Phillies confident but a world away from ultimate prize

CLEARWATER, Fla. - It was an instant you-remember-where-you-were-when-you-heard-the-news moment for this generation of Phillies fans. Cliff Lee was coming back, a lightning bolt out of a seemingly empty sky.

Brad Lidge found out in a text from centerfielder Shane Victorino. As word spread, his phone began to ring.

"All my friends started calling and saying, 'You're not going to lose a game all year,' " the closer said yesterday at Bright House Field on the eve of the most eagerly anticipated first official workout for pitchers and catchers in franchise history.

Lidge rightly laughed out loud at the notion. The very idea is both absurd and a legitimate reflection of the off-the-charts level of excitement that surrounds this team. The Phillies already have sold some 3.2 million tickets. When single-game sales begin Thursday, it's probable that all remaining seats will be quickly snapped up, guaranteeing 81 more sellouts a month-and-a-half before a pitch that counts is thrown.

It also helps bring into focus the number of potential land mines that lie ahead.

"Every guy in here feels we need to win the World Series this year," Lidge continued.

That's good. The reality, though, is that there is still a long, hard road to slog before any team can even begin to think about raising the big trophy and basking in the adulation that comes with capturing it.

Six weeks of spring training . . . 26 weeks of the regular season . . . the division series . . . the championship series. Then, and only then, can a team focus on its ultimate goal.

Charlie Manuel is as excited as anybody about the possibilities that are so tantalizingly within reach. The manager also remembers that, on multiple occasions last season, he had to call his team out for its perceived complacency. That as late as July 21 they were just two games over .500, in third place, seven games out, before getting on a 49-19 roll that left them with the most wins of any team in baseball.

He further understands that this is an older team that has experienced plenty of success. That a lot of players now have lucrative, long-term deals. That adding Lee could lull some into an inflated sense of their own invincibility. That these factors can make it just a little more difficult to maintain the edge that separates excellent teams from merely good ones.

"That's the downside. You'll hear that. 'Oh, we'll get them tomorrow.' Or, 'Oh, we're too good to lose two games in a row.' Or, 'We're not going to lose five, six or seven in a row.' You get that a lot," Manuel acknowledged recently.

"But what really comes into play is the thinking and attitude of your club. You've got to keep it in the aspect of that it's an every-day process and we've got to keep it going. That is the hard part. And I think that measures the character on our team."

This is where the manager earns his money. The strength and the curse of this nucleus has been that the players never seem to become too bothered by losses. They have an innate self-confidence that everything will eventually work out. And they're usually right. Adding Lee to go along with Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt only amplifies this sense of well-being.

Manuel's task is to keep confidence from mutating into overconfidence, to remind his troops that they've won not only because they have ability but because of an intangible toughness that opposing teams openly marvel at.

"I said when I came here, 'Give me the talent and I'll work with the attitude.' Talent counts. But at the same time, if you've got good talent and you've got a good attitude, it's better than having great talent and a bad attitude," he noted.

Lidge hit all the right notes yesterday.

"This is a rare opportunity," he said.

"It's never as easy as it seems on paper," he said.

"Our brass has given us every opportunity. Now it's up to us to deliver," he said.

These words could be a template for the approach the Phillies will try to carry into every game, from the early April chill to the blossoming of trees and flowers, through the sizzling summer and well into the falling leaves and bare branches of late autumn.

But it won't be easy.

The best baseball players in the world have a specialized skill set for which they are well-compensated and widely celebrated. It's sometimes easy to overlook the fact that they are also human beings with the standard assortment of human frailties.

So it may very well be that the team that poses the biggest threat to the Phillies this season isn't the defending world champion Giants or the loaded Red Sox or the ascendant Braves or the Cardinals, Yankees, White Sox, Reds, Brewers, Rangers, Tigers or Twins.

On the day of the first official workout for pitchers and catchers, in the spring of expectations gone wild, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the team the Phillies need to be most mindful of is the one that stares back at them every day from the clubhouse mirror.

Send e-mail to hagenp@phillynews.com