Phils' Lee keeps life simple

Watch Cliff Lee when he's in the kind of groove he found in August and you'll glimpse the uncomplicated philosophy that guides him.

At his best, as he was in 2008 and during his first five starts as a Phillie, and as he hopes to be again in Game 1 of the National League division series this afternoon, the 31-year-old lefthander is a minimalist magician.

He gets the ball and throws the ball, almost always at the edges of the plate. He doesn't fidget. He doesn't stall. He doesn't nibble.

He keeps it simple.

"That's kind of how I look at everything," Lee explained recently. "The simpler you keep it, the better off you're going to be."

That's why Lee vowed he wouldn't complicate things as he prepared for the biggest start of his career, his first taste of the postseason, against the Colorado Rockies today.

"It's still the same game," Lee said about his playoff baptism. "It's still the exact same game. It's still the same strike zone, the same distance to home plate."

Last week, when asked to assess his performance in Philadelphia following the deadline deal that brought him here from Cleveland three months ago, Lee's answer sounded like something you might find on a youngster's "My Summer Vacation" essay.

"It was good," Lee said. "I did good more than I did bad."

That penchant for simplicity helps explain why Lee likes small towns better than big cities and why he prefers bass fishing to books. And it's also why, after Game 1, he'll most likely respond to questions in a matter-of-fact manner that exposes little about his mind-set or himself.

Players are rarely too revealing. The strong, silent type is baseball's ideal. Cooperative? Yes. Available, Yes. Straightforward? Yes. But chatty, intellectual or emotionally open? Almost never.

Because of his adherence to that clubhouse code, when a reporter in Cleveland wanted to know his favorite book, Lee wasn't afraid to respond honestly.

"I don't think I've read a book in my life," he said.

His college coach agreed that Lee was at his best when he could unravel the moment to its core, when he could rely on a catcher and just rear back and fire the pitches that were called.

"Cliff is definitely not a thinker," said Norm DeBriyn, the longtime Arkansas coach who guided Lee in his one season as a Razorback. "He doesn't rely a lot on scouting reports or stuff like that."

Lee, DeBriyn said, always had the stuff but struggled with command that season. So he moved him to the bullpen, where he prospered.

For those Phillies fans concerned about Lee's lack of a postseason pedigree, his old coach said not to worry.

"We were playing the No. 1 team in the nation at home, either South Carolina or LSU," DeBriyn said. "Big game. And they were threatening late. We brought Cliff in and he just blew them away. Just blew them away."

Just as it took the 6-foot-3, 190-pounder time to find his mound persona, the younger Lee occasionally strayed from his simplistic outlook. In fact, things got pretty complex for him in Cleveland in 2007.

Struggling through a lackluster season, he infuriated the Indians' Latin players, particularly catcher Victor Martinez, when - in their eyes anyway - he intentionally beaned Sammy Sosa on a night when the slugger was being honored in Texas.

Not long afterward, the Indians, who would reach the postseason, sent him down to triple A.

"Nobody wants to go down," Lee said. "But I told myself I wasn't going to let it make me bitter. I told myself that if I did everything I was supposed to do, I'd get back there."

He returned Sept. 1 and, ever since, he's kept his head and his pitches down.

In 2008, Lee began to rely more on his fastball and in doing so fashioned one of the most remarkable pitching seasons in recent baseball history, going 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA and winning the American League Cy Young Award - all for a .500 team.

"We went duck hunting last year," DeBriyn said, "and I asked him what had made the difference, why was he now able to throw the ball where he wanted. And he said a lot of it was the cutter he'd developed. The cutter and a change-up that he was finally able to control."

When Lee explained the improvement, it - naturally - sounded simple.

"You can't get behind hitters," he said. "Get strike one and stay ahead of them. If they're going to get on base, make them swing."

As he became more successful on the field, he became more careful, more taciturn away from it.

If you didn't know any better, you'd swear the Arkansas native was as hollow as the huge empty mailing tube that sat in front of his sparsely decorated locker at Citizens Bank Park. (It was sent by Mitch Williams and though it almost certainly contained some kind of hunting or fishing equipment, Lee didn't want to confirm its contents.)

While his teammates' lockers were crammed with photos, posters, bobbleheads and other evidence of their idiosyncrasies, Lee's contained a single can of Skoal and two snapshots of son Jaxon and daughter Maci, hung low and almost out of sight.

Jaxon, who was diagnosed with leukemia as an infant, quickly overcame the illness. ("He's fine now," said Lee.)

DeBriyn cautioned anyone who might mistake Lee's simplicity for shallowness.

"Don't think he's not sharp," said DeBriyn. "He's just really focused. Cliff knows what he wants and he knows how to go after it."

So today, if the Phillies lefthander looks a little too relaxed on the mound, don't be fooled. He's just keeping it simple.

"I'm just going to try to do what I've done my whole career," he said. "Naturally, there will be a little more adrenaline and excitement. But you have to find a way to channel that and not let it become a distraction. . . . I try to win every game I pitch. This isn't going to be any different."