer in the sixth inning.

Ryan Madson, the bullpen phone rings for thee

On paper, two years removed, it looked like nothing more than a bad outing for a relief pitcher in a tight, late August game. What made this one particularly bad was that reliever Ryan Madson helped turn a sure win into an ugly defeat with just seven pitches.

August 28, 2008 was the date and the Phillies were six outs away from a win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Madson needed only to get through the eighth inning to hand off a ninth-inning lead to closer Brad Lidge. But those seven pitches resulted in a homer, a double and a single. Instead of giving Lidge a ninth-inning lead, Madson turned it over to Chad Durbin who quickly made the lead vanish.

But it wasn’t the performance that led to Madson’s season-changing moment… a veritable moment of clarity for the pitcher. It was the discussion afterwards with manager Charlie Manuel that turned it all around. Actually, in a discussion there was a give-and-take. In this one there was all give.

“I chewed his ass out,” Manuel said with a wry smile months after the moment and a few hours before Madson pitched a scoreless eighth inning in the clinching game of the NLCS. It must have worked, too, because Madson allowed just one run in the rest of regular season and three during the playoff run.

Of course Madson also worked hard on his shoulder exercises and received regular treatments with a chiropractor to help his fastball climb to 98-mph, which might have more to do with his big-time pitching down the stretch. Then again, every once in a while a guy needs to get chewed out. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it makes a helluva story.

Needless to say, there will not be any of those types of discussions this year. Madson doesn’t need it. Better yet, even though Madson spent a big chunk of the season on the disabled list as a result of a broken toe suffered when he kicked a chair after blowing a save chance in San Francisco[1], he won’t need to have any discussions with anyone about his performance.

“It’s been a perfectly normal year,” Madson said on Wednesday afternoon before the series finale against the Marlins at the Bank.

And that’s a good thing. Normal for Madson means he’s one of the top set-up men in the league, and maybe a guy who could take over as a closer sometime soon. In fact, Madson was Manuel’s closer for the first month of the season while Lidge was on the disabled list, and he finished off Tuesday night’s victory over the Marlins with 1 1/3 innings of work.

When Madson took over in a save situation in Wednesday night’s 10-6 victory, it was his 10^th appearance in 13 days. That’s old-school workload. That’s Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage style, or at least the modern day facsimile of it.

“I always thought he could close games, but it’s just a matter of him feeling confident about himself and comfortable and having some success and adjusting to that role,” Manuel said.

“I think he’s getting there. The only way we’ll know is if we send him out there for a season and see if he can hold his own.”

In addition to it being a perfectly normal season, Madson says, “I feel fine” in regards to the work Manuel has piled on him. Based on the numbers, it’s impossible to argue considering he has worked 9 2/3 innings with 12 strikeouts and no earned runs in the last 10 outings.

In fact, Madson has been charged with an earned run in just one game going back to July 29, a span of 25 games. In that time the righty has pitched 25 innings, racked up 36 strikeouts with a win, a save and 10 holds.

But, as pitching coach Rich Dubee eluded, big deal.

“He’s been a big part of our success here. I’m not surprised,” Dubee said. “This is what the guy does.”

That’s not a bad trait to have for a pitcher. Madson gets called on to get outs and comes through without complaint or injury… unless he’s kicking the hell out of a chair. Actually, not only has Madson pitched in 10 games over the last 13 days, but he also has appeared in more games than any pitcher in the big leagues since July 26.

As it looks for the final 21 games of the season, it appears as if the Phillies want be shy about using Madson, either. Dubee says Madson appears to be “fresher” than most of his teammates in the ‘pen largely because of the time spent on the DL, but also because his repertoire of pitches appears to be so “lively.”

Plus, if the way Manuel used his relievers down the stretch in 2007 is any indication, Madson better have enjoyed his rest. With relatively few dependable relievers and a dogfight with the Mets in the NL East, Manuel used Brett Myers, Tom Gordon and J.C. Romero seemingly every game. Actually, Myers appeared in 16 games during September, including 12 of the last 16. Gordon made it into 18 games in the final month, including 13 of the final 16, and Romero got into 20 of the 27 September games and 17 of the final 22.

When the playoffs started, Romero got into every game, while Gordon and Myers appeared in two of the three.

Is that what’s in store for Madson? We’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, the veteran right-hander seems to have stepped up his game to a higher level.

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[1] Madson’s toe was broken into pieces as a result of his run-in with the chair in San Francisco. So imagine how hard that chair must have been kicked. Certainly each of us has kicked or punched a solid, inanimate object in a fit of anger really, really hard and rarely does it result in an injury, let alone a toe smashed into pieces. Moreover, Madson spent nearly three months on the disabled list with his toe injury… from kicking a chair! Anyone want to guess what the chair looked like afterwards?

Phillies, Braves on a collision course

The silly, old adage with Major League Baseball is, “it’s a marathon,” and as a veteran of 14 competitive marathons (not bragging or anything), I would call the 162-game baseball season with its spring training and month long playoffs, the much more grueling sport to play and cover. For a good marathon a person is investing three to four months of focused training and then two-and-a-half to three hours of running on race day.

Plus, when broken down, running is just moving forward… one foot after the other. It's kind of simple when looked at that way.

Baseball is like that, too, only the training period never really ends. Sure, a lot of ballplayers will try to rest up during the month of November, but typically start working out for spring training and the season around Thanksgiving. Not including all the games, the travel, the sitting around and waiting and all of the late nights and early mornings, the self-respecting ballplayer and ballscribe look as if they have been put through a meat grinder when the playoffs roll around. Considering all the bad flights, bad food, lousy sleep patterns and no true semblance of a “real” life while friends and family are off enjoying the summer and vacations, the baseball lifers earn all those Marriott points they rack up during the season.

Respect? Well, someday… someday.

Nevertheless, over a 162-game season it often gets tough digging up a story idea. Sure, the news of the day always prevails, but with so much competition and so many different people disseminating it, a fresh angle is always the goal. So the search for an obtuse or acute angle brought us to the second game of Monday’s day-night doubleheader[1] led a lot of us to the same spot…

The race for the NL East is going to come down to that last weekend of the season in Atlanta.

Hey, it was a long day. Besides, sometimes the best story is the most obvious one. Other times it’s best to give credit to the schedule makers. After all, the past few years the Phillies had a way of wrapping up the season at home against Washington or Florida with a few days to rest the team’s big guns. In fact, last year, the Phillies had things sewn up with four games remaining in the season to reinforce the accepted fact that there is nothing worse than meaningless September baseball.

Obviously, the converse of that is also fact. There is nothing in sports more exciting than meaningful September and October baseball and it appears as if the Phillies and Braves are headed for a collision course.

“If I had my way we’d get a lead and be four up with three to play before we went in there,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “I don’t know, but it’s kind of traveling that way. It’s like a hurricane they’re predicting to go up the coast with the track it’s going to take.”

Yes, two hurricanes headed for the same spot at the same time. Meteorologists say this can’t happen in nature, but it seems as if the Phillies are resigned to let it happen. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. Publically, however, the ballplayers are still in the play-them-one-game-at-a-time mode. That makes sense considering the Phillies are at the most crucial stage of the marathon, well past the point where glycogen stores are depleted and the dreaded “wall” is staring them right in the face.

With a clubhouse full of seasoned, playoff veterans, the Phillies aren’t sizing up the Braves and calculating how it will go down during the final weekend of the season.

“Let’s not look too far ahead,” Shane Victorino said. “We’ll just keep playing. We worry about ourselves. We’re not worried about what [the Braves] are doing. We control our own destiny. We’ve got to go out there and play our baseball.”

Logically, Victorino is correct. If the Phillies keep winning ballgames a trip to the playoffs for a fourth season in a row is a virtual lock. The numbers crunchers at Baseball Prospectus put the odds for the Phillies to win the east at 29 percent, the wild card at 40 percent and a berth at the playoffs at 68 percent. Interestingly, the BP formula has the Phillies going 11-12 the rest of the way and a match up against the Cincinnati Reds in the NLDS with the Braves pared with the winner of the NL West.

Still, like in any marathon a mile in the beginning of the race logically carries the same importance as the last miles. But we know better. So too do they Phillies and every other ballclub in Major League Baseball. The example I like to cite is the end of the 1982 season where the Milwaukee Brewers went to Baltimore for four games in the final three days of the season. The Brewers needed one win to clinch the division, while the Orioles had to sweep all four to complete the improbable comeback to win the AL East.

The Orioles cruised in Friday night’s opener, 8-3, highlighted by a three-hit game from Rich Dauer and 2 2/3 of one-hit relief from closer Tippy Martinez. Storm Davis tossed a gem in Saturday’s first game as the Orioles rolled 7-1 and swept the doubleheader with 18 hits in an 11-3 laugher.

So with the season coming down to one final game on the last Sunday of the regular season, and aces Jim Palmer and Don Sutton on the mound, the Brewers regrouped to clinch the East with a 10-3 victory. Not only did the Brewers save themselves from the indignity of blowing a three-game lead with four to play, but the last game served as a signature game for 1982 AL MVP, Robin Yount, who led his team with two homers, a triple and scored four runs.

Not a bad afternoon, for Yount or the Brewers. For the Orioles, the one game proved to be the lasting image of the 1982 season.

And that’s what the Phillies (and every other team) is up against.

“I think our team will be remembered by how we finish,” Manuel said, astutely. “We’ve hung in there. Our starting pitching has kept us in there. We’re sitting in a good place, and now is a good time for us to pick it up and start putting some runs on the board consistently.”

As it shapes up now, Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt (in that order) will pitch in the final series. The Braves will have Derek Lowe, Jair Jurrgens and Tim Hudson ready to go, too.

How can it not come down to that last weekend?

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[1] The doubleheader, especially the day-night doubleheader, is a phenomenon foreign to every pro sport aside from baseball. Yes, the physical tolls of the games on its participants aren’t as foreboding in baseball, but think about the scribes. Most folks got to the ballpark for Monday’s day-nighter before 10 a.m. and did not leave the park until after 11 p.m. That’s a long day no matter what the task.

Oswalt turns Cliff Lee into a fond memory

I haven’t counted, but I’m willing to bet that the player I wrote the most about during the first half of the baseball season was Cliff Lee. Some of the reasoning behind this deduction is obvious because for about seven months after Lee was traded to Seattle on a whirlwind December day in which the Phillies got Roy Halladay, he was the lightning rod we all fired strikes at.

The Phillies would have been better with Cliff Lee, we reasoned, not wrongly. Worse, general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. never offered a reason for dealing away Lee that we would accept. Oh sure, we got it, but we didn’t like it.

The constant harping about Lee always got back to a couple of main points. For one, there was the money thing. It wasn’t our money and as a public trust that has sold out 108 straight games in the relatively brand-new park, the team ought to spend, spend, spend. Then, there was the idea of the Phillies going down the stretch with a starting rotation that featured two guys who won Cy Young awards, and another who was MVP of the NLCS and World Series. Would any team want face a team that went Halladay, Lee and Hamels in three straight games of a playoff series?

No. No way.

But a quick perusal of the archives of this little site shows that Lee’s name hasn’t been mentioned since July 29. That date—two days before the annual trading deadline—not only is the anniversary of Lee’s arrival in Philadelphia where he wore the Phillies’ pinstripes for approximately three months covering just 17 starts, including the postseason, but also it’s the date of Roy Oswalt’s arrival to Philly. It kind of makes sense now why Lee hasn’t been mentioned all that much anymore.

In his first seven outings for the Phils, Oswalt is 4-1 with a 1.89 ERA with 41 strikeouts in 47 2/3 innings. No, Oswalt hasn’t won the Cy Young Award like Lee, but he has won the MVP in the 2005 NLCS with the Astros. Better yet, Oswalt says he pushed through the usual “dead arm” stage of the season that seems to strike high-innings pitchers late in the summer and certainly will see his workload increase the rest of the way. Manager Charlie Manuel hinted as much on Friday afternoon when he alluded to the experience Roys Halladay and Oswalt have with pitching on short rest. If that’s not planting a seed of thought, nothing is.

Regardless, Oswalt’s arrival has made us stash Lee’s name away into the attic of happy memories after he posted the greatest statistical postseason by a Phillies pitcher since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1915, which only makes sense. Still, after pining for Lee into July, some have gone into a full-out sprint in the other direction by wondering if all the carrying on was wrong. Maybe trading Lee away wasn’t such a bad idea after all, went the reasoning, especially when one considers that Lee missed the first month of the season, got traded to Texas, slumped a bit and now is struggling with some back discomfort. Since being traded to the Rangers, Lee has gone 0-3 with an 8.26 ERA during the past month and just got an anti-inflammatory injection for his back this week.

That’s a far cry from what Oswalt has done in his seven starts with the Phillies, or even what Lee did in his first seven outings with the Phillies last year at this time. Lee had a 3.37 ERA and 47 strikeouts in 48 innings when he first joined the club last year.

So yes, statistically Oswalt has been better. Moreover, because Lee might be injured Oswalt is clearly the more valuable pitcher right now.

See, trading Lee wasn’t such a bad idea after all… right?

Well, yes and no. The yes should be obvious because Oswalt is healthy, happy and pitching well. Before he was traded to Philadelphia there was concern that Oswalt, a quiet and private man from Weir, Mississippi (population 553), might not fit in well in a hardscrabble northeast city. Sometimes, athletes in Philadelphia are judged more by emotion and personality than talent or results. Not exactly the most demonstrative man on the mound and straightforward and soft spoken with the press, it’s understandable if Oswalt was apprehensive.

Yet by all accounts, Oswalt, like Lee, has fit in quite well in Philadelphia. Of course the excitement of a pennant race has something to do with that, but that’s kind of the whole point… right?

“I can tell he’s happy here,” said Brad Lidge, Oswalt’s teammate from their days in Houston. “You can see that extra pep in his step. I think he feels the change in energy and he’s enjoying being part of this as opposed to just another season going by. You can see him thinking about trying to achieve that ultimate goal.

“And he’s throwing great.”

Conversely, the move to get Oswalt before the deadline is an admission that the Phillies needed a pitcher of high caliber. Lee’s contract status might have spooked Amaro into trading him, but that never changed the desire to have three horses at the top of the rotation.

And now that he has them, Manuel hopes they are ready to run for the next month-plus.

“The best part about that is Halladay and Oswalt have pitched on short rest,” Manuel said. “They have that experience and that becomes very big.”

That’s down the road, of course, but for now the best part about Halladay and Oswalt is that they made folks forget about Cliff Lee for a little while. Besides, Oswalt has a no-trade clause and a contract for 2011. Looks like the Phillies are stuck with him.

PODCAST EPISODE NO. 16

So we’re headed for the stretch run. This is the time of year that could make or break a season. No, the games don’t count any more than they did in April, but they mean more. They carry more weight. They’re heavier.

This is the time of year where legends are made, or, even more heroically, it’s the time legends define their legacies. And yes, the past sentence was written in the John Facenda-voice font. 

Nevertheless, we have much admiration for the guy who refuses to simply play out the string. That’s where the Nationals’ Nyjer Morgan comes in, because even though his team is a good 21 games out of first place and headed for their fifth last-place finish in the last six seasons, Morgan has not given in.
It’s like Updike once wrote about Ted Williams:

“For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill.”

For a couple of nights that was Nyjer Morgan of the lowly Washington Nationals. Not only was he running over catchers and swiping bases with his team down by a dozen runs, but when the Marlins tried to drill him a second time for perceived insults, well, that was too much for the man to bear.

And so he started a brawl.

We want to be known as the audio show that barrels over a catcher in a late-season game when there is nothing at stake aside from the final score. Maybe we did that this time:

AWESOME 16

Was this the “tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and thing done ill?”

Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, we’re giving you, the listener, you’re moneys’ worth…

Wait... it’s free. OK, never mind. 

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