'YOU KIND of visualize, try to imagine where he's going to hit the ball," Brad Lidge was saying. He was in the Phillies' dugout when it happened, when Jimmy Rollins made the latest miracle.

"You're thinking, 'Maybe in the gap or something,' " Lidge said. "You don't think it's going to happen. You're believing it's going to happen, but . . . it's incredible."

It is harder this time - not because of the bullpen, not because the Rockies and the Dodgers this year are so much better than the Brewers and Dodgers were last year. It is just harder for the Phillies this time. It just is.

They have this quality about them - cool, cojones, whatever. Everybody can see it, everybody who has watched the Phillies through the last few summers. It is what separates them from every team in every franchise in this city in most of our memories. The Phillies can read a scoreboard with the best of them, and act accordingly. They can read a calendar better than almost any of them, and turn it on in the money months of September and October.

We all can see it. It will always mark this group as special and identify this epoch. And now, this. They just keep doing it. Amazing, stunningly, etc.

They had to fight back last night, again, to win another postseason game in 2009. They trailed by 4-2 in the sixth inning and by 4-3 in the ninth inning before Rollins did it, rocketing a two-out double into right-centerfield that scored pinch-runner Eric Bruntlett and Carlos Ruiz and handed the Dodgers a deflating, 5-4 loss.

After an entirely memorable assault on the nerves against the Rockies in the National League Division Series, the League Championship Series against the Dodgers has been just as compelling. The Phillies' 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series belies the fortitude it has taken for them to win these games.

After it was over, after they had beaten Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton, reporters entered the Phillies' clubhouse and the players retreated en masse into a back area and toasted Rollins, away from prying eyes. They had just lived another miracle. They had sat in their frigid dugout, sat there into the ninth, and watched it all unfold again. Matt Stairs walked, Ruiz was hit by a pitch, and it was on.

"Stairsy walked and you hear everybody in the dugout yelling, 'Same seat, same seat,' " reliever Scott Eyre said, recounting the baseball superstition. "All that stuff we yell all the time. Then Carlos got hit and they were yelling even louder, 'Same seat, same seat.' "

When Rollins got the hit, Eyre described the scene in the dugout as "pandemonium."

And, a little while earlier, Lidge just shook his head and marveled and said, "A lot of teams say they play all 27 outs. I've never seen a team actually do it like this one."

It is their persona. Before the crushing game, Dodgers manager Joe Torre was talking about it. He said:

"They're very confident. They're sort of freewheeling. They have nice balance on both sides of the plate, and then the thing that gives your team more confidence than anything, they can send a pitcher out there, day-in and day-out, starting pitcher. I know they've struggled somewhat in the bullpen, but their starting pitchers have really been the difference as far as their sort of swagger that they have - first off, last year.

"And when you see ballclubs, ball teams go out there and play hard the way they play hard, that means when you win it once, it's not enough. That's certainly a compliment to Charlie [Manuel, the Phillies' manager] because, to me, he sets the tone and certainly reminds them, first of all, how they did it last year - and that last year is not enough."

But last year was different. Last year, it felt as if the Phillies were riding this great, wondrous wave. They had homefield advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs, they had Cole Hamels pitching like an MVP, and they never lost a game at Citizens Bank Park. It set up those first two series as theirs to lose.

This has seemed so much tougher. But now, after this, you wonder how the Dodgers will be able to come back. The Phillies gave the Dodgers a late-game gut punch in last year's NLCS, when Stairs hit a pinch-hit home run off Broxton. But Ryan Howard said, "This one was bigger."

"We're down by a run," he said. "This game potentially changed the momentum. If they win the game, it's 2-2 and we have to go back to LA and they feel like they have life. But now, being able to take that game, it's got to be a hard game to lose. Now you're down 3-1 and still have one more game in Philly."

It radiates off them: confidence, swagger, whatever - on most nights, but especially on these kind of nights. Now, here they are - creating a legacy. And if it is harder this time - and it is - the Phillies don't seem to mind.

Send e-mail to

hofmanr@phillynews.com,

or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at

http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.

For recent columns go to

http://go.philly.com/hofmann.