Join Daily News columnist Sam Donnellon for a live chat about all things Phillies starting at noon Monday.

If you're on a mobile device, click here to follow along and post questions.

Join Daily News columnist Sam Donnellon for a live chat about all things Phillies starting at noon Monday.

If you're on a mobile device, click here.

Video: A few years ago, the thinking surrounding the Phillies was that "the window of opportunity" to win multiple World Series was short. Sam Donnellon discusses why that is no longer the case.

The story is now part of marketing folklore. Back in 1958 the late, great famed press agent Irving Rudd went to work for Yonkers Raceway, a New York horse track that had fallen into disrepair and was closed for refurbishing. Rudd's job was to create a buzz for its reopening, a task he found daunting until one day a masterful idea sprung inside his fertile head. Rudd told painters to purposefully misspell the sign outside of the track "Yonkers Racewya". Phone calls came into the track and more importantly to the city's newspapers, radio stations and television networks mocking the mistake. Photographers from the city's numerous newspapers rushed out to snap a picture of the sign before it could be corrected (haha) and put it on their front pages. Radio stations reported it, there was even television video shot. According to his 2000 obituary in the New York Times, Rudd's public relations masterpiece "generated clippings around the world".

I got to know Irving when I covered boxing in the '80s and early 90s and he worked as a press agent for Sugar Ray Leonard. My dad had worked briefly for UPI back in the '50s, and Rudd actually recognized my name and asked if I was his son. He also invented bat day, camera day and music unappreciation day while working for the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Pretty amazing dude.

Anyway, I can't help but think there's a sharp mind among the new Sixers group that conjured up his spirit in this whole mascot debacle. Imagine if they had launched a contest before presenting us with the three hilariously bad cartoons that have appeared everywhere over the last three days. Would that moose have been on the front page of the Daily News today? Would we have dedicated more than three pages to improving upon their candidates? I think not.

So there he was, a year later, bat in hand, two outs in the ninth his team needing a run to keep its season alive.

Fate is cruel, but watching Ryan Howard writhing in pain along the first base line as the St. Louis Cardinals celebrated this latest bitter end to a promising Phillies season was, in a word, inhumane.

Howard grounded out to end last night’s deciding Game 5, a 1-0 Cardinals victory that underlined the dark fears that lay underneath their 102 win regular season.

ST. LOUIS – They scored two quick runs. Their lucky squirrel re-appeared. Fortune offered itself to the Phillies in Game 4 of the National League Division Series last night, chased them a bit, but like that crazy squirrel, they kept running from it.

David Freese knocked in four of the Cardinals' five runs with a double and home run off Phillies starter Roy Oswalt, and St. Louis starter Edwin Jackson recovered from the shakiest of starts to pitch six strong innings, propelling St. Louis to a 5-3 victory and a Game 5 showdown with the Phillies Friday night at Citizens Bank Park.

That’s twice now in this series that the Phillies have offered one of their aces a lead to work with. And they’ve lost both games, scoring just twon runs after the first inning in both.

Join Daily News columnist Sam Donnellon for a live chat ahead of Game 4 of the National League Division Series between the Phillies and Cardinals, starting at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

If you're on a mobile device, click here to follow along and post comments.

ST. LOUIS – Lurking below the praise of four Phillies starters capable on any given day of shutting down their opponent is that dark underbelly that has fed our anxiety all season long.

No, not the bullpen. Nothing lurking about it.

It’s this: On any given day, the opponent is capable of shutting down their team too. Especially when throwing lefthanded.

It was an offseason in which delighted Phillies fans salivated at the prospect of offering the opposition the double dose of aces that was the lot of the St. Louis Cardinals over the weekend. The down side? Both Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee are signed to long-term deals, which makes the chance that the two men will ever face off against each other in a game as important as tonight’s nearly nil.

Which means the closest you are likely to come to last year’s dream/nightmare matchup was Game 2 of the National League Division Series, which pitted Lee against Halladay clone Chris Carpenter, the St. Louis ace who stands 6-6 and on most nights, commands his pitches like a surgeon handles his tools.

This was not most nights. For either man. The Cardinals rallied from a four-run hole to beat the Phillies, 5-4 in front of 46,575 at Citizens Bank Park, another sellout record.