Posted on Fri, Oct. 30, 2009
NEW YORK - It took one swing of the bat to wake them up, to raise the decibel level in this $1.3 billion palace to a height surpassing any it had reached in the previous 24 hours. For 12 innings, they had slept, lulled into a deep hibernation by one of the most powerful sedatives in sports, their notorious spunk silenced by a pair of disparate yet devilishly effective starting pitchers.
Then, in the fourth inning of a game that Mark Teixeira later labeled a "must-win," they awoke.
Pedro Martinez delivered and Teixeira swung and a series that one night before had tilted in favor of the visitors finally arrived at Yankee Stadium.
One night after Cliff Lee hurled them to a Game 1 victory, the Phillies found themselves walking in another pair of moccasins, down a road that now heads back to Philadelphia with the World Series tied at one game apiece.
"I always like to be 2-0 over 1-1," manager Charlie Manuel said after his Phillies fell to the Yankees, 3-1, in Game 2 of the World Series. "But it is what it is. I've got to accept it. Like you said, we're going home."
The weather changes fast in October, and so do the tides of a postseason series, when the line between victory and defeat mirrors the thin stripe of chalk that runs from home plate to the poles.
The Phillies arrived at the ballpark with an opportunity to seize control of a Fall Classic that almost nobody predicted them to win. They left well aware of the false sense of security that a Game 1 victory on the road can bring. The next three games are at home, where the Phillies are 11-1 in the last two postseasons. But they also feature pitching matchups that could favor the Yankees: experienced lefty Andy Pettitte, 16-9 with a 3.83 ERA in 38 postseason starts, against young lefty Cole Hamels, who has allowed 11 runs in 14 1/3 innings of three starts this October. And in Game 4, if the Yankees decide to bring back CC Sabathia on 3 days' rest, the Phillies could face a pitcher who held them to two runs in seven innings of their 6-1 victory in Game 1.
On Wednesday, it was Chase Utley who changed the game, hitting two solo home runs off Sabathia, and it was Lee silencing the Yankees in a complete-game effort.
Last night, it was Teixiera holding the jumper cables, igniting his teammates and renewing the spirits of a sellout crowd with a solo home run in the fourth off Martinez. Last night, it was A.J. Burnett behind the wheel, frustrating the middle of the Phillies' order with backdoor curveballs and fastballs down and away.
Teixeira's blast to lead off the fourth tied the game, 1-1. Burnett handled things from there. The Phillies had some opportunities: they stranded runners on first and second in the third inning, and Jayson Werth squandered a leadoff single in the fourth when Yankees catcher Jose Molina caught him lingering off first base following a pitch to Raul Ibanez.
But after Werth's single, Burnett retired 11 of the next 12 batters. He then turned the game over to vaunted closer Mariano Rivera, who pitched the eighth and ninth innings to increase his postseason-record save total to 38.
"I felt like Burnett did a tremendous job," Manuel said. "I felt like if we could have hit his fastball early and made him throw breaking balls a lot that his command might be not be so well and we might be able to get him deep in counts and hit him better. But he blocked all that out by throwing his fastball for strikes and being very aggressive with it, and then, of course, his slider was off the chart."
The game provided plenty of fodder for the second-guessers of the world: Having thrown 83 pitches in five scoreless innings - four short of the total that Manuel deemed the limit in Martinez' start in Game 2 of the NLCS - Martinez returned to the mound for the sixth. After striking out Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, he allowed a solo home run to Hideki Matsui that gave the Yankees their first lead of the series. Martinez, who admitted later that he had been sick in the days leading up to his much-hyped matchup against a team he already had faced six times in the playoffs, then returned to the mound for the seventh and quickly allowed back-to-back singles that put runners on the corners with no out. Chan Ho Park and Scott Eyre limited the damage to an RBI single by Jorge Posada - they were aided by another controversial ruling by major league umpires, who decided that Ryan Howard had caught a low worm-burner off the bat of Johnny Damon and doubled off Posada, although television replays suggested otherwise - but it was enough.
With runners on first and second and one out in the eighth, Rivera coaxed Utley into an inning-ending doubleplay on a 3-2 pitch. He then struck out Matt Stairs for the final out in the ninth.
The Phillies have traveled this road before: Just last season, they beat the Rays in Game 1 before mustering just two late runs in a 4-2 loss in Game 2.
Once they left Tampa Bay, they never returned.
"Our confidence is still there," said Stairs, who drove in the Phillies' only run on a single to left in the second inning. "You'd always like to come in here and take two from them, that's for sure. But we had a big game [Wednesday] and you tip your hat to A.J."
For more Phillies coverage and opinion, read David Murphy's blog, High Cheese, at http://go.philly.com/highcheese.
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