is a retired Inquirer columnist

The camera, which has no conscience, no pity, no soul, no heart, creeps relentlessly in on him. Closer. Closer. Closer. And there he sits, Bradley Thomas Lidge, a man twisted in torment inside, a man who, on the outside, has that vacant, hollow-eyed look of a shell-shock victim, a man haunted by a question for which he has no answer:

How did this happen?

In the space of mere months, he has plummeted from absolute perfection into a pit of misery and despair.

Last year, Brad Lidge was Lights Out Lidge. The game was over when he said it was over, and not until then. Forty-eight times the Phillies entrusted him with the lead and the last inning. Forty-eight times he delivered. Never once did he fail. Not once.

And it was all punctuated on a cold and brittle October night with Brad Lidge on his knees, howling like a wolf under a full moon, celebrating the World Series championship by the Fightin's, much of it due to his brilliance.

And now . . .

And now he endures the season from hell.

It is the nature of the profession, this abrupt rise and fall, this mow 'em down one night, get lit up the next, though, admittedly, rarely quite as precipitous as this.

Brad Lidge is The Closer. The most specialized of a specialized occupation. It requires steel cojones. It requires a man who acknowledges that flaming failure is, from time to time, inevitable, and doesn't care. It requires a man who thrives in chaos.

Or, as they used to say of Mitch Williams, the Wild Thing, when he was coming out of the Phillies bullpen: "He pitches like his hair is on fire."

Williams served up the single most reviled pitch in Phillies history, and yet he not only survived but has thrived, a triumph of courage and the unflinching acceptance of responsibility and accountability. Williams stood up and answered every media question, and now, 16 years after Joe Carter's home run, Wild Thing has won over a tough, tough town.

To his considerable credit, Lidge has conducted himself with similar uncommon grace. He hasn't hid out, he hasn't ducked the media horde, he hasn't made alibi or excuse, he hasn't spewed lavas of rage.

A confession: I find myself rooting very hard for Brad Lidge.

Apparently, so, too, do a lot of the Fightin's fans. They have been extraordinarily patient; they have cut him miles of slack, remembering that without his 48-for-48 perfecto there would have been no championship. And no one, but no one, has been more loyal, more forgiving, than the manager, who created a magical moment Wednesday night by bringing Lidge in to register the final out of the win that clinched the Fightin's division championship. It was the perfect touch, redemption and compassion merged, and you watched that and said to yourself: Bravo, Charlie, bravo.

Charlie Manuel has given his man a second chance, and then about 237 second chances after that, and part of you admired the way good ol' Cholly stuck to his guns and kept running his man out there, and part of you would shout at the TV: "N-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o ... not Lidge again!"

Finally, as the specter of The Great Collapse of 1964 loomed over the Fightin's, the manager relented and opted for other arms, settling on the bullpen-by-committee approach.

And the search for the answer to what ails Lidge continues.

Injury? Throws too many sliders? Throws too many fastballs? Throws too many fat offerings? The ever-popular lost location? Fear of failure?

Or maybe, just maybe, he thinks too much. Paralysis from analysis?

You recall the words of the late and sorely missed Frank Edwin McGraw, the Irish Leprechaun: "You try to get cute and try to outsmart them and you can end up outsmarting yourself. Sometimes it's best to just hump up . . ."

Tug always did have a way of reducing things to their simplest level.

Certainly the single most important attribute a closer can have is a short memory.

"You gotta want the ball," Tug McGraw was fond of saying, "and if they torch you, forget it. You only have to wait 24 hours to make up for it."

His favorite was The Frozen Snowball Theory. To wit: "A billion years from now, the Earth is gonna be a frozen snowball, and nobody is gonna care if I gave up the winning run."

Meanwhile, the forlorn, tormented, frustrated, confused Brad Lidge continues the search.

"He needs," said Charlie Manuel, "a little break."

Ah, if it were only that simple . . .