Sam Donnellon: Scrappy Phillies come up short in World Series

NEW YORK - On Sept. 24, 2004, Pedro Martinez walked off the Fenway Park mound in the eighth inning a cauldron of frustration. His Red Sox teammates had just tied the game at 4, had just built some momentum in a key game to decide the American League East Division.

Hideki Matsui stepped to the plate.

A home run and a 6-4 loss later, Martinez sat on a podium and issued this famous quote: "They didn't beat my team. They beat me. They're that good right now. They're that hot. I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy."

What Martinez missed then, what everybody missed when Boston manager Grady Little left him in too long in a Game 7 loss to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series the year before, was that it really boiled down to one daddy, not a whole team of them.

Matsui, the Most Valuable Player of this World Series, hit a double after Martinez was left in that night in 2003, later scoring the tying run and erasing a 5-2 Boston lead. Aaron Boone's 11th-inning home run later won it for New York, and the Red Sox fired Little within 2 weeks.

No such fate will await Charlie Manuel in Philly, of course, for his loyalty and baseball instincts were as much a reason that the Phillies won their second world championship in 2008 as they were a cause for last night's 7-3, season-ending loss to the New York Yankees that extinguished their hopes to force a seventh game, or to repeat as world champions.

In 2003, Little's transgression was not reaching for Alan Embree, a reliable situational lefthander used in that role all season. Perhaps the biggest difference for Manuel between this year and last, the biggest difference between this season's Phillies and last year's version, is how often those type of roles hadto be altered due to injury and ineffectiveness.

Their closer set a record for futility. Their ace went AWOL. J.A. Happ, who later surrendered Matsui's fifth and sixth runs batted in last night, was one of Manuel's two most reliable starters in the second half. Yet, both he and Joe Blanton were sent to the bullpen when the postseason started, and both seemed to lose sharpness because of that. Rather than use either as starters throughout the postseason, Manuel went repeatedly to Cole Hamels, hoping he would find his 2008 mojo in the bigness of the season, and to Martinez - hoping he would find his 1998 fastball.

Instead, Martinez gave him nights more in line with his latest decade - a gritty Game 2 in which he remained one inning too long, and last night, when he was hit hard from the first batter until his exit after four innings and his fastball rarely topped 87.

"I know we can do better," Manuel said. "Because as I sit here tonight, I know Hamels is going to be better and I know [Brad] Lidge is going to be better."

Martinez delivered more than was expected. Expecting Hamels to repeat 2008 was as unfair and unrealistic as expecting Lidge to repeat his perfect season.

Expecting better from both when things went bad is not. Lidge altered that M.O. in the playoffs, though, and that was a big part of the Phillies rolling into their second consecutive World Series.

Hamels couldn't. Snapping his glove in disgust when Ryan Howard blew a pickoff throw against Colorado, waving his hands when Chase Utley threw away a doubleplay ball against Los Angeles, wishing for the season to end after his latest aborted effort in his only World Series start - on Hamels' to-do list this offseason should be finding a good sports psychologist.

And writing a teamful of apology notes.

The Yankees hit better, pitched better, caught the ball better. Two of their three starting pitchers won a game in this World Series.

Cliff Lee was the only Phillies starter to do so.

He was Charlie's one constant. But even that came with a qualifier. Lee had never pitched on 3 days' rest, so Manuel elected not to try it. I would still like to have seen Lee against CC Sabathia on Sunday and Blanton against A.J. Burnett on Monday, but I don't know if that would have changed the outcome, or just prolonged it.

"We came real close this year," Lidge said. "And every one of us believe we have the capabilities of doing that again next year and for years afterward."

In the end you were left with a team that scrambled its way to this point, a team that beat the hottest team in the National League and a much-improved Dodgers team to win its second consecutive National League pennant. They took on the biggest team and the biggest payroll on the biggest stage and battled right down to Shane Victorino's game-ending groundout.

Sure, beating the Yankees would have been unimaginable bliss.

But given all the season's uncertainties, battling them for six entertaining games should at least make you proud.

"We can improve and we will," Manuel said. "We're going to be a better team next year." *

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