Pat Gillick enjoys his last hurrah

Win the Stanley Cup, Flyers coach Fred Shero famously wrote on the locker room blackboard, "and we walk together forever."

Win the World Series, and Phillies general manager Pat Gillick just plans to walk away forever.

It has been a strange fit from the beginning, the patrician and eccentric GM and this hot-blooded sports town. And it will end every bit as strangely, with the 71-year-old Gillick retiring at the peak of his success here.

In a city where winning a championship can mean decades of job security - Bob Clarke, Dallas Green, Larry Bowa - Gillick is planning to stick around for a matter of days when this postseason ends.

Game 7 of the World Series, whether the Phillies are in it or not, is scheduled for Oct. 30. Gillick's contract expires the next day. No matter what happens over the next three weeks, he said, he still plans to retire.

"I live way out in Seattle," Gillick said the other day, "and I haven't been home a lot in the last 10 years. I've been out there working, and it gets kind of old being out there on the road. I don't get home that much. It's difficult. I'm married. My wife is out there. She doesn't get back here that much."

If the circumstances of his final weeks with the Phillies are unusual, that befits his tenure. A look Gillick's personnel decisions reveals as many misses as hits, and the list of players who have departed has more big names and stars on it than the list of players he has acquired.

Gone: Bobby Abreu, Jim Thome, Billy Wagner.

Here: Jayson Werth, Pedro Feliz, Brad Lidge.

Aaron Rowand goes on both lists. He was acquired for Thome in a trade with the Chicago White Sox and then allowed to depart as a free agent last winter.

And then there are the outright busts: Freddy Garcia, Adam Eaton, Rod Barajas, Wes Helms.

Put all those moves on a ledger sheet and you'd reckon the Phillies had gotten worse in Gillick's three years. The reality, of course, is that the team went from near-miss to division champion, the winner of its first postseason series in 15 years. There are three primary reasons for that.

First, Gillick is the first GM since the 1970s who wasn't knee-capped to some extent by his available payroll. The Phillies don't provide the GM Club Platinum Card with no credit limit that executives in Boston and New York carry in their wallets, but they have been able to spend enough to fix at least some of their expensive mistakes.

Second, and maybe most important, Gillick was smart enough to take over this franchise at an opportune time. No one in Philadelphia likes to give former GM Ed Wade credit, but Wade, Mike Arbuckle and Ruben Amaro are responsible for Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Cole Hamels, Chase Utley and Brett Myers - the nucleus of this team's rise. Gillick even inherited manager Charlie Manuel.

The third reason is Gillick himself. He successfully filled in around the nucleus, even while whiffing on the likes of Eaton and Helms.

"It's ideal for the nucleus of the franchise to be homegrown," Gillick said. "It's not as difficult to fill in around a good nucleus like that. The great Yankees teams, the Braves - they had a strong homegrown nucleus and went out and got the right parts."

Some of Gillick's best moves have been non-moves. He concluded, correctly, that Manuel was the right guy to manage this team at a time when it was hard to explain that decision to the fans. He has allowed the core players to develop their own personality without seriously disrupting the chemistry. As up-and-down as he has been, for example, Pat Burrell has been an important element in that chemistry.

Gillick's best acquisitions have been players who barely made a headline when they joined the Phillies: Werth and Shane Victorino, Greg Dobbs and Jamie Moyer and J.C. Romero. All were available because other teams didn't consider them must-haves.

This group has combined for the Phillies' best chance to win a championship since 1993. All by itself, that makes Gillick one of the most effective executives in the franchise's - and the city's - long, mostly unhappy history.

"I've only been here for three years," Gillick said, "so I'm happy for the management of the club and the ownership. I'm happy for the players, and I'm happy for the fans. They're fantastic fans. We're part of the way there, and we've got to keep going."

If these players can win it all, they will walk together forever. The guy who finally brought the group together will simply walk away.