An hour beforehand, it was still hard to know. The seats at Citizens Bank Park, dark blue and mostly empty, sat unopened in the cold. You could imagine the ticketholders huddling elsewhere, in the concourse, around their cars and their coolers, trying to stay warm, stamping their feet, pondering their fate, waiting.

They had arrived here early Monday night filled with hope and departed a few hours later, wet and exhausted, sentenced to 2 more days. “Only in Philly,” came the simple message from a buddy, and it was echoed a million-fold throughout the region. This is a place that has found comfort in misery over the last quarter-century. So, rain? Of course.

They came to see 3 1/2 innings, the resumption of a suspended World Series game, the final, labored sprint at the end of a 25-year marathon. And you wondered — what it would feel like when a Philadelphia team finally won, what it would sound like, what of the roar that was so many years in the making?

The answer came at 9:58 p.m. It ended with Phillies pitcher Brad Lidge, the perfect closer, on his knees in front of the mound. He struck out Tampa Bay Rays pinch-hitter Eric Hinske, and the joyful noise erupted. It might not yet have stopped.

And Lidge said, summing up in a television interview, “It’s very honestly hard to control my emotions right now ... These fans are amazing.”

And Jimmy Rollins said, asked about the drought, “It’s over. It’s over, man.”

Phils manager Charlie Manuel has played the first card of Game 5 1/2 of the World Series: After the Phillies hit in the bottom of the sixth inning, Ryan Madson will be first out of the bullpen in the top of the seventh.

"Madson will start the game for us," Manuel said, at a pre-mid-game press conference, undoubtedly the first ever press conference he has ever done in the middle of the sixth inning.

"He's got experience, and a couple of years ago he was a starter," Manuel said. "He go in like 20-something games as a starter. And like I said, he's got experience. He's been throwing the ball real good. I think from a mindset he also knows that, we've just got actually three innings for our bullpen to pitch.

"So it's kind of a mindset thing, but I think when you look at it, he's got to get three outs or four outs or whatever, five outs. Whatever. However long we leave him in."

They'll all head out to rightfield, right from the start tonight -- coaches Mick Billmeyer and Roly DeArmas, all of the pitchers, all of them. They will troop out to the Phillies' bullpen at Citizens Bank Park, to huge cheers. You wonder if they will know.

It is likely, barring a nine-run explosion when the Phillies come out to play the bottom of the sixth inning in the craziest World Series circumstances of all time (non-earthquake division), that Phils manager Charlie Manuel already knows how he is going to play this thing. Because he will be pinch-hitting for Cole Hamels to start this mini-game, and he will need to go to the bullpen. But who?

You wonder if he will clue them in before the game. You wonder if he will tap Ryan Madson on the shoulder, say, and tell him that he's the one. That's the way I would go. Manuel has the ability to lefty-righty this thing to death, if he chooses, but I wouldn't. I'd go with Madson for as many outs as he can get, followed by J.C. Romero and then Brad Lidge in the ninth. You can argue it either way -- there isn't any right answer. It is a flexible bullpen with a lot of trustworthy parts. You could just as easily go with Scott Eyre for a batter (Rays catcher Dioner Navarro, the leadoff hitter and a switch-hitter, doesn't hit as well against lefties), Chad Durbin for two, somebody else for the pinch-hitter, and on and on.

However Manuel decides, though, I don't think I would tell any of them ahead of time.

They love to preserve their routines. You wonder if it's possible, given these bizarre circumstances. Everybody knows the game is headed to the bullpen, and they've had to sleep on this for two nights (as have the Rays' pitchers). They know they will be the focal point, for as long as this thing goes. It isn't natural to begin with the end. It isn't the routine. But it is the reality.

Still, I wouldn't tell them ahead of time. I'd make them all go out there, all in the dark. I'd get them out there, and then I would let the bottom of the sixth get started, and then I would tell pitching coach Rich Dubee to pick up the phone and deliver the message to Billmeyer on the other end -- at which point it would all go as it has all season for the National League's best bullpen: Billmeyer picks up the phone, listens, hangs up and tells one or two guys to get up and get ready. 

In the gloomy light of  morning, after post-game bar arguments and other suitable deliberations, here are the two main points about Game 5 of the World Series, butchered-by-Bud:

1) Whenever they re-start, the Phils will be batting in the bottom of the sixth of a 2-2 game. The Phils, therefore will have four at-bats if they need them while the Tampa Bay Rays will have only three. Advantage, Phillies.

2) When they resume, the game will be in the back end of the bullpen. The Phillies have had the best back end of the bullpen all season, and they have the best back end of the bullpen in this series, and Ryan Madson and J.C. Romero -- both of whom pitched a significant amount in Game 4 -- will now be rested, which they would not have been on Monday night. Advantage, Phillies.

Feel any better?

Look, I know that this is frustrating, and that you are convince the world is against the Phillies, and that you want to drink paint-thinner. And I agree that the game should never have been started by Selig & Co. -- especially because of the way the fans were abused. But once it was started, well, this was not a bad result. It could have been worse.

The conditions began to deteriorate at about 9:20 pm, according to the scrawl in my scorebook. "Rain picks up top of fourth," is what I wrote in the margin. And if you had based the stoppage decision based upon those conditions alone, a stoppage from the top of the fourth on would have been appropriate -- it was raining sideways, after all. But the Phillies didn't want that. To only have gotten nine outs from staff ace Cole Hamels before banging the game really would have been criminal.

But they don't base it primarily on those conditions, but also on the condition of the field. I think it's  fair to say that anytime after the start of the fifth inning could have raised the question of stoppage based upon field conditions. But I said this as it was happening: "Watch the pitchers. The first one who slips, they'll stop." Funny thing, though. No pitcher slipped significantly. And no batter slipped on a swing. That is the traditional measure -- something the umpires said after the game. But no pitcher or hitter slipped.

The infield was cleaned up by  the grounds crew at about 10:05, when the Rays were making a pitching change in the bottom of the fifth. They spread a ton of that drying agent stuff on the dirt and, when they left, it was dry enough to continue. By the top of the sixth, it was much worse, though. By the bottom of the sixth, after the tying run was scored, it was raining harder and it was a mess.

One argument was that they waited until it was a tie game to stop it because it just looked better. That's what I thought as it was happening because what we didn't know is that both team front offices had been told beforehand that the regular-season rain rules would be suspended and that any game would be played to a conclusion after the rain stopped. But given that new rule, which everyone says was decided upon ahead of time, consider:

You are Phillies manager Charlie Manuel. You have been put in a crummy situation by MLB. Again, this game should not have started. That is the crime here, starting. But once it did start, you have your ace on the mound and you have to want him out there as long as humanly possible. Knowing now that the Rays scored the tying run, you would have wanted it stopped in the top of the sixth. But truth be told, as Hamels stood on the mound to start the sixth, leading 2-1, the Phillies wanted him out there. They wanted the game to continue. They wanted to milk as much out of Hamels as they could. And, again: if he had slipped and fallen while delivering a pitch, they would have stopped the game. But he didn't.

It was a terrible situation. It should never have happened. On that, we can agree. That is Selig's incompetence. If you want to rip baseball,  that's the rip -- for starting in the first place, given the weather radar. But once it did start, the Phillies had to want it to go as long as possible. And because you don't like the way the top of the sixth inning turned out does not change the fact that, if they had been given the choice of stopping the game before the inning started, the Phillies likely would have voted to keep playing, to try to get a few more outs from their ace.

The rain robbed them of a full Hamels outing. It took away part of their expected advantage. It has to be frustrating. But the Phils have four at-bats remaining and the Rays have three. The Phils have the better bullpen, and the bullpen is now rested.

Advantage, Phillies.

“This is a time to cherish,” Jimmy Rollins was saying. He was sitting in the dugout, hours before the first pitch last night. The ballpark had begun to awaken after the long night before. The stadium service people and all manner of media were performing their ancient rituals. Boxes of rally towels were stacked at the gates.

Cherish. It is a really rich word, the very sound of it somehow adding to its meaning. You cherish valuables, but only the most valuable. You cherish memories, but only the absolute best of them. It is not a word used wantonly. It is not a word a baseball player uses in July.

“You never forget that a lot of guys don’t make it this far,” Rollins continued. The win in Game 4 of the World Series would not go final for another nine innings and 6 hours. The Phillies would ride Joe Blanton and Ryan Howard and four home runs to a 10-2 victory but they would follow Rollins, again. He was on base four times and scored three times.

The Phillies are one game away now from their first title since 1980. The city of Philadelphia is one game away now from its first major sports championship in 25 years. These are big numbers. We tend to measure around here in decades and years (and mostly next-years, at that). One game is difficult to comprehend but it is this morning’s reality.
“There have been a lot of dreams cut short – we all know what happened in ’93, the last time the Phillies were here,” Rollins was saying. But they never got as close as these Phillies now are, up three-games-to-one against the Tampa Bay Rays.

This was the 102nd win of the Phillies’ season. As we all know, Rollins predicted 100 at the start of the year, but he was talking about the regular season. Since then, though, he has happily embraced the notion that the playoffs count toward the total, too. And why not?

He is imperfect, granted – he stood and admired his eighth-inning shot to right field last night for a little bit too long, and had to hustle into second base when it hit off of the top of the wall. But he remains their most visible presence.

They have plenty of leaders. He is simply the one most willing to catch the arrows.

Brian Westbrook returns.

Eagles win.

Cause, effect.

It was an odd sort of day, with a Phillies hangover from the night before and Phillies anticipation for the night ahead. The Eagles were sandwiched into the middle, not their customary position. It felt a little different, and there was a ramshackle quality to parts of the game -- like the fourth-quarter goal line series where the Eagles were stopped first on one of their tired shovel passes, and then stopped again on a quarterback sneak. Donovan McNabb was misfiring high for much of the first half, and the overall engine was not exactly smooth at times. But they had Westbrook, and that was enough to beat the Atlanta Falcons, 27-14.

Still nursing ribs that he broke three weeks ago, there were times early on when Westbrook looked as if he wasn't that sure about what the contact would feel like. There were other times when he would get up after a hit and walk around a bit as if trying to convince himself that it really didn't hurt that much. But in an offense built around his multifaceted skills, Westbrook again offered this team a lifeline of stability.
  
The final numbers: 22 carries,  167 yards and two touchdowns, and six catches for 42 yards. He was explosive sometimes and simply good at other times. His second  TD,  on a 39-yard run with 1:51 left, offered the final punctuation -- and left Falcons defensive end John Abraham to remove his helmet and throw it violently, 20 yards or so toward his dejected sideline.

But the explosive big plays are part of it but not all of it. Because what he does more than anything is offer a sense of calming security to an offense that has had injury issues all season, and to a team still struggling to discover its identity after seven games.

It will be weeks before that defining is done, and everyone knows it. And the Eagles did catch a big officiating break at the end, when it was incorrectly ruled that the Falcons muffed a punt that they never touched, robbing them of a final attempt at trying for the go-ahead score (before Westbrook's last touchdown). So nothing is really secure and they all know it.

In the meantime, the Eagles are 4-3, Andy Reid is 10-0 in the week after the bye, the franchise won its 500th game, and the fans at Lincoln Financial Field spent part of the final minutes of the game chanting, "Let's go Phillies."

“You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.”
   Ernest Hemingway
  The Old Man and the Sea


The ovation for Jamie Moyer began the moment manager Charlie Manuel’s head popped out of the dugout. There was one out in the seventh inning, the Rays’ second run of the game had just scored, and it was time.

The noise built as Manuel reached the mound. The infielders had gathered around. Moyer and catcher Carlos Ruiz were talking, maybe reliving the previous batter, maybe something else. Manuel let them finish for a second. Then Moyer looked at the manager, and then he handed him the ball, and then he made the slow walk to the dugout.

The crowd rose. They knew what they had just seen. It would take more than an hour for the final result to be tallied – Phils 5, Rays 4 – but they knew they were watching history a 45-year-old getting his first chance at pitching in the World Series and making the most of it. His pitching line ended up like this: 6 1/3 innings pitched, five hits, three runs, one walk, five strikeouts. The last run charged to him scored while he was in the dugout.

The man was, well, himself. The pre-game rain delay did not shake him. Nothing did. He was the same pitcher who won 16 games during the regular season. After struggling earlier in the playoffs against Milwaukee and especially against Los Angeles, Moyer came back as if the two starts had never happened. He is the king of compartmentalization, always has been. If anything, Moyer is the master of the here and now.

"The difference for me tonight was probably just creating a tempo," Moyer said. He said that tempo-creating began in the bullpen and continued on into the early innings, when he was able to throw strikes and limit the initial struggle.

And then, he said, there was the crowd, which he said he felt from the moment he left the dugout to being his warm-up session.

"It was very uplifting to walk across the field, even through the puddles, and hear the excitement of the fans," Moyer said. "...I really don't pay attention, but you can hear things."

He could not hide what this game meant to him. In the days leading up to Saturday, Moyer acknowledged that it was the biggest game of his life. On the one hand, you do not get the impression that he hung around this long simply for the chance to pitch in a World Series – he has always seemed to be more about battling himself, and battling to improve himself, and that ongoing struggle more than, necessarily, the spotlight.

But now that time and circumstance and good fortune had trained the spotlight on him, finally, there was no hiding the significance. It was the biggest moment, this was, the old man and the Series.

"I think it exceeded every expectation or every thought or every dream that I had," Moyer said.

And while he didn’t get the win, the old man and his team won.


“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”
  Hemingway, ibid.


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What a bizarre night. The game was delayed by rain for 91 minutes at the start. It did not end until 1:47 am. In between, the Phillies hit three home runs (Carlos Ruiz in the second, and Chase Utley and Ryan Howard back-to-back in the sixth). The Phils also were victimized by another bad umpiring decision.

In the top of the seventh, Carl Crawford bunted to the right side. Moyer made a great diving scoop-and-shovel to first base, where Howard barehanded the ball. Crawford was out, except he was called safe. What followed was a double and then two infield groundouts that scored two runs. Had the correct call been made, and the same sequence followed it, no runs would have scored.

But he was called safe and the runs did score. And then BJ Upton ran the Rays into the tying run in the eighth with an infield single, a steal of second, a steal of third that ended with him scoring because Ruiz’ throw hit Upton and skittered away.

Then, in the bottom of the ninth, the Phils won it with more bizarreness. Eric Bruntlett was hit by a pitch. With Shane Victorino squared around to bunt, pitcher Grant Balfour threw a wild pitch and then catcher Dioneer Navarro threw the ball into centerfield. Bruntlett ended up on third.

The Rays walked the bases loaded intentionally. They set up a five-man infield. Up was Ruiz, who hit a little dribbler up the third base line. Should Evan Longoria have let it roll and hope it went foul? He will second-guess himself, undoubtedly, because it was a close call.

But Longoria played it and tried to get Bruntlett at the plate. His throw was wild. The Phils won.

Watching the mist and the rain fall this afternoon, the day has a 1993 feel to it -- specifically, October 20, 1993. Because it represents a fate I would wish on no one, specifically me, I bring it up here in a reverse-black-cat kind of strategy.

You remember that night: Blue Jays 15, Phillies 14, Game 4 of the '93 Series. To this day, it represents the most runs scored in a World Series game. To that point, it also was the longest nine-inning game in Series history at 4 hours, 14 minutes. (The new longest game was 4 hours, 19 minutes -- Game 3 last year, Red Sox vs. Rockies.)

But, in 1993, it was just this kind of a day -- gray, misty, all of that. It seemed as if that game was almost played in a fog. The particulars -- the Phils blew a six-run lead in the eighth inning -- will forever be a part of municipal lore. It is the smaller details that stand out.

That was the game where Blue Jays' starter Todd Stottlemyre tore up his chin with a ridiculous head-first slide into third base, this big red mark winking at everyone for the rest of his abbreviated appearance. And it was the game where the telephone in the Blue Jays' bullpen broke, forcing them to rely on hand signals to get the right reliever warmed up. One time, manager Cito Gaston signaled for a pitching change and was shocked at the identity of the relief pitcher who arrived to take the ball from him. Gaston complained to the umpires, who allowed him to call the correct guy from the bullpen and gave him all the time he needed to warm up. Then the Blue Jays were given walkie-talkies to communicate. Then the first walkie-talkie failed.

It was surreal, inspiring this sign carried by a Phillies fan: "Will Pitch Middle Relief for Food."

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Early in the afternoon, two weather forecasters -- The Weather Channel and weather.com -- are saying that the rain will stop by game time (about 8:30 pm, give or take a few hundred commercials).  However,  weatherunderground.com  is stubbornly  insisting  that  it will still be raining a lot by then.

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For the glass half-full segment of the population, generally not that big a segment in this area code, here are some Jamie Moyer stats concerning how much rest he has before pitching. (Again, all hail baseball-reference.com.)

Three days of rest, 4.76 ERA
Four days, 4.18 ERA.
Five days, 3.20 ERA.
Six or more days, 3.09 ERA.

When he takes the mound for Game 3, Moyer will have 12 days' rest. Just saying.

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Lousy weather in Orlando, rainy, foggy, getting ready to fly home, doing the second-guess thing in my head about how Phils manager Charlie Manuel lined up his pitching rotation for the World Series.

I have already said that I would have done what Manuel did -- Cole Hamels, Brett Myers, Jamie Moyer and Joe Blanton in Games 1-4. I really think there is a danger in over-thinking this stuff, especially at this time of year. Over-thinking can start to smell like panic if you aren't careful. I think what Manuel did was fine.

The decision he had to make was whether or not to pitch Myers in Game 2 on the road or Game 3 at home, where he has been so successful this season. In hindsight, now that the Phils have lost Game 2, it is only natural to roll it all around in your head and wonder. But the more it rolls around, sloshing with the byproducts of the coffee IV that most everyone traveling with this team is hooked up to at this point, it still seems to have been the right way to go.

Think about it. The Phils did not lose Game 2 because of Myers. He might not have been stellar, but he was professional. He got better as the night went on. He settled in and did fine, acquitting himself well enough in his first World Series appearance. Repeat: the did not lose because of Myers.

They lost because they were 1-15 with runners in scoring position. Oh, yeah; that.

Now they have Moyer at home for Game 3. He has not pitched well so far in the  post-season but both of the games, against Milwaukee and Los Angeles, were on the road. I have no idea what will  happen on Saturday night, but I have to think that that being at home, in the biggest moment of a long professional life, will work in his favor.

And, another thing: with it lined up this way, you have Myers rested and ready for Game 6 -- which is where this thing is almost certainly headed. If you believe in Cole Hamels, regardless of what happens in Games 3 and 4, then this is going to get to Game 6.

So, that's it.