The Rotation (44 page)

The Cardinals were the unlikely participants in this postseason tournament, the club that had little to lose, the club that was playing with the house's money after being 10½ games out of the playoff chase in late August and 8½ back at the start of September.

The Phillies were the team that had carried heavy World Series expectations since there had been snow on the ground. The pressure would be squarely on them in Game 5.

Oswalt could have prevented all this, but he gave up five runs in six innings to take the loss in Game 4. He allowed a run in the first inning and two runs in the fourth inning when he walked Lance Berkman, hit Matt Holliday with a pitch, and gave up a double to David Freese to give St. Louis a 3-2 lead. Freese got Oswalt one final time when he hit a two-run homer in the sixth to make it 5-2.

“Two pitches, I guess,” Oswalt said. “I don't know. I thought I had pretty good stuff.”

But pretty good doesn't get it done in the postseason.

For 162 games, starting pitching had been this team's great strength, the weapon that was going to carry the Phillies to the World Series. But in two of the first four games of the postseason, the starting pitching was lackluster, as Lee and Oswalt allowed 10 runs in 12 innings in their two starts

Not that the offense was shining. In Game 4, the Phils scored two runs in the first inning, but failed to build much after that as Cardinals right-hander Edwin Jackson retired 17 of the final 20 batters he faced. The Phillies ended that game having been held scoreless in 22 of the previous 25 innings, conjuring up nightmares of the previous October. It looked ugly, too. While Cardinals hitters put on a clinic, working counts and having quality, grinding at-bats, Phillies hitters showed poor plate discipline, and it drove Charlie Manuel, not to mention the folks up in the executive suite, crazy.

“What's that saying?” Manuel said before the game. “I could have missed the pain, but I'd have to miss the dance?”

The agony of those poor Phillies' at-bats would be forgotten if they could win Game 5 at home. History had already proven that. The Phils had just one hit in their first 32 at-bats with runners in scoring position in the 2008 World Series, but few remembered because it all ended with a parade.

“It's a pressure situation,” said Jimmy Rollins, looking ahead at Game 5.
“This is what we play for. This is also what we get paid for—to play in these situations. I don't think anyone in here is afraid of it.”

Rollins spoke those words in an almost empty clubhouse in St. Louis. Most of the Phillies, including Roy Halladay, had already made their way to the bus for the ride to the airport and flight back to Philadelphia. Halladay would get the ball in Game 5 against his old friend and Toronto teammate Chris Carpenter. Suddenly, it didn't look as if Tony La Russa had outsmarted himself. His decision to use Carpenter on short rest in Game 2 allowed the right-hander to be ready for the decisive fifth game—on full rest.

The thought of Halladay taking the mound was comforting for Rollins.

“You get your big boy on the bump,” he said. “This was the reason why he was brought there, for games like this, for him to come out and be the man. Be Doc. Go out there and perform a little surgery.”

Charlie Manuel scheduled a light workout at Citizens Bank Park for the off day between Game 4 and Game 5. The players would have shown up for a workout even if Manuel had given them the day off. The season was on the line and no player wanted to sit around the house stressing about a do-or-die game. Better to get on the field and work up a sweat.

Outwardly, the Phillies appeared loose. Rollins reached back in time and kept it Philly by blasting some Hall and Oates in the clubhouse before the workout. During batting practice, the stadium sound system prophetically blared Lady Gaga's “Edge of Glory.”

One team was indeed on the edge of glory.

But which one?

Despite proclamations they were loose and relaxed before one of the biggest games in franchise history, there were signs that the Phillies were anything but.

A few years earlier, Manuel had said that learning to finally stay relaxed in pressure situations was one of the keys to the Phillies' winning the World Series in 2008.

“We got tight,” he said in February 2009, referring to the team's maturation in 2006, 2007, and part of 2008. “We'd get in a good position, but it was hard for us to take advantage of it because we got tight. I call it fear of
failing. When you have never been through it before, fear of failing enters your mind. The fact of the matter was we had never been there before.”

Chase Utley sensed the tightness during the 2008 season and famously told teammates and the coaching staff to “get the rubber duck out of your ass.” Everyone had a good laugh whenever Utley said it. Manuel loved the expression so much that he bought a bunch of rubber ducks and placed one in each player's locker before Game 1 of the 2008 World Series, his reminder to everyone to stay loose. A few rubber ducks had resided in Manuel's office at Citizens Bank Park since. Sensing the weight on his team before Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS, the manager reached for some of the 2008 magic and left a few of the rubber ducks on the counter in the clubhouse. Players reacted with laughs and smiles.

But they were still tighter than hell.

At least that's how they looked on the field.

The Cardinals, meanwhile, continued to play like a band of wedding crashers. Rafael Furcal opened the game with a triple against Halladay and the next batter, Skip Schumaker, grinded out a classic Cardinals 10-pitch at-bat that resulted in an RBI double.

Halladay settled down and pitched out of trouble in the inning, pitched like an ace. That first-inning run would prove to be the only one he'd allow in eight innings of brilliance that saw him allow just six hits while walking one and striking out seven.

As good as Halladay was, his old pal Carpenter was better. He pitched a three-hit shutout and did not walk a batter. The Phillies averaged 4.80 runs per game from July 1 through the end of the regular season, tops in the NL. All they had to do was score two runs for Halladay and they would have lived to have seen the second round of the playoffs. But Carpenter, a tough-minded right-hander who battled years of arm trouble before winning the NL Cy Young Award in 2005, gave the Phils nothing. With each zero he put on the scoreboard, tension in the Phillies' dugout grew. With each scoreless inning, Phillies hitters squeezed their bat handles tighter and tighter until there was no more season.

The Phils lost, 1-0, and were eliminated.

The
what ifs
started almost immediately.

What if Halladay hadn't been victimized by a familiar bugaboo? (Leadoff men were 16 for 33 with a walk against him for the season.) What if Victorino had hit the cutoff man and given the infield a chance to cut down Furcal on that triple? What if Raul Ibanez's drive to the right-field warning
track with two men on in the fourth had been greeted by a friendly October tailwind and landed in the seats? What if Utley's ninth-inning drive to the warning track in center had traveled a few more feet?

What if management hadn't put together the best starting rotation in baseball?

What if all the hype never followed?

What if the expectations never soared as high as they did, so high that they'd only be reached with a World Series title?

Would it have hurt any less had none of this happened?

Maybe.

But for now, it hurt. A lot. Especially for Roy Halladay, who pitched his ass off but received no run support.

The end had come, all too shockingly soon, and, now, where there was once great hope, only numbness remained.

The last sellout crowd of the season walked quietly out of the ballpark, heads down and hearts broken.

The Cardinals—talented, resilient, and looking kissed by destiny—danced in triumph on the infield grass.

A few feet away, a wounded Ryan Howard flopped on the first-base line and writhed in pain after his Achilles' tendon ruptured like the Phillies' dream as he made the final out of the game.

In his postgame news conference, a shaken Charlie Manuel searched for the right words, only to finally speak for an entire organization, an entire team, and an entire city.

“I feel very empty right now,” he said.

As Manuel spoke, Roy Halladay was down the corridor in the clubhouse. He sat alone, in uniform, and stared frozenly into his locker for 25 minutes after the last out.

For an hour after the game ended, players showered, dressed, and spoke to reporters about their unfulfilled season.

“I'm shocked that we lost,” said Brad Lidge, lingering in front of his locker.

Shane Victorino was one of the last players in the room. After dressing in the clubhouse for the final time in 2011, he rummaged through some belongings in his locker. He reached in and pulled out a sheet of World Series tickets marked for games in Philadelphia. He looked at them wistfully, and then slowly tore them into pieces and dropped them into the trash bin as he headed for the door.

Victorino did not speak to reporters.

He didn't have to.

Thirty-four years earlier, to the day, the Phillies suffered their infamous Black Friday loss to the Dodgers in Game 3 of the 1977 NLCS. For a whole new generation of Phillies fans and a whole new group of players, this was the new Black Friday. Even a major-league-best 102 wins would not soothe this wound. So much more was expected from these Phillies.

Disappointing year or disappointing ending?

“Disappointing year,” Cliff Lee said. “We had higher expectations than this. It's not over until it's over and for us, it's over now.”

Never had a loss hurt the Phillies in so many ways. Another year had ticked off the biological clock of the team's nucleus. A number of key players would become free agents. And from a financial standpoint, the early playoff exit cost the franchise millions of dollars in revenues.

For the second season in a row, the Phillies bowed out of the playoffs with their bats turning feeble. They scored 21 runs in five games against the Cardinals, but 11 came in the first game of the series. The Phils scored just 10 runs over the final four games and pushed runs across the plate in just three of their final 34 innings. As a team, they hit just .226 in the series. Howard was 2 for 19 and hitless in his last 15 at-bats. Placido Polanco was also 2 for 19. Carlos Ruiz was 1 for 17. The Cardinals did not tear the cover off the ball; they hit .259 for the series and were actually outscored, 21 to 19. They were there for the taking, but the Phillies never took them.

The Phillies ran out of gas.

They began to sputter in the final weeks of the season when they struggled to score runs. But through the offensive drought, the starting pitching was always there. That changed in Game 2 of the NLDS when Lee, the man whose December arrival fueled World Series hysteria, couldn't protect a lead at home.

“I take a lot of responsibility for this,” Lee said after the Game 5 loss. “I had a 4-0 lead and wasn't able to keep it. If I did, we would have swept the series.”

Regret also filled Cole Hamels' voice.

“You only get to play this game for so long,” he said. “So it's kind of tough to see it slide through your fingertips.”

Roy Oswalt moved on quickly. The contents of his locker were already packed and ready to go by the time reporters entered the clubhouse 20 minutes after the last out. Oswalt had the most difficult season of any of the team's Big Four starters and at times seemed as if his thoughts were elsewhere. On the night it all ended, he looked like a guy who was either double-parked on South Broad Street or couldn't wait to get home. Oswalt was the first one to exit the funereal clubhouse, leaving while many of his teammates were still in uniform coping with the loss.