"But in that one, he wasn't talking to the pitcher - he was talking to the catcher. He said, 'Stay off the umpire. We're not going to get anything if you're completely barking at the umpire.' People thought he was talking to Moyer but he was talking to Ruiz."

It was one moment in a very long season, not exactly definitive but still illustrative of how Dubee sees himself and how the team sees Dubee. As they head to the National League Championship Series, a Phillies pitching staff that has become the strength of the team will receive national scrutiny, and the pitching coach who pretty much never talks about himself will receive at least a sliver of the attention.

What they will find out is that Dubee is human blood-pressure medicine. That is what the people on the team will say when you ask them, "What does Dubee do?"

"He's unique," reliever J.C. Romero said. "He keeps everything very positive. When he comes out there to talk to you, he talks about solutions. He tries to calm you down. That's a key for a pitching coach, especially when you come to those crucial situations and you feel like the world is moving very fast.

"He tries to calm you down, slow you down. He always thinks positive. That's huge with a relief pitcher. You always want to have some encouragement on your side. You don't want any long faces or anything like that. He's pretty good. We, as a pitching staff, feel very comfortable with him.''

So, when he visits the mound in the midst of trouble, he doesn't bring up what might have gone wrong with the previous batter?

"You can't do that," Romero said. "If you are doing something that he might think is the reason for your struggling at that particular time, he might try to address it in a very careful manner. Other than that, he always talks about solutions - what we can do to get out of the jam . . . What you did is over and done with. You have to keep your guy on track, and he does it pretty well."

It has not all been soothing. Dubee has been in the middle of some critical decisions this year: allowing new closer Brad Lidge, coming off offseason knee surgery, to stay in Florida and get stronger for an extra week at the start of the season; asking Brett Myers to go to the minor leagues in the middle of the summer to straighten himself out; exiling fifth starter Adam Eaton at the end.

When you ask Dubee about it, he says the Lidge decision might have been the season's best because, "I think it showed Brad that we'll take the burden and he doesn't have to. I think it took a lot of tension out of him and just allowed him to be himself."

As for Myers, Dubee gives him all the credit for accepting the assignment and finding himself. In a few minutes, he manages to inject the name of every pitcher on the staff into the conversation, from Cole Hamels to Rudy Seanez, without prompting. It is what he does. Dubee says it is about them, about individual accountability.

What he brings, he says, "is, I hope, a calmness. If anything, I hope there's a calmness there. Also, the one thing I try to instill is responsibility by themselves as far as being prepared - being mentally prepared and being able to control their emotions.

"But I've got one of the best seats in the house. I try to prepare them as best as I can between their starts or side work or whatever. But when that game starts, it's up to them - and they've been fabulous."

Dubee will admit that he did not know, coming out of Clearwater, that pitching could be this team's strength. They had struggled in past years, to varying degrees - sometimes with health, sometimes with talent - but the staff earned-run average does not lie. There is a reason everybody thought this team was going to need to score a million runs to repeat as NL East champions.

"No," Dubee said, he did not know. "I thought we'd be good. I thought we'd be very competitive. I thought our starters would keep us in games."

But here they are, still playing in the baseball month dedicated to the building of expectations and reputations - and tensions, which is where Rich Dubee comes in. *

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