Lately, it's won and done for World Series champs

IT WASN'T LIKE the Red Sox didn't know what they were dealing with after winning the World Series in 2004. It was the franchise's first world championship since 1918, and the outpouring of civic pride was intoxicating.

Trouble was, they had to play another season in 2005.

"You always hear about how managing success can be hard, managing success throughout the organization can be hard, but you don't really appreciate it until you've lived through it," general manager Theo Epstein said. "It can be difficult. You have to sort of plan ahead to make sure a sense of entitlement doesn't grip the organization from top to bottom."

So the front office met the issue head on at the start of spring training. Talked openly about the challenge of repeating, preached the same theme to the players.

And still failed to win a game in the playoffs the following season, being swept by the White Sox in the first round.

The Red Sox were relatively successful after their duck-boat parade through the streets of Boston, too. The Angels and Marlins won it all in the 2 preceding years, the White Sox and Cardinals were world champions the following 2 years. None of those teams even made it back to the playoffs.

Four of the last six teams to hoist the big trophy and spray champagne on the last day of the season were sitting home, on the outside looking in, when the playoffs opened the following fall.

That history could be the biggest challenge facing the defending world champion Phillies as pitchers and catchers gather for the first official workout of the spring tomorrow.

No team has repeated as king of the hill, top of the heap, since the Yankees won three straight in 1998-1999-2000.

No National League team has won back-to-back Fall Classics since Cincinnati's Big Red Machine in 1975 and '76.

The only thing more difficult than winning the World Series, it appears, is winning it again the following year.

Think about it. Nine of the last 20 World Series teams didn't make it past the end of the regular season the following year. Five lost in the first round. Three lost in the League Championship Series. The Yankees repeated twice before losing to the Diamondbacks in 2001.

It wasn't always that way, of course. The Bronx Bombers appeared in the World Series nine of 10 seasons from 1949 through '58, winning the first five, and have a total of 26 world championships. More recently the Reds, Oakland A's, Toronto Blue Jays and, yes, the Yankees again have constructed mini-dynasties.

Repeating, though, has become a devilishly difficult proposition, for a number of reasons including parity, psychology, luck, fatigue and the simple fact that the defending champion is always a target for the rest of the league.

It starts with parity. Baseball has tried to level the playing field through revenue sharing, and there are indications it may be working. Not only that, sharp young general managers - Oakland's Billy Beane has been a trendsetter - have developed smart new theories that help them compete even though they may not have the resources of the big-market clubs.

"It's the competition," said Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. "There is a great deal of balance now in baseball, so much parity. Obviously, the revenue-sharing has been the biggest reason more than anything else."

Stanford-educated Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. took that thought a step further. "I think revenue-sharing is a factor," he said. "And just intelligent baseball minds. As we move forward, I think people are getting smarter and smarter. And the talent continues to increase, just athletically. I think people are making smarter decisions and it creates great competition for the fans. It's the whole issue of hope. There are a lot more teams hoping at the beginning of the year."

That impact has been amplified by expansion. Back when the Yankees were winning almost every year, there were 16 teams, eight in each league. Now there are 30.

So there are more teams with a puncher's chance. Since 2001 there have been three teams in the World Series (Diamondbacks, Marlins, Rays) that didn't even exist before 1993.

"There's 30 teams. Every one of them has a shot when the season starts, so it's 1-in-30," pointed out Phillies reliever Scott Eyre. "I know it gets narrowed down real fast. But that means a lot of things have to go right."

And having more teams has led to two extra rounds of playoffs, increasing the odds of an upset along the way, especially in the best-of-five Division Series.

So, as the margin between winning and losing has become slimmer, the intangibles become even more important. That's where psychology comes into play.

It's human nature to sit back and bask in the glow of a job well done. The Phillies have had all winter to soak in the adulation from their fans. And it isn't always easy to switch back to the grind-it-out mentality needed to win over baseball's longest season.

The Cardinals won it all in 2006, finished third with a 78-84 record in 2007. "At the team level, it's how do you keep your team motivated," said general manager John Mozeliak. "As we all know, the baseball season is a marathon. You're asking me a question that we didn't achieve, which is pretty ironic. But when I look back on it, one of the things we wanted to do was stay with some fresh faces and some energy, and I didn't think we accomplished that. Again, it's hindsight. I think when we rolled out that '07 team, it just didn't have the same energy we thought."

Phillies reliever Ryan Madson said recently that, even as the Phillies were storming through the playoffs last year, there was talk about a possible hangover.

"I remember we were saying how hard it was going to be to go back and play a regular-season game again. Because it was so exciting," he said, then added quickly: "But obviously we're going to get up for the regular-season games because that's all we're going to want to do. Now that we know what it feels like, we're going to want to repeat that feeling."

Staying focused isn't as easy as it sounds, though. "Everyone works so hard that sometimes you start walking around with your chest puffed out a little too much," Epstein noted. "You can fall behind. But we tried to manage that as an organization as best we could and keep the focus on next year. Turn the page."

Conceded Amaro: "There's always that fine line between, 'OK, I've done my job. I'm a world champion. That's all I needed to do,' and, 'I'm going to continue to strive to get back there because I'm hungry to do it and I want to get back there every single time now.' But I think that we have the kind of group and the kind of leaders on our club who won't let that happen."

It will be largely up to Charlie Manuel to make sure the players don't get too comfortable, and he's already begun to think about how he'll do that.

"I'll bring it more up in the first meeting we have," he said recently. "Those are the things we'll talk about. I've already thought about that and I've thought about how I'm going to do it. That's the biggest things because, if you look at us, we should be pretty good. And we are good. And I think we know we're good. But it's up to us to keep going."

Beyond that, the circumstances are largely beyond a team's control. Luck, for example. Last year, the Phillies were largely able to avoid major injuries to key players. This year, already, second baseman Chase Utley (hip) and third baseman Pedro Feliz (back) are coming off surgeries and lefthanded reliever J.C. Romero will miss the first 50 games serving a suspension for violating baseball's policy against performance-enhancing substances.

Just ask the Cardinals how important that can be. Ace starter Chris Carpenter experienced elbow stiffness on Opening Day 2007 and missed the rest of the season.

Then there's the fact that teams that make it to the World Series end up playing a month longer than the teams that miss the playoffs, and the lingering impact that can have, especially on the pitching staff.

"The biggest factor for me, even beyond the organizational ethos, is just fatigue," Epstein said. "If you win the World Series, it means your best pitchers were horses for 7 months the previous year. And to bounce back after a quick offseason from that can be really difficult. It's hard to manage."

Eyre seconded that notion. "I got a month less off this winter. It doesn't feel like spring training is supposed to start [already]. So you have to keep yourself healthy again, that's the biggest key."

It's also to be expected that the Phillies' schedule will be rearranged now that they're the champs. Getaway day games might be changed to night games for television, disrupting their routine.

Finally, there's the undeniable fact that the Phillies are now the team to beat. Not just in the National League East, all across baseball.

"Everyone's going to play harder when they play us because they don't want to see us repeat," Eyre said. "The Mets don't want to see us repeat. And they shouldn't. If I were on a team that had a good season, came down to the wire and lost twice, I'd want to win it, too. They're going to be hungry. They're a good team. They have every right to be hungry. We have a big mark on our back. Not to say that teams are going to play harder against us, but we're that targeted team."

For all those reasons, it's fair to say that winning the World Series again in 2009 would be an even bigger achievement for the Phillies than winning last season was.

Amaro believes the Phillies have what it takes to be the exception to the rule, but admitted he can't be sure.

"When you're talking about many teams with a ton of talent when you break camp in spring training, you're talking about a lot of teams with [a chance] and really it becomes an issue of luck and karma and staying healthy," he said.

"There are so many things that have to happen right for a club to even, one, get a chance to be in the dance again. The ball has to roll right for you. But also, these are human beings you're counting on. These are not robots. Things can go wrong. There are circumstances whereby things don't go quite right. The best-laid plans don't always work out." *

Daily News sports writer David Murphy contributed to this story.