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Fuggedabout the innings already pitched.
Fuggedabout the injuries of my past.
I'm Cole Freakin' Hamels, damn it, ace of the staff, and if I once had been willing to injure myself going to the aid of a friend in a bar, you can be sure I'm willing to do that and more to bring a championship to Philadelphia.
Would you like to hear something like that out of Cole Hamels one of these days? Even if he didn't really mean it? Would you like him to seem more a farm horse than a racehorse, to think of him as old school rather than new school?
Let's be clear. There's nothing wrong with what Cole Hamels has been saying this week. He wants to stay healthy so he can make every start down the stretch. Nothing wrong with it at all. He has pitched his tail off for your club this season, been one of the two constants on the Phillies' starting staff. He is 12-8, with plenty of those types of starts in his bright future as long as he remains healthy.
Is he a horse? Those NL-leading 203 innings pitched would indicate he is on his way to becoming one. And yet there is something unnerving about his stoicism, that matter-of-fact approach in which he seems to always balance concerns about his future with the immediate needs of the present.
"I finally surpassed 200 innings," he said after shutting out the Nationals over 7 1/3 innings Tuesday. "I think that's in their minds [coaching staff]. It's in my mind. I just want to be able to finish the season. I truly want to be able to go out there and pitch deep into a game but be smart about it. I don't want to overextend myself because if I overextend myself, it's not really going to benefit the team. Because they're counting on me for four or five more starts. And that's what I'm really focusing on because I know if I can do that, I can really help this team get into the playoffs."
Hamels also said last night that: "One game is not the most important. I think it's the [22] we have left. Tonight is more important."
There is this old axiom in baseball about every regular-season game being as important as another. It's how managers motivate through much of the season, and mathematically, they're dead right. The Phillies could have won by more than one game last season if they had done better in April. They would be the chasee and not the chaser right now if they had taken care of July.
But if sports is your vocation or avocation, you know quite well that some games are more important than others, because of when they occur, and because of their immeasurable but undeniable affect on the mental state of both teams.
The Mets need one this weekend. The Phillies need two. That's not a mathematical analysis. It's a psychological one. The Mets have beaten the Phillies 10 of 15 times this season, yet last year's collapse still hangs over every game.
The Phillies are in no position to play it safe. And so Hamels will be on the mound Sunday, on normal rest because of today's off day, bumping struggling righthander Kyle Kendrick. To old-school minds and arms, it must seem like a silly debate, whether to throw the most consistent arm of an inconsistent staff out there against your rival on regular rest.
"I know 5 days is the same as 5 days ago, so I know I can handle it," he said last night. "It gets sticky when it gets into the 4 days, and that sort of situation. That's when it will come down, almost that day of how you feel."
Again, nothing wrong with what he's saying. You just would like to hear a little more, a little edge. It's September after all, and it's the Mets, and Sunday is probably the biggest game the Phillies have played since that last Sunday of 2007, when they erased their dubious reputation as a team that could not win big games.
Jamie Moyer pitched that game. Hamels won a game almost as big the Friday before, then got so hyped to pitch the playoff opener against the Rockies that he barely slept the night before. And it showed. "I wanted the opportunity," he said. "And I just blew it."
Maybe that's why he has sounded so cautious all week, why there's not the kind of bravado normally associated with the Ace, the Man, the Horse - "The main guy when it's the playoffs, the championship, the big division rivalry," Hamels said.
"That's what I want to be, and that's what I've been able to learn. Finally, I get that time to step up to the plate. I definitely know I'm ready for it."
You'd like to know that, too.
Before Sunday, that is. *
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For recent columns, go to
http://go.philly.com/donnellon.
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