Bill Conlin: Ghosts of World Series past haunt Phillies

ELIMINATION.

It is the biggest word in baseball's minimalist lexicon. And the baddest.

For the runner-up in the most grueling journey in team sports, there truly is no tomorrow. The night you lose for the fourth time in a World Series, there is an exquisitely painful finality. The winners half-drown themselves in champagne, most of it sprayed, and beer, most of it consumed. Then they travel down the main streets of their adoring cities, basking in the adulation that only a million or so of your fans can bestow.

The Phillies were five outs from facing what could have been the final game of this never-dull season. Down 4-3 and reliever Joba Chamberlain firing a 3-2 pitch to make Pedro Feliz his third strikeout victim of the eighth inning. But the third baseman powered a homer to left. It was 4-4. Hope sprang eternal - OK, bad joke. How about it sprang for about 15 minutes?

The Yankees snapped out of dink-and-dunk mode. They did terrible things to Brad Lidge, who was lights-out retiring Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter. Then back in Dim Bulb Mode.

Johnny Damon worked a patient single, Lidge hit Mark Teixeira and Aaaaaa-Roid, Aaaaaa-Roid hammered an RBI double to left after Damon was credited with two stolen bases while the Phillies were in a shift against Teixeira that left third base carelessly uncovered. Bizarre.

The final spear-thrust was delivered by catcher Jorge Posada, who called about a half-hour's worth of mound conferences and slowed the game down to an American League pace. His single scored Teixeira and A-Rod. Many in the suddenly desolate crowd had their backs to Mariano Rivera's 1-2-3 save.

Welcome to the first Elimination Night a Charlie Manuel team has encountered after winning five straight postseason series while going 18-5.

The losers? They drop off the national sports radar more completely than warp speed.

Ever see a team recapture its lost perch atop the local pecking order faster than our Eagles will if the Phillies lose just one more game to the New York Yankees?

At the bottom of the black hole reserved for runner-ups is an unforgiving calendar, a short autumn and shorter winter. Ask Cole Hammered about how one day you're at a banquet hearing for the 100th time how great you are and the next you're showing up in Clearwater on a frosty mid-February morning ready to begin the long journey again. Where did those 14 weeks go?

Don't, worry, kiddo, 14 weeks won't be nearly enough for you to read all the negative reviews of your October work.

The Phillies are on the precipice after going down, 7-4, last night, and only Cliff Lee can save them.

They are surrounded by the ghosts of other elimination games.

Is that you, Joe Carter, rattling your chains while a voice in the background shrills, "Touch 'em all, Joe, you'll never hit a bigger one."

We see you, Eddie Murray, admiring your second homer of Game 5 in 1983, a towering moonshot off Sir Charles Hudson that officially ended the five-season Pete Rose Era.

It's not good to see Bill Russell again. The Dodger Blue shortstop all but ended the Game 4 misery with a 10th-inning single to center that was bobbled by Gold Glover Garry Maddox, permitting the Dodgers' walkoff winning run to score in 1978.

Or you, Tommy John, who skated like Rick MacLeish on a rainswept mound in Game 4 of 1977, while Steve Carlton skidded and slid like Rocky Balboa on his first date with Adrian.

We see you in the shadows, Ken Griffey Sr. The Phils led the Big Red Machine, 6-4, in the bottom of the ninth in 1976's Game 3. Then George Foster homered, Johnny Bench homered. Everybody walked off to a famous World Series with the Red Sox when Griffey scored Dave Concepcion with a one-out, bases-loaded single.

That takes us back to the real ghosts of the Game 4 Yankees of 1950. Most of those guys are wearing Mother Earth for their uniforms, but not the baby-faced lefthander who buried the Whiz Kids to complete a sweep. Whitey Ford turned 81 last month. The 5-2 victory was the first of his 10 World Series victories.

Most of you couldn't care less about who will show up to haunt the Phillies from 1915 on Elimination Night. But the fascinating thing about the history of anything is it has a beginning but the end is never written. So you can't ignore that distant Game 5 hero, Red Sox rightfielder Harry Hooper, whose solo homer in the top of the ninth made a 5-4 winner of 5-8 righthander Rube Foster.

There is a sepulchral quality to elimination games played in front of fans who dropped a couple of hundred deflated greenbacks hoping to tap into the jubilation a World Series victory brings.

Nobody in my business likes to see home fans who overflowed The Bank to 103 percent of capacity this season become 45,000 pallbearers of a shattered dream.

Sparky Anderson once said, "My idea of managing is giving the ball to Tom Seaver and sitting down and watching him work."

Charlie Manuel didn't have Tom Seaver in Game 4 last night. But he didn't have Cole Hamels either with his negative vibes and a Joe Bstlfk black cloud hanging over his head waiting for rain even with a 3-0 lead and a no-hitter going in Game 3. Joe Blanton hauled his well-rested bones out there and gave his teammates and a throng that bobbed from torpor to hysteria as the taut drama unfolded a professional effort while paired against CC Sabathia, the hulking Yankee ace who was working - or more accurately running on fumes - on 3 days' rest.

But the Bronx Bombers went to their wet-washrag attack. Blanton needed just 11 pitches to navigate the first inning and had a 2-0 deficit to show for his thrift. American League Hank Aaron Award winner Derek Jeter celebrated the prestigious prize with an infield single, then Johnny Damon launched the only ball barrelled off Blanton's crisp assortment, a ringing double to rightcenter that scored Jeter. Then Joe did something Hamels might have considered during his woeful Saturday night meltdown. He buried a fastball off the bulging left bicep of Alex Rodriguez with such obvious intent that both benches were warned.

A high, hard one will trump a dirty look every time, the Daily News has learned.

The brink. Welcome to the abyss half of history's World Series teams have faced. Hello darkness our old friend.

Does "Alex Rodriguez, Mr. November," have that special ring?

Send e-mail to bill1chair@aol.com.

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