SOMETIMES YOU get the 3 days' rest and sometimes the 3 days' rest gets you, or something like that.

This World Series has come down to two managers, Joe Girardi and Charlie Manuel, two men and two fundamental decisions they have made about how to use their pitching staffs. The contrast is rarely this stark and now there is no turning back.

Girardi has gambled on stressing his best arms. Manuel has calmly counted on the depth of his staff. Girardi has sent out CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett on short rest and now seen Burnett blow up on him, giving the Phillies their opening. Manuel resisted the temptation to force the issue with Cliff Lee in Game 4 and was rewarded with resuscitation by Lee in Game 5, in what turned out to be a wild, 8-6 victory.

Now Andy Pettitte will likely pitch for the Yankees in Game 6 on short rest. Now Pedro Martinez will pitch for the Phillies on regular rest.

And the Phillies can see daylight.

Manuel has been second-guessed, exhaustively. Forget that almost nobody wanted to deal with the predicate: that if Lee pitched Game 4 on short rest instead of Joe Blanton, Blanton still would have had to pitch Game 5. The only question was the order.

Manuel made this unspoken calculation: that the risk of starting Lee on short rest for the first time in his career was greater than the risk that his team would be irreparably demoralized if it fell behind in the series by three games to one. It was absolutely the right call. To do anything else would have been to panic.

Yet the second-guessing resounded.

"That doesn't bother me," Manuel said. "Like I said, I've seen it both ways. I've seen it work, and I've seen it not work . . .

"If we would have pitched Lee [in Game 4] and he would have won, we'd still need to win today's game. I mean, that's kind of the way I look at it. And who's to say that if Lee pitches tonight and we win, who's to say - he might pitch again."

And after watching Lee give the Phillies seven reasonable innings (five runs), and watching Burnett completely go ka-boom, failing to get an out in the third inning before departing, Manuel's words just hang there:

I've seen it work and I've seen it not work . . .

After the Yankees won Game 4 and took their 3-1 series lead, Girardi did have a decision. With his hard-earned cushion, the question was if he would insert lightly used starter Chad Gaudin into the Game 5 slot, moving Burnett back to Game 6.

"We talked about it a little bit," Girardi said, before the game. "The interesting thing is Chad hasn't thrown much in the last month, and that's a difficult spot to put him in. With CC only throwing about 100 pitches, we feel good about that. A.J. feels good, and we feel good about A.J. going out there. So we feel that this is the right move, and that's why we did it."

But it blew up on him. It is the downside of 3 days' rest, the inherent uncertainty of the situation, the fact that guys do it so infrequently anymore that you just cannot know. Yet Girardi, assuming he goes with Pettitte tomorrow, has banked everything on this inherent uncertainty.

Asked about Burnett, and his ineffectiveness, Girardi said it had nothing to do with the 3 days' rest.

"I don't think there was any correlation," he said. "He just lacked command tonight."

Girardi also said: "Well, if we would have pitched today, we probably would have won. That's the bottom line. A.J. struggled today. He felt good, he just struggled today. That's something that happens in the game of baseball."

Clearly, the guy knows his team. The strategy was exhaustively discussed internally, and it is in place. The goal was to get Sabathia out there three times in seven games, and they would deal with the rest. And here we are.

Girardi says he wants to check with Pettitte at today's workout to see how he feels, but you get the sense it is mostly a formality.

"If Andy feels physically good, he's going to go Wednesday," Girardi said.

Which only makes sense. There really is no way to undo this. They have chosen their strategies, both managers have, and now we get to see who was right. And who was wrong.

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