A Full Night's Worth of Drama

By Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Thursday, October 30, 2008; E01

PHILADELPHIA - OCTOBER 29: Manager Charloe Manuel of the Philadelphia Phillies celebrates with the World Series trophy in the locker room after their 4-3 win against the Tampa Bay Rays during the continuation of game five of the 2008 MLB World Series on October 29, 2008 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

PHILADELPHIA- Once, 28 years ago, Tug McGraw heaved his glove high in the night sky at old Veterans Stadium to celebrate his final strike to Willie Wilson of Kansas City. On Wednesday night at sparkling Citizens Bank Park, Brad Lidge, perfect all season with 48 straight saves, had an equal, though opposite, outpouring of emotion, dropping to his knees after his last strike to the Rays' Eric Hinske made the Phillies 4-3 winners of this fifth and final World Series game.

Finally, at 9:58 p.m., as a packed house that had stood all night, swathed in red and screaming, paid obeisance, the Phillies piled atop Lidge, the second team since 1883 with "Phillies" on their chests to be the best team in all of baseball.

Three innings of baseball on a freezing, windy night should not produce a Series jewel. But the Phillies and Rays turned a mess into a mini-masterpiece, transforming a suspended game into a tense, 79-minute suspension of disbelief. First Philadelphia, then counterpunching Tampa Bay and finally the victorious Phils delivered clutch hits or improvisational plays.

"When it was over, I kind of laughed. I thought, 'We just won the World Series!' " Phils Manager Charlie Manuel said of the instant when he realized that Pedro Feliz's RBI single in the seventh inning had made a winner of reliever J.C. Romero.

On the field, however, amid his celebrating team, Manuel showed the true animating emotion of this often spurned sports town, which had not won a world title in any pro sport for 25 years, telling the crowd: "This is for Philadelphia. Who's the world champion now?"

For the Rays, a dream ended -- of becoming the first team in any American pro sports league to go from the worst to the very best in just one season. However, as Manager Joe Maddon put it, " 'The mind, once stretched, can never return to its original form.' I like that expression. Our minds have been stretched. Our players will never be satisfied again with less than winning."

Each half-inning of the partial game constituted its own mini-drama as the passionate crowd, waving white towels, wearing red stocking caps and frequently jumping up and down to stay warm, delighted in the torturous ebb and flow.

PHILADELPHIA - OCTOBER 29: Brad Lidge #54 of the Philadelphia Phillies strikes out Eric Hinske of the Tampa Bay Rays for the final out during the continuation of game five of the 2008 MLB World Series on October 29, 2008 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Phillies won 4-3. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

In the most peculiar beginning of any Series night, this evening began in the bottom of the sixth with the score tied, 2-2. The first batter, pinch hitter Geoff Jenkins, crushed a double off the right-center field wall near the 398-foot sign off Grant Balfour, two feet beyond the lunge of right fielder Rocco Baldelli.

After moving to third on a sacrifice bunt, Jenkins scored on a bloop single over a drawn-in infield, the ball popping out of the glove of brilliant defensive second baseman Akinori Iwamura who, for the fifth time in this Series, either made an error or failed to make exactly the kind of gem for which he is known.

The Rays' Baldelli responded with a crash in the top of the seventh, crushing a solo homer to left to tie the score at 3. The play of the night and of this entire Series, however, came later in the inning. After quick Jason Bartlett singled and was bunted to second base, Iwamura slapped an infield single behind second base to Chase Utley, who made a sprinting backhand grab. That should have ended the play.

However, in a moment of inspiration -- or heady pro savvy -- Utley made a pump fake toward first base, almost like a football quarterback's jump pass. Bartlett bit on the deke. There was home plate to be taken. Phils first baseman Ryan Howard made 19 errors this season and is famous for his weak and inaccurate throwing arm. Bartlett would gamble that Howard couldn't throw him out.

But Howard never got the ball. Utley still had it and, almost with a casual three-quarter-speed throw to the plate, which wasn't even perfectly on line, still threw out Bartlett by six feet to end the inning. Derek Jeter, where are you?

That play switched momentum and set a tone for the rest of the brief night. The Phils' 33-home-run man Pat Burrell led off the seventh with a 400-foot double to center field off lefty J.P. Howell. Had the wind not blown the ball to the deepest part of the park, it would have been a homer. Had Burrell run hard every step of the way, he might have had a triple. But he stayed at second and pinch runner Eric Bruntlett had to be moved over to third by a Shane Victorino groundout.

"Twice tonight we moved men over from second to third with a bunt and a ground ball," Manuel said. "We didn't execute in some games, But we did this time and it set up both our runs."

PHILADELPHIA - OCTOBER 29: Catcher Carlos Ruiz #51 and Brad Lidge #54 of the Philadelphia Phillies celebrate after recording the final out of their 4-3 win to win the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays during the continuation of game five of the 2008 MLB World Series on October 29, 2008 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images)

Thus the stage was set for Feliz, a solid but unspectacular Phil better known for his defense at third base than his bat. His clean single to center field off submariner Chad Bradford scored Bruntlett for the final winning run.

Many will note the wild and relieved celebration at the end of this game as Lidge got the final two outs with the potential tying run at second base. But perhaps what was most remarkable was the number of people on hand for this celebration. All day, skeptics wondered how many fans would, or could, actually attend this game. How many had remembered to keep their ticket stubs, which were sold during the day for $200 to a few thousand dollars.

"We had 44,000 out of the 45,000 fans" from Monday night, Phils President David Montgomery said.

In effect, about 98 percent of Philly fans remembered that valuable stub because there was absolutely no way you could get back in your seat without it. No stub, take a hike, bud. But this is Philly. They know. Perhaps the rain check -- the symbol of patience and returning another day -- is the proper symbol of this long-suffering franchise. No, nothing the easy way -- ever -- for this bunch. That's why they deserved to win the Series so much more than Tampa Bay can even imagine.

Maybe someday Rays fans will know how Phils fans felt on this raw night, but not now, not after 11 years. If this Series had a suspended game at Tropicana Field, perhaps because of a light failure, how many empty seats would there have been, how many mystified angry fans who couldn't get back in? Make a guess. Not just 2 percent.

In Philadelphia, where everything is as old as Ben Franklin and cracked bells, everything is context and history. You don't know where you are until you know where you've been. And the Phils have been to baseball hell and back. Several times.

The Whiz Kids were good, they tell us, but not next to Joe DiMaggio's '50 Yanks. There wasn't much wrong with the '76, '77 and '78 Phils either, nothing one more pitcher and a conscious manager couldn't have cured. The '83 Series wasn't the Phils' fault; the Orioles were due. And '93 was a raw deal. Who loses 15-14? What can you do when the Wild Thing closes and the other guys have Joe Carter?

PHILADELPHIA - OCTOBER 29: Chase Utley #26 of the Philadelphia Phillies fakes a throw to first which allowed him to throw out Jason Bartlett #8 of the Tampa Bay Rays on a ball hit by Akinori Iwamura of the Rays in the top of the seventh inning during the continuation of game five of the 2008 MLB World Series on October 29, 2008 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

So unless you're really old and still raw at the Red Sox for Rube Foster's big Series in '15, that's the whole encyclopedia of Phillies grief. In all the volumes back to 1883, there's only one luminous page, one precious minute -- 11:29 p.m. on Oct. 21, 1980, when the late McGraw hurled his glove higher than anybody ever, cops on horseback circled the Vet, and, if you were there, you thought, "The poor snakebit Phillies are free, thank Bowie almighty, free at last."

But they weren't. Not until now.

It took another generation, another 28 years, for them to bring back memories of "You Gotta Believe" with the kind of backward rallying cry that captures the Phillie fan's familiarity with self-mockery and dark Philly humor. This year's motto: "Why Can't Us?"

If the Phils hadn't grabbed this ring, next year's motto would have been, "Yes, We Can't."

Yo, Adrian, now you can.

Back in '80, all of us in the Vet thought we'd seen the end of something, the burying of a defeatist complex, the beginning of a new generation of Phillies fans who would believe that they rooted for a normal team.

How wrong we were. But how right it now feels, 28 years and eight days later, to see the Phillies add a second title, so well deserved, so long deferred.