Join the Daily News' Rich Hofmann for a live Eagles chat at 1:30.

Phillies pitchers (from left) Cole Hamels , Tyler Walker and Joe Blanton hang out in the outfield during a workout at the Bank.

Having spent about an hour looking at old World Series records, you will forgive me if I'm a tiny bit off here. But it will be only a tiny bit, and the lesson remains:

That is, that Game 5 will be the hardest game for the Phillies.

It is a little bit complicated because all of the World Series have not been seven-game series and some have included ties. But, in my best attempt to compare apples to apples, it seems obvious that for the team trailing by three games to one, as the Phillies are now, that Game 5 is the toughest.

But it gets easier if you can endure.

By my feeble calculations, there have been 41 best-of-seven series in which one team took a 3-to-1 lead. And, well, here goes.

Of the 41 Game 5's that followed, the team leading the series closed it out, then and there, 23 times. That is, the team leading won 56 percent of the time and ended it.

If the trailing team managed to extend the series, there were 18 Game 6's. The team leading the series won 10 times. That is, again, 56 percent of the time.

But if the trailing team managed to extend the series to seven games, the odds flipped violently. Momentum, nerves, whatever, but when it gets to Game 7, the team attempting to defend that original 3-to-1 lead gets overtaken more often than not. Best as I can tell, the chasing team won five times (in '85, '79, '68, '58 and '25) and the leading team won three times ('72, '67 and '12, although that last series featured a tie).

In rough terms, then:

Right now, based on history, the Phils would be about a 8-to-1 shot to win the series.

If Cliff Lee can win them Game 5, they become about a 3.5-to-1 shot to win it.

If they can win Game 6, the Phillies become the favorite.

All of that, again, is based on history and nothing but history -- which is instructive, maybe, but not determinant when it comes to a World Series being played in 2009.

And, one final time: I get what people say when they talk about pitching Cliff Lee on 3 days' rest in Game 4. Nobody, though, seems to want to deal with the reality that Joe Blanton would then have had to pitch Game 5. A rested Blanton and a rested Lee vs. a short-rested Lee and a rested Blanton -- that is the argument. At the end of Game 5, the Phillies will be in exactly the same spot -- but the way they have done it, they get Lee at what they have reason to hope will be his best.

The only way it was wrong not to pitch Lee in Game 4 is if the Phillies are now mentally broken by the size of the 3-1 deficit. Their recent history says they will not be. Now they get a chance to prove it.

Prior to today, the greatest day in Philadelphia sports history was Sunday, October 19, 1980. It was a day that began as this one did, with an astounding Eagles victory.

This one in 2009 -- Eagles 40, Giants 17 -- was borderline absurd. I mean, nobody saw this coming. This was a game for first place in the NFC East. This was a game between evenly-matched rivals. This was a game between a Giants team that had lost two straight games and an Eagles team that could make explosive plays but couldn’t really sustain anything on offense.

The suspicion -- and by that I mean, everybody’s suspicion -- was for a train wreck kind of a game, with both teams hitting each other in the head and staggering around, trying to hit on something. Playing without running back Brian Westbrook (concussion), their historic Giant-killer, and with an offense line that has been mix-and-match, and with a quarterback (Donovan McNabb) who hadn’t looked very sharp the last two games, it was hard to see the Eagles doing anything really methodical on offense.

So, of course, what happened was the Eagles’ defense put clamps on Giants quarterback Eli Manning, forced a bunch of turnovers and bad throws, and then absolutely sliced open the Giants’ defense with a handful of huge plays. Fullback Leonard Weaver had a 41-yard touchdown. Wide receiver DeSean Jackson had a 54-yarder. Rookie running back LeSean McCoy had a 66-yarder.

For the Giants, it was an astounding, breathtaking defeat. For the Eagles, it meant first place in the NFC East. And for anyone who was wandering around a Philadelphia newspaper office in 1980, as I was, it brought back memories.

Because on that October day in 1980, two great events took place: the Phillies won Game 5 of the World Series, putting them one win away from the franchise’s first World Championship, and the Eagles beat the Dallas Cowboys at Veterans Stadium in the first divisional showdown between rival teams, back when beating the Cowboys was still something of a rarity.

So, that day in the office, the debate raged: how to play the two huge events on the back page of the Daily News?

It really was a debate, too -- that is how big a win over Dallas was back then. (Remember, this was only months before the Eagles would beat the Cowboys in the NFC Championship Game and go to the Super Bowl.) Sports editor Mike Rathet, a big football guy, was actually considering playing the two games as a kind of co-lead for a while.

The World Series ultimately prevailed. As a consolation prize, The Eagles got what was known in the business as a “big tease” on the bottom of the back page, a bigger-than-usual box pointing readers to stories about the Eagles-Cowboys inside.

Twenty-nine years later, if you asked people about a “big tease,” they would probably think you were talking about Cole Hamels. Which is another matter.

On the latest, greatest day in Philadelphia sports history, the Eagles help up their end -- shockingly so.

Poll: What was the biggest touchdown play for the Eagles against the Giants? (1488 votes)