Kris Benson threw a side. (Insert stretching-adhesion sounds here.)

Adam Eaton threw a side. (Insert creaking-back sounds here.)

Brad Lidge threw a side. (Insert right-knee clicks here.)

Kolt Myers threw a side. (Insert 2-year-old giggles here.)

There were so many Phillies front-office honchos watching Benson, Eaton and Lidge throw their sessions off mounds in Bright House Field it looked like the reviewing stand for the old Politburo May Day Parade in the Cold War days of the USSR.

The only thing missing was a line of fire trucks in case one of the convalescing righthanders crashed and burned.

Kolt Myers threw for a much smaller but no less appreciative audience in the green space between the Rich Ashburn and Steve Carlton diamonds at the Carpenter Complex.

Kolt started loosening up about 20 minutes before his dad, Brett, threw 72 pitches to a collection of Double and Triple A players in a strong outing that lasted 5 2/3 innings. I figure the kid threw about 400 pitches - all with a compact windup, dead overhand delivery and Spalding Guide follow-through. Kolt's heat blazed about 10 feet through the dappled sunshine. Sometimes he ran down his own pitch. Sometimes the baseball was retrieved by his grandpop, Phil Myers.

Phil was paying such close attention to Kolt, I doubt if he saw more than 10 of Brett's pitches, and certainly not the one that minor league outfielder Jake (Wrong Brother) Blalock drove through the wind for a two-run, first-inning homer. Brett was so sharp by his final inning, he needed just a half-dozen pitches to get three outs. So he retired two more hitters just to reach his pitch count.

"Kolt's gonna be a big boy," Phil Myers was saying. "Bigger than his dad." Only 2-year-old I ever saw work from a full windup.

Phil is a large man with an easy smile, a resonant voice and strong opinions. The acorn not only fell close to the Myers family tree, but must have hit most of the branches on the way down.

What Phil had in mind when he was raising his son in Jacksonville through some lean times and in-between times - many spent in various gigs involving professional boxers - was a big-league baseball player. A big-league pitcher, to be precise. Watching big-little Kolt joyously pegging a baseball most kids that age could barely lift, it was easy to visualize big-little Brett 25 years before.

Phil Myers never intended that Brett would take boxing too seriously, even after he took him to a boxing club and started him in the Sweet Science. "I had to earn a living, which means I wasn't always there with him," Phil said. "Between baseball seasons, I wanted him in an activity that kept him focused and boxing was perfect for him at the time. By the time he hit 13, there was plenty of baseball for him."

Former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes had trained for many of his bouts in Jacksonville and took a liking to the hard-punching kid. "Larry loved Brett," Phil said. "He wanted to train him - said he had a chance to be the Great White Hope. I told him, 'Thanks, Larry, but baseball is where he's headed.' "

Phil Myers estimates he has been associated with about 50 boxers in one aspect or another over the years. "One of the fighters I worked with, Nate Campbell, just pulled a huge upset on HBO down in Mexico," Pop Myers said. "Nate's 36 years old."

I had watched Jacksonville's Campbell win an upset Saturday night for the IBF, WBA and WBO lightweight titles with a 12-round split decision over once-beaten 24-year-old Juan Diaz. In his Quintana Roo hometown, no less.

It will be 2 years in June since the single event that has defined Brett Myers' career more than his All-Star level pitching. At the end of a night of bar-hopping in Boston, Myers got into a mega-publicized and very physical altercation with his wife, Kim, that put a harsh, indelible, glare on his career.

"I think Brett is starting to get it, I really do," Phillies employee assistance professional Dickie Noles was saying while Myers was in the process of retiring the final 12 hitters he faced. "I think he's made significant strides towards becoming more in control of his emotions and his life."

Noles was just a few years older than Brett when the righthander dead-cat bounced off the hard bottom of drug and alcohol abuse, a dilemma wrapped on the horns of a penchant for violence. Now, Dickie is a beacon that has shined a lot of hope on troubled Phillies organization athletes whose stories have never been told and never will be.

"Sometimes the whole story of something never gets told because the only ones who know the whole story are the people involved in it," Phil Myers said. "I think Brett has matured a lot. He's going to be OK. There's one of the reasons."

Kolt Myers unfurled another 10-foot fastball and scampered to retrieve the weary baseball.

The next 50 feet, 6 inches will be the easiest. *

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