Bill Conlin: Yes, Harry, Game 2 was really hard to believe

IT WAS ONE of those annoying nights in The Bank where you could actually talk below a shout. Most of the game, that is. But not in a crazy endgame where the National League's top-rated defense turned into nine Original Mets named Marv Throneberry.

All that early silence and those inert rally towels meant only one thing, of course. The Phillies were losing and playing like oafs in the process, a rarely seen sight for a team that prides itself on fundamental soundness.

It means the rally towels were resting on 46,511 laps. Bad baseball was being played. It was a pit stop for weary larynxes. Four throat lozenges and a full bottle of water, please.

Last night, it appeared for a long while to mean that Roy Halladay would face the Reds again Monday - time TBA. In the Great American Ball Park, where it might not be as easy to throw that second no-hitter in a row. Rest easy, Johnny Vander Meer. This time it would have been in a game where the Phillies' postseason could possibly be on the line.

And then it was the seventh inning and Aroldis Chapman, the Reds' Cuban Missile Crisis, was pumping 100-mph-and-higher octane heat. And the 4-0 Reds' lead had been whittled down to 4-3. What happened next was the kind of rally that defines this team and this Phillies era.

An offense that had been stagnant most of the evening proved the Reggie Jackson axiom that if he knew it was coming, he could pull a jet plane.

The Phillies knew what was coming - one of baseball history's fastest fastballs. In his unhappy outing, the 6-5 kid with the golden arm fired seven fastballs clocked from 100 to 102 mph, three that only registered 99 mph and one lonely 88-mph slider.

His first mistake was to make Chase Utley the third Phil to be hit by a pitch, joining back-to-back sixth-inning victims Carlos Ruiz and Ben Francisco. His second mistake was to trust his National League top-ranked defense to make plays behind him.

The Reds' defense was such a shambles in the improbable 7-4 comeback victory that five Phillies runs were unearned, thanks to wretched plays by second baseman Brandon Phillips, rightfielder Jay Bruce and former Gold Glover Scott Rolen, whose ill-advised attempt to force Utley at second set the stage for Bruce's fatal error on a routine liner by Jimmy Rollins that Bruce appeared to lose in the lights. Utley scored on the Bruce error and when Phillips botched the relay throw, Jayson Werth came storming home with the go-ahead run.

When the comedy of errors ended it was, miraculously, 6-4.

All those unearned runs ain't pretty, but Charlie Manuel will take them.

"They're a lot better team than that," Manuel said, magnanimous in victory. "For four or five innings, they were a good team . . . They have a lot of talent. A couple of days from now they might play a perfect game . . . "

The Reds never survived the standing-eight count they inflicted on themselves. Ryan Madson worked a strong eighth and Werth singled home Utley with an insurance run in the bottom half of the inning.

Brad Lidge saved it and the Reds headed home with the grim prospect of facing Cole Hamels tomorrow in an elimination game, with Halladay in the wings should Game 4 be necessary.

Roy Oswalt came out flat against a team he has owned - until lately. In his last Astros start, which was against the Reds, he was pounded, losing 7-0.

This was even worse, considering the high stakes and the perception that the H2O troika could be invincible during a tranquil cruise through the October waters.

But the small-but-potent veteran with the gaudy previous record vs. the Reds while an Astro got no early help from his own usually excellent defense on a night where he needed all the help he could get.

He came out looking rusty and not trusting his fastball for some reason.

Phillips, who hit the ball 6 feet for the hairy final out of Halladay's masterpiece, hit it about 400 feet leading off the game. Down 1-0.

You had to be holding onto something to avoid being sucked out of The Bank's third level by the season's deepest group inhale.

It became quieter still when Oswalt-killer Laynce Nix ripped a ball to the left of Utley. The second baseman made a fine stop, but his awkward, off-balance throw pulled Ryan Howard off the bag. Nix became an unearned run when Utley threw away a doubleplay relay for his second error of the inning.

And when Bruce powered an Oswalt slider into the second tank in right for a 3-0 Reds lead, it began to appear this just was not going to be the defending National League champion's night.

Fortunately, this team has yet to learn the meaning of the word "quit."

It took a rim shot below Ruiz' left knee by reliever Arthur Rhodes and a brutal head-shot by reliever Logan Ondrusek that left pinch-hitter Francisco sprawled in the dirt without his batting helmet, which had been rattled off his head by the 6-8 righthander, to serve as a call to arms.

Suddenly, it was 4-3 when Shane Victorino walked with the bases loaded to force in Werth, who walked and stole second to begin an inning where the Phillies did not hit a ball out of the infield against starter Bronson Arroyo, Rhodes and Ondrusek.

The rally towels were flapping like used-car-lot pennants in a hurricane. Shouting, semaphore or signing were the preferred means of communication.

What had looked like a mail-it-in lost cause had evolved into the kind of October end game for which this team has become famous.

The 7-4 final score offers no clue whatsoever as to what a struggle it was.

Send e-mail to bill1chair@aol.com.