NEW YORK - Some mysteries aren't all that mysterious.

When the most steroid-tainted team in baseball builds a stadium that makes Citizens Bank Park look like the old Polo Grounds, you can expect a lot of home runs. And when the most notorious steroid-linked active player returns after surgery, it should surprise no one that seven of his first 10 hits are home runs.

Alex Rodriguez hit his seventh homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning yesterday. Rodriguez caught up to a fastball by suddenly human Phillies closer Brad Lidge and took it the opposite way. It landed a few rows behind the right-field fence, erasing a 4-2 Phillies lead.

There will be reasonable speculation about Lidge's pitching problems. The man who delivered a perfect 2008 and, not coincidentally, the final pitch of the Phillies' World Series clincher has been downright shaky at times this season. Lidge already has blown three saves. Just as worrisome are the baserunners and runs he's allowed in games that he has finished on the winning side.

But none of that really applied to the at-bat that turned a very entertaining, well-played Phillies win into a loss.

Lidge had just struck out Mark Teixeira on three pitches when Rodriguez stepped to the plate. Johnny Damon, who led off the ninth with a walk, was on second.

Lidge got ahead of Rodriguez, 1-2, then threw a slider that was low. Lidge threw another one, and Rodriguez laid off it for a full count. Then Lidge decided to come with "a fastball away . . . after throwing him six sliders in a row."

Rodriguez hit it out. Save blown, game tied.

"I was pretty impressed that he was able to do that with that pitch," Lidge said. "He's a great hitter, and he got to a pitch that we didn't think he'd be able to. . . . With him, if he hits it well enough, it's going to go out."

Lidge has always been a class act, whether he's standing at his locker answering questions about giving up gut-punch home runs or he's tracking down Charlie Manuel to present him with the ball he threw past Eric Hinske to win a championship.

So Lidge stood there in the visitors' clubhouse and tipped his proverbial cap to Rodriguez, who admitted to steroid use after Sports Illustrated reported he tested positive for performance-enhancers in 2003. Although Lidge has been a critic of fellow players who cheat, he didn't refer to any of that after this game. He credited Rodriguez and blamed himself.

Such is the state of baseball: Even as we watch a truly entertaining game with a postseason feel to it, we have to wonder just what it is that we're seeing. We can marvel at Rodriguez's ability to take that fastball and muscle it the opposite way, but we also have to wonder whether he's still getting a little help in the muscle department.

And we grade Lidge accordingly. The home run pitch doesn't seem as bad, but the rest of that inning was the kind of mess Lidge seldom made last year.

Walking the leadoff hitter, Damon, was the equivalent of dropping a banana peel in a silent film. You know what comes next.

After Rodriguez tied the game, Lidge gave up a sharply hit ground single to Robinson Cano. He let Cano steal second without holding him on, then fell behind Melky Cabrera, two balls and no strikes. Cabrera hit a flare into right, and Cano scored easily.

The Yankees rushed the field as if they'd won a playoff game. That was a measure of the big-game feel, but also of the respect the Phillies now command.

The shame of it is that Lidge undid what would have been a feel-good day for his teammates. J.A. Happ made his first start of the season and proved he belongs in the rotation. John Mayberry Jr. hit a three-run homer for his first big-league hit - then a total stranger was identified as his father on national TV.

Ultimately, what Lidge proved was just how rare and special his perfect season was. Games like this can and do happen to good teams and elite closers. What matters is how the team and the closer react.

Lidge pulled himself from the depths of self-doubt to find that 2008 groove. He already has proved he's mentally tough enough to recover from bigger disappointments than this.

He can start with some perspective. A tainted slugger hit one over the shallow right-field fence in a ballpark - The House That Roids Built - that plays like a Little League field.

It might have caused Lidge and the Phillies some misery, but it was no mystery.

Contact columnist Phil Sheridan at 215-854-2844 or psheridan@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/philsheridan.