In less than 24 hours, as their team won two games here to clinch their National League division series, the back end of the Phillies bullpen had more emotional swings than Sammy Sosa.

Before, during and after his two performances, Ryan Madson was up and down and up again, much like the best and worst of his pitches.

Scott Eyre, who was writhing in pain with a mild ankle sprain when he left Game 3, got two big outs in the ninth inning of the dramatic Game 4 clincher.

And Brad Lidge was home at last.

Not Colorado, where he grew up with a poster of the Rockies hanging from his suburban Denver bedroom wall, but back again in his accustomed residence as the Phillies closer, his two saves here marking the prodigal's official return.

Of all those stories, it was the arduous season-long saga of Lidge that seemed to touch manager Charlie Manuel.

"I never once gave up on him," said Manuel, "because I've always known that he could get back to where he was."

Still, it may have been Madson's back-to-back outings here that best summed up the kind of season it's been for the Phils relievers.

When it was over, the righthander roamed the joyful Phillies clubhouse showering teammates and himself with beer, as if determined to cleanse the bad memories, the blown saves, the uncertainty.

"That one inning, between the eighth and ninth, was like the whole series, the whole season," Madson said, rubbing the beer and perhaps his earlier troubles out of his eyes, "For me especially. I had the whole weight on my shoulders and they took it off and it feels good."

A night earlier, as he ran in from the bullpen in the seventh inning of Game 3, Madson had been smiling, joking as he passed Shane Victorino. He was smiling again when he talked later about the pivotal inning he'd pitched in that one-run Phils win.

But last night, he was lower than Ron Kulpa's strike zone when his inning was done, the three runs he'd permitted having given the Rockies a 4-2 lead in Game 4.

He sat down in the dugout and hoped. He hoped his team would redeem him. He had no way of knowing they'd go one better. They'd make him the winning pitcher.

"I thought it was possible," he said, emphasizing the final word, about a Phils comeback. "With the team we have, they get up for moments like that. So I knew we had a chance."

But last night, as he walked off the mound in the eighth inning, that chance seemed remote at best. He had allowed the Phillies' lead in the game and, maybe, the series to evaporate in the mountain air.

Once again his performance must have given pause to Manuel, who for much of the second half of the season and even into this series continued to be questioned about why Madson was not the closer.

In two postseason innings before last night's, Madson had looked ready to inherit that role. He'd allowed no runs and struck out four Colorado hitters.

The lanky righthander entered to relieve a tiring Cliff Lee with two Rockies on base and one out in the eighth. The Phillies, looking to avoid a decisive Game 5 at home, clung to a 2-1 lead.

Colorado's menacing cleanup hitter Troy Tulowitzki – who had barely missed clobbering a misthrown Madson changeup a night earlier - was at-bat.

The 49,940 fans at Coors Field were waving their purple-and-white rally towels and rhythmically exploding with their signature chant . . . "TU-LO". . . . "TU-LO"

It appeared that Madsen would escape another jam when Tulowitzki's soft flyball to shallow left was run down by a sliding Ben Francisco, inserted there in the top of the inning by Manuel.

Now pinch-hitter Jason Giambi, shrunken from his steroid heyday but still a fearsome presence with a bat in his large hands, was next.

Madson threw him a good first-pitch fastball, in on his hands. But a lunging Giambi got his bat on the fading pitch. The ball arced just beyond the infield and fell into shallow left like an enemy parachuter, tying the game and further inflaming the crowd.

"I made a good pitch to Giambi, the pitch I wanted, exactly where I wanted it," he said. "Sometimes you have to tip your hat to the hitter. Especially when it all works out in the end."

He couldn't have known that then, of course. And on the mound Madson's wide shoulders seemed to sag, his expression grow more concerned.

That concern was well-placed as it turned out.

Yorvit Torrealba lined a fastball into right-centerfield, the two-run double giving Colorado what appeared to be a formidable two-run advantage entering the ninth.

"He hit a fastball away," Madson said. "I've gotten him out on that pitch in the past. But he put a good swing on it."

In the ninth, after Ryan Howard's two-out, two-run double highlighted the Phillies' clincher comeback, Manuel brought in Eyre, his ankle sufficiently healed.

Eyre got two outs and the Rockies got two singles. When Tulowitzki walked toward home plate, Manuel called on Lidge. He struck him out swinging on a series of nasty sliders.

"He's been a tremendous pitcher," Manuel said of Lidge, "and, believe me, he'll still be as good as he ever was."

Meanwhile, Madson was among the most elated of the postgame beer-sprayers.

"That was a great win," he said. "That kind of sums up what baseball is."