"I think it's going to go down to the end," Phils manager Charlie Manuel said, after it was over. "I think it's going to be a good race. It's going to be a good fight."
Both teams have a bit of speed and a lot of power. Manuel thinks the Phillies have the better bullpen, especially as long as Mets closer Billy Wagner is on the disabled list, but issues are developing in the Phillies' bullpen as well. There always are - bullpens breed issues like bacteria in a petri dish - as wear and tear accumulate and August eases into September.
"I think both teams are kind of similar," Manuel said. "It's who wants it and who plays the best, I guess."
After the Mets beat the Phillies last night, 6-3, there was little left to state except the obvious. That is, that neither team seems capable of pulling too far ahead. Neither is good enough or complete enough for that. What will be left are stumbles and hiccups. The closer you look at it, the more you see a last-week rerun of 2007's division race.
"It could," said Kyle Kendrick, who started for the Phils last night and pitched five busy innings. "Games like that, we've got to win. Who knows? It could."
To summarize the series: Tuesday night was fun and last night was work.
Tuesday night for the Phillies was really kind of pressure-free, when you think about it. You fall behind by 7-0 to the Mets, nobody expects you to come back. You do what you can but, well, really. And when you do come back, in an extra-inning, dock-walloping, running-out-of-players, wake-the-kids kind of extravaganza, it is all joyful noise.
Last night was different. Last night was Johan Santana pitching for the Mets. If the baseball cliche is true, that momentum is the next day's starting pitcher, then everything the Phillies had accomplished on the long night-and-morning before was now hermetically sealed, a scratch in the standings, a bountiful blip, nothing more.
Before the game, Manuel warned, "We've got Santana, we've got a big load, we've got to go get it."
As it turned out, the Santana part went fine for the Phillies. When he left the game after six innings, the Phils held a 3-2 lead. This time, the Phillies lost the game in their bullpen. Rudy Seanez, only pitching because the bullpen was spent in the 13 innings the night before, gave up the tying homer to Carlos Delgado, second of the game for Delgado. Then closer Brad Lidge, brought into the eighth inning to get the final out and rescue Seanez, instead gave up back-to-back hits that allowed three more runs to score.
Work. Miserable, exhausting work. Going-to-take-until-the-end-of-September work.
Tuesday night had been like a vacation, in retrospect. It even featured some controversy, which is always fun. Shortstop Jimmy Rollins, looking back on what might have triggered the overcoming of the 7-0 deficit, placed the blame on the Mets themselves. He smiled that Cheshire grin of his, the one that leaves you with the distinct impression that Cheshires are carnivores.
"The other team gives you inspiration - let's put it that way," Rollins said. "And when you're able to take that and keep yourself motivated, it helps."
That is where Rollins left it. None of the handful of reporters remaining in the Phillies' clubhouse had seen what Rollins was talking about, leaving us more clueless than usual. It was late and there would be no further explanation.
"See you today," Rollins said, walking toward the night/morning.
The details came out yesterday afternoon.
"It was Tatis," said somebody in the dugout who witnessed the whole thing. What he was talking about was the ostentatious little slide-shuffling dance that the Mets' Fernando Tatis unfurled as he crossed home plate after clubbing a three-run homer in the third inning.
"Yeah, that's what it was," the guy in the dugout said. "But there wasn't a real big deal made out of it. Well, I take that back - one of the coaches was yelling. It wasn't that big of a deal for everybody else.
"But people did notice," he said.
In the end, though, what did it matter? We love feuds, crave conflict, especially New York conflict, but what did it really matter?
Not so much. Not on the next day, a workday for the Phillies, a day too hard. *
Send e-mail to
hofmanr@phillynews.com, or read his blog,
The Idle Rich, at http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.
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