Phil Sheridan: Still Phillies' series to lose

Game 5a was a debacle. Still, it was not an excuse for the Phillies, who now have an excellent opportunity to win the World Series in Game 5b tonight or Thursday night or Christmas Eve.

While their anxious fans and reporters, local and national, reach for comparisons to the Fog Bowl and other Philadelphia sporting disasters, the players have to understand one simple fact: They are still in control of this game and of this series.

Fortunately for the Phillies and for those anxious fans, these players have not blinked in the postseason spotlight. There has been no sign of the big-game shrinkage that plagued recent Phillies teams, nor of the burden-of-history ballast that sank a couple of the Eagles' more seaworthy vessels in mid-decade.

There's no reason to think a little rain or a little snow or a lot of mishandling by the men who run their sport will change that. Not with these guys.

"[The] four years I've been here, we come to the ballpark, we're concentrating on winning, winning the ball game," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "That's all that's important to us; that's all we think about."

What happened in Game 5a was unfortunate, but there is no changing it now. The game is tied at 2 because of a run that scored well after play should have been stopped. Cole Hamels will not be available to pitch, which is a blow to the Phillies, as well - although, in fairness, it was Hamels who allowed that tying run to score. If he gets Carlos Pena there, the score would have been 2-1 for 45 hours or so.

It is understandable that fans and reporters will chew on all the implications and what-ifs created by Game 5a. But Game 5b must be the Phillies' only concern, and they enter it with every advantage.

Imagine if someone came to the Phillies in March and offered this proposition: You can play 31/2 innings, with four times at bat to the opponent's three times, to win the World Series. And if you somehow manage to lose that shortened game, you get two more full games. Win just one of those and you're the champs.

Think the Phillies would have taken that? Every team in baseball would take that. It should be remembered, too, that the Phillies earned that advantage by winning three of the four games that weren't debacles.

"I think the way it sets up right now is, we've got a good bullpen," Manuel said. "We've got 12 outs, and they have nine coming. And I feel like we feel like we're strong, and we can win, and we're going to be ready to play the game."

As Hamels said after his surreal six-inning outing Monday night: "I have confidence in our hitters and our bullpen to win this."

If it does wind up back in St. Pete, all the pressure remains on the Rays. The Phillies have Brett Myers to pitch a potential Game 6. If it goes to Game 7, they could have Hamels, Jamie Moyer and Joe Blanton all on deck.

If the Phillies fail to win the 2008 World Series, it won't be because the fates are aligned against them. It won't be because it snowed before Halloween or because Bud Selig's glasses fogged up during the fifth inning of Game 5a or because William Penn is still honked about One Liberty Place.

No, it will be because Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell couldn't score one more run than the Tampa Bay Rays with three extra outs to work with.

These things aren't supernatural. The Eagles didn't lose their 1988 playoff game in Chicago because of the sudden arrival of thick, impenetrable fog. They lost because they had two touchdowns called back for penalties they committed in plain sight, and because tight end Keith Jackson, uncovered in the end zone, dropped a touchdown pass. The Eagles were inside the Chicago 20-yard line nine times and failed to score a touchdown.

We all remember the fog better than the details, and years from now we'll remember the first World Series game ever to be suspended better than we'll remember Shane Victorino's two-run single in the first inning.

But the Phillies can make the most lasting memory an onfield celebration of the second World Series championship in franchise history. That's up to them, not Selig or the Weather Channel.

"It's up to us to stay focused on [tonight's partial, sort of a] game," Manuel said, "to win that game. And if something happens and if we don't get the job done or something, I have no complaints at all, because it's in our hands, it's all up to us to do it."

Exactly.