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Phils crawling to the finish line

Observations, insinuations, ruminations and unvarnished opinions . . . 'What is the springtime after all? "Only the other side of fall."

John Bowker, right, and Chase Utley can't come up with a flyball that dropped in right field. (Michael Bryant/Staff Photographer)
John Bowker, right, and Chase Utley can't come up with a flyball that dropped in right field. (Michael Bryant/Staff Photographer)Read more

Observations, insinuations, ruminations and unvarnished opinions . . .

'What is the springtime after all?

"Only the other side of fall."

Poet-songwriter Rod McKuen asked that question in verse and when I read it a long time ago, I thought of how it works the opposite way for baseball.

What is October baseball, after all? Only the other side of spring training.

The Phillies are struggling to reach the finish line of the long season like Dorando Pietri, the 1908 Olympic marathon runner who was dragged across the finish line by race officials after collapsing with victory in sight.

In the young season, Ryan Howard, Hunter Pence, Carlos Ruiz and Antonio Bastardo would probably be on the 15-day DL.

And the way it is done when time is on a ballclub's side, they would go back to Clearwater to be certified healthy by some rehab assignment at-bats. Bastardo's apparently tired arm - or worse - would be gradually brought back to eighth-inning worthiness.

So here the Phillies are on the first day of calendar Autumn, trailing blue smoke and leaking oil like a truck filled with Dust Bowl Okies.

And time is an enemy as the days dwindle down to a precious few, a time that requires Charlie Manuel to obey baseball tradition and give the hanging-on Braves his best shot.

The Phils have been playing like crap and through both medical necessity and benign neglect have blown what 2 weeks ago appeared to be two mortal-lock milestones for their fans. These Phillies would break their all-time regular-season victory mark of 101 in front of yet another sellout. At home, right? In their sacred yard. At the same time, Manuel would become the winningest manager in franchise history. Book it.

And that would be a good thing, seeing as the holder of the previous record, Gene Mauch, had never finished higher than tied for second in his nine seasons here and symbolizes the word "collapse" and all its synonyms.

Gene Mauch's 1964 Phillies became the Dorando Pietri of baseball-pennant coughups.

I have seen many times how easy it is for a great baseball team to coast to the finish line, then blow an engine on the October restart.

Before eight of 30 teams, including two wild cards, qualified for a shot at winning the World Series, it was simply two pennant winners playing best-of-seven. Now, you've got to win 11 games in one best-of-five and two best-of-seven crucibles. It is the toughest title in sports: Play 162, then you get to slide down a razor blade as many as 19 times.

The Dodgers were prohibitive favorites to beat the 1966 Orioles. Many experts predicted a sweep by a team led by the incomparable Sandy Koufax and menacing Don Drysdale.

But Drysdale and Koufax lost in Dodger Stadium. Koufax, just 30, never threw another pitch. The Orioles gleefully completed their sweep at home.

The Cubs were running away with the 1969 NL pennant race. If they had gone into their swoon with just a dozen games to play, the Phillies' collapse would not be so well-remembered. But . . .

The Mets were 10 back on Aug. 13. They took a one-game lead on Sept. 10. A magnificent 38-11 finishing kick left them with a 100-62 record and an easy eight-lap pennant win. They swept the Braves in the NLCS.

But the Mets were a heavy World Series underdog to a great Orioles team. However, the momentum and euphoria surrounding the Amazins' first pennant was unstoppable. They took out the O's in five and the sod of Shea Stadium was torn up for the third time that October.

OK. Maybe this battered team runs on lithium batteries and still will have the juice it takes to win those 11 more games you need to win to strike up the parade bands. Last year, the Phils were six wins short. A team with Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt was outpitched by a scratching-and-clawing Giants team playing a brand of baseball with which the Phils were unfamiliar.

Maybe by Oct. 1 the walking wounded will be fit as Olympic swimmers. Maybe the Four Aces will rack up so many zeroes it will look like the Battle of Midway.

Meanwhile, there is absolutely no truth to a rumor that in case of an early Phillies elimination, an extra E-ZPass lane will be opened on the bridges to accommodate the expected rush.

I can't hear you . . .

Lots of commenters hammered me when I explained last Friday how Temple would once again build an early lead on Penn State. But the No-JoePas would take a narrow lead in the fourth quarter and use their superior depth to hold it. I'm still waiting to hear from the This Is The Owls' Year mob, as well as the Penn State Will Kill Them Nit-Pickers . . . Meanwhile, it is now safe for the Owls to return to the Big East - while there still is one . . . It wouldn't be a bad conference for Penn State, either.

Change of venue

This will be the last Sunstrokes column to appear in a weekday edition of the Daily News. SS will be a regular feature in Philadelphia Sports Week, a fat magazine that will have your sports Jones begging for mercy when it replaces the Saturday paper on Oct. 1.

I'll miss DN Lite, even though it was too thin for a cat to pee on or to wrap around a flounder. It is the only Saturday paper in America you could shape into a lampshade and have actual light shine through.

And just think of how many million trees were saved over the years by the soon-to-be late, great, Saturday Daily News . . . OK, all together now. One, two, three . . .

"You mean they charge a dollar for that?"