Danny Knobler

PHILADELPHIA -- Just to make things clear, Cole Hamels said Monday that he can wait for the season to end.

He told Phillies manager Charlie Manuel. He told the rest of us, too.

He wants the World Series to go seven games. He wants to start Game 7.

“Of course,” Hamels said, after the Phillies forced Game 6 with an 8-6 win over the Yankees. “Who wouldn’t want the ball in Game 7?”

The Phillies had to have questions about how much Hamels wanted it, first because he fell apart in the fifth inning of Game 3, and then because his comments after the game included the seven words he now regrets:

“I can’t wait for it to end,” Hamels said then, in response to my question about how he would feel if Game 3 was the final start of his disappointing season.

I wrote that night that I didn’t believe Hamels meant those words literally, that he didn’t mean them to sound the way they did. But over the last two days, plenty of people in Philadelphia took those seven words at face value, and took Hamels to task for saying them.

“I wasn’t able to sleep the last couple of nights because of that,” Hamels said. “I didn’t know what I said until I read it -- well, I didn’t read it, but I was told about it.”

Right after Monday’s game, Hamels went to speak to Manuel. The Phillies manager still hasn’t committed to a Game 7 starter, but if Hamels’ mental state weren’t in question, he would be the obvious candidate.

“I just wanted to tell him my true thoughts, that I’ll never quit,” Hamels said. “I think Charlie knows me. I think the only doubt it left was with the fans, and that hurts. I love the city of Philadelphia.”

And, he said again, he’d love to have a chance to start Game 7, a chance to pitch the Phillies to a second straight World Series title.

First, he got a chance to try again to say what he means.

“It’s hard,” Hamels said. “It’s hard to play baseball and talk at the same time.”