The Rotation (39 page)

“What do you mean motivate them?” Manuel said with a laugh. “We came out and got one walloping run.”

Halladay's 18
^th
win was significant because it was the Phillies' 95
^th
of the season and it assured them of at least the NL wild-card playoff spot. Once upon a time, an accomplishment such as that would have been reason for celebration for the Phillies. This was, after all, a team that went 14 years without a playoff berth after winning the NL pennant in 1993. But times had changed for the franchise. It had All-Star pedigrees all over the diamond. It had a $175-million payroll. And, of course, it had The Rotation, the best pitching staff in baseball. Only a parade down Broad Street would satisfy this club.

That's why that Wednesday afternoon win in Houston was treated like, well, a Wednesday afternoon win in Houston.

“That's the beauty of being here,” Halladay said. “We had some big wins last year, and you came in the clubhouse and the feeling was,
that's what we expected to do
. It's a great mentality to have. There's still business to be taken care of.”

That business included winning a fifth-straight NL East title, wrapping up the best record in the game, and maybe setting a new franchise record for wins. The Phillies had all of those milestones at their fingertips as they jetted back to Philadelphia for the season's final home stand, a 10-game run that would bring the jubilation everyone was waiting for—and some frustration that no one expected.

Three months had passed since the Phillies had last seen the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards had given the Phillies problems earlier in the season, and now were in Citizens Bank Park with two-and-a-half weeks to go. They were red-hot, and making a late run at the NL wild-card spot. The Cards had been 10½ games behind Atlanta in the wild-card race on August 25, but 14 wins over a 19-game span had pulled them to within four games as they arrived in Philadelphia for a four-game series against the cruising Phillies on September 16. A month earlier, the only drama in St. Louis was whether free-agent-to-be
Albert Pujols would re-sign with the Cardinals in the off-season. Now, rabid Redbirds fans had a playoff push—and maybe so much more—to follow.

The Cardinals had given the Phillies trouble back in May, sweeping a two-game series in St. Louis on May 16 and May 17. Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt pitched well in those games, but runs were difficult to come by that entire month, and the Cards won the games by scores of 3-1 and 2-1. Now, four months later, the Phillies' offense was beginning to scuffle for runs again, but the drought wasn't all that worrisome because the team had built an impressive reservoir of wins and champagne showers were in the forecast.

The Phillies were poised for a celebration when they arrived at the ballpark on Friday afternoon, September 16. Sheets of plastic had been hung above the lockers and were ready to be unfurled. The champagne was on ice, and, surely, someone had a stash of victory cigars tucked away in the clubhouse. The New York Mets beat the Atlanta Braves that night, reducing the Phillies' magic number to one, but the Phillies couldn't fulfill their half of the equation against the increasingly difficult Cardinals, as St. Louis scored a 4-2 win in 11 innings. The Phillies' offense, which had been robust for much of the second half of the season, continued to be a concern as the club was held to three or fewer runs in its eighth-straight game.

The plastic was still rolled above the lockers when the Phillies arrived for work the next day. The 198
^th
-straight sellout crowd made its way through the turnstiles and there was a party atmosphere in the stands.

“Tonight's the night!” a female fan shouted from behind the dugout as the Phillies exited the field after batting practice.

It was the night. In their 150
^th
game of the season, the Phillies sewed up their fifth-straight NL East title with a 9-2 win over the Cardinals. The Phils got big contributions up and down the roster. Hunter Pence knocked in a pair of runs. Shane Victorino homered on his way to a three-RBI night. Raul Ibanez put an exclamation point on the evening with a grand slam in the bottom of the eighth.

The most promising contribution came from Roy Oswalt, who looked like a postseason-ready pitcher in delivering seven shutout innings. He walked none and struck out seven. The ball had excellent life coming out of his hand.

“It was jumping,” he said with a smile that was all too rare during the preceding months.

It had been a difficult season for Oswalt. In addition to dealing with a painful bulging disc in his back, he had spent a week at home in Mississippi
helping family, friends, and neighbors clean up after a tornado.

“It's pretty special to pitch the game that got us in,” Oswalt said as champagne flew around the victorious clubhouse. “Any clincher is special, especially with all the stuff I had to deal with this year.”

No sport has a more grueling schedule than baseball. Seven weeks of spring training followed by 162 games. Players often arrive at the ballpark by 2 P.M. and don't leave until close to midnight. Winning a division title is a special accomplishment, and it deserves to be celebrated. But the Phillies' celebration on September 17 was a little different than the club's previous ones. Oh, sure, there were still the hugs and hoots and hollers. The newcomer, Pence, was given the honor of popping the first champagne cork—an honor that had gone to Halladay, Brian Schneider, and Mike Sweeney, all playoff newbies, the year before—and he whooped it up pretty good, dropping to his knees as teammates doused him with bubbly. But on the whole, the celebration was more controlled and less raucous than previous ones. These Phillies had been there and done that. They were saving themselves for a bigger party. Heck, Victorino barely participated in the celebration. He went off to the weight room while his parents wandered around the field looking for him.

“This is a step,” Ryan Howard said. “We'll celebrate a little, but we know the true test starts in October.”

“This is just one piece,” Charlie Manuel said.

After soaking the clubhouse carpet with champagne, Phillies players returned to the field. A smattering of jubilant fans remained in the stands. Players milled around with family members and celebrated with club officials. Behind home plate, Cliff Lee and his wife, Kristen, shared a moment with John Middleton, one of the Phillies owners, and his wife. The couples had met and, as Kristen said, “kind of clicked,” two years earlier on the field at Citizens Bank Park as the Phillies celebrated their 2009 division title. Lee, of course, was traded that winter, a move that broke his wife's heart.

At the All-Star Game in 2010, Kristen bumped into the Middletons and told them how much she and her husband loved being with the Phillies and how disappointed they were to be traded away. John Middleton is a powerful, behind-the-scenes force in the Phillies organization, a competitive, physically fit, fiftysomething Main Line billionaire. He shuns the spotlight and media interview requests, but there's no doubt he loves the Phillies—and winning. “He's got a little Steinbrenner in him,” one team official said. When the Phillies brought Lee back for $120 million in December 2010, one of Amaro's first calls was to Middleton, who was thrilled by the news.

Now, after stops in Seattle and Texas, the Lees were back in Philadelphia, celebrating another division title with the Middletons.

“Just a little detour,” Kristen Lee said. “But it worked out in our favor.”

It was a bittersweet home stand for Cliff Lee. Two nights before the clincher, he was one strike away from his seventh shutout when he hung a 0-2 cutter to Florida's Jose Lopez, who swatted it into the left-field seats, tying the game at 1-1. The Phillies won the game, 2-1, in 10 innings, but Lee did not get the win. Poor run support and one bad pitch—how could he have thrown a strike there?—might have cost him the Cy Young Award that night, and deep down inside he knew it. Seven shutouts in one season might have put him over the top.

Oh, well. Lee found solace in the division clincher. He enjoyed it even more than the 2009 clincher.

“This year, I feel more a part of it,” he said. “Last time, I jumped in during the middle.”

As the celebration died down, Ibanez talked about his eighth-inning party-starting grand slam.

“Every hair on my arm stood up, and if I had any hair on my head, that would have stood up, too,” he said.

A moment later, Ibanez, 39 years old and in the final year of his three-year contract, grew reflective. He talked about how lucky he felt to play in front of packed houses every night in Philadelphia, and how lucky he was to play behind The Rotation.

“One day, I'll be telling my grandkids I was part of a team with a pitching staff like this,” he said.

From the first pitch of spring training to Oswalt's gem in the division clincher, The Rotation delivered.

“I actually think they've been better than advertised because of the expectations put on them,” Pitching Coach Rich Dubee said. “They pitched beyond those expectations. They took it to another level.

“We have a great rotation. Look at the numbers. But right now, we're just getting started.”

Yes, with a division title in hand, the Phillies were just getting started.

But how much longer would they last?

That seemed to be a very legitimate question the rest of the month.

Maybe the Phillies should have blown it out after clinching the division. Maybe the postgame celebration should have been rowdier and the players should have done the Lambeau Leap into the arms of delirious fans. Maybe Victorino should have skipped his workout, hung a lei around everyone's neck and shouted, “Let's party!” Then there might have been an excuse for the almost unbelievable hangover that dogged this team for the next week.

Twenty-four hours after they clinched, the Phillies got just eight singles in a 5-0 loss to the Cardinals. The Phils had nothing to play for, and it showed. The Cardinals had everything to play for, and it showed. In a performance that would cast a shadow all the way into October, Cardinals' ace Chris Carpenter pitched eight shutout innings to keep his team alive in the wild-card race.

From a Phillies' perspective, the loss was quite understandable. There is an inevitable letdown after clinching a division.

But what made this letdown worrisome was that it lasted eight games.
Eight freaking games
. At one point during the skid, Pence said the team was embarrassed by its play. How many 98-win teams can say they are embarrassed by their play? How many 98-win teams are booed in their final regular-season home games—on Fan Appreciation Night for gosh sakes?

It all happened. The Phillies lost their final six home games, and the skid reached eight games with a pair of losses in New York. Back in February, the Phils had hoped to be a history-making team. They made history, all right. They became the first team in baseball history to lose eight straight after clinching a league or division title. They became the first team to ever lose eight straight after winning its 98
^th
game. The eight-game skid was the team's longest since 2000. High hopes accompanied that season, too. The Phils traded for Andy Ashby, and he was to join Curt Schilling atop a rotation that was going to give the Phillies a chance. Only problem, Schilling needed preseason shoulder surgery and opened the season on the disabled list and Ashby was a flop. Both of them were eventually traded and the team finished the season with a rotation that included Kent Bottenfield, Omar Daal, and Bruce Chen—hardly Halladay, Lee, and Hamels.

As the losses piled up, angst grew in the streets. Even the starting pitchers, frustrated by a lack of run support, were beginning to sound agitated. At first, Charlie Manuel tried to calm frayed nerves by pointing out how banged-up his team was and promising how things would turn around once he was able to get his regular lineup on the field. But after a doubleheader sweep by the Mets on September 24—the Phils squandered a Cole
Hamels gem in losing the opener, 2-1—extended the losing streak to eight games, even Manuel found himself searching for answers. He fielded just two questions from reporters that night in New York. In answering the second question, the old-school Manuel went on a nearly four-minute, stream-of-consciousness rant that seemed to reveal some frustration with the team's health situation and the new-school medical staff 's conservative approach to getting players back on the field.