PHILADELPHIA -- Two pitches. Two pitches and about three seconds. A game turned, a crowd roared to life and Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Derek Lowe was doomed to a long night of staring through the darkness.
"Close games make you lose sleep at night," Lowe said after Philadelphia snatched a 3-2 Game 1 win in this National League Championship Series with a sixth-inning ambush. "Why did I throw that pitch? Why didn't I throw something else?"
Lowe actually was far calmer standing in the quiet Dodgers clubhouse as midnight approached than he appeared on the mound. He nearly had an excellent night. His sinker dove more than Michael Phelps and dipped more than an amusement park roller coaster. He induced 11 ground-ball outs through five innings. The Phillies were about to the point where they were going to have to invent ways to force those pitches up.
Then came an opening. On what should have been Lowe's 12th ground-ball out of the game, Dodgers shortstop Rafael Furcal air-mailed the throw to first, forcing James Loney to leave the bag and lunge, gymnast-like, to his right. No way. The ball was out of reach.
About three-quarters of the way down the first-base line, Shane Victorino, who broke out of the box hard like always, saw what sure looked like paradise laid out right in front of him.
"I saw Loney reaching up, and I said to myself, 'Whoa, what's happening here?' " Victorino said.
Whoa, indeed.
E-6. Victorino to second.
Next pitch, slumping Chase Utley in the box, bam!
Two pitches. Los Angeles' hard-fought 2-0 lead scrubbed right off the board.
Furcal's error barely had time to register before Utley sent a get-me-over fastball -- mistake! -- screaming toward the right-field seats.
"When he hit it I saw it carry, but at first I wasn't sure," said Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard, who had an excellent view from the on-deck circle of one of the moments they'll be talking about throughout Philadelphia all day Thursday. "But then I saw it hit another level.
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| Don't blame the hip. We all knew Chase Utley would snap out of his 'funk' sometime. (Getty Images) |
A gust of wind? The hand of the baseball gods reaching down with mercy on a century-old franchise with only one World Series title to show for it? Lowe's expletives spewing forth and pushing it?
"I don't care what it was," Howard said. "If it was the wind, hey, we'll take it. Sometimes when you get it up there, the wind does crazy things."
Two things happened here: Two batters later, Pat Burrell, who smashed two homers against Milwaukee the other day, blasted maybe the only poor sinker Lowe threw all night into the left field seats to lift the Phillies to a 3-2 lead. And starter Cole Hamels, who kept the Dodgers off balance most of the night, blazed through a 1-2-3 seventh to finish in a blaze of glory before turning the game over to Ryan Madson (eighth inning) and closer Brad Lidge (another dominant ninth).
The part that was going to keep Lowe up was the meaty, high fastball to Utley.
"I know better than that," Lowe said. "They had just gotten a guy to second. I pretty much knew he was going to swing at the first pitch."
Um, he did.
"At that point, I was just trying to get him over," said Utley, who was only 2-for-15 (.133) in the Milwaukee divisional series and homered only twice in September, leading to speculation that his hip has been hurting more than he has acknowledged. "No matter what, I was getting him over to third base."
"You know Chase is going to come out of it," Rollins said. "That's one guy I don't worry about. He works hard. You see him in the batting cages every day."
"He's all right," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "That's what happens in this game sometimes. Hey, there have been a lot of great players who have finished the season bad. And first of all, Utley didn't finish the season bad. Hell, he had 33 homers and 104 RBI.
"It's like Burrell. He hit (.205) in (September). But in Milwaukee, he hit two rockets."
Plus Thursday's, giving him three homers and five RBI so far in a very productive postseason.
"It's a tough loss because you feel you pitched pretty well," Lowe said. "Next thing you know, you're down one."
And the damndest thing of all was that, as most everyone agreed, neither Burrell's homer nor Utley's probably would have gone out in Dodger Stadium.
Manny Ramirez's long rope off of the top of a fence atop the center-field wall (where it angles up) above the 409-foot sign that went for an RBI double in the first?
"I have never seen a ball hit that fence. Ever," Victorino marveled. "In my three years here, since '05, I have never, ever seen a ball hit that fence. I was shocked."
Leave it to Manny.
"Mine and Utley's, I don't think those balls go out of Dodger Stadium," Burrell analyzed. "His would have. We got lucky there."
It takes all sorts. Luck. Breaks. Taking advantage of opportunities.
The Phillies needed every last one of them on a warm night to raise the curtain on this NLCS.
"Hopefully, we can keep our foot on their necks," Rollins said.
"There's a certain toughness here that I'm not sure everyone has," Lidge said. "We have a collection of offensive guys who feel at any moment, they can change the game."
This one turned as quickly and as dramatically as you'll see on those two pitches.
Then Burrell's homer came 11 pitches after that, chasing Lowe and giving the Phillies their 23rd win in their past 32 games.
The Dodgers had won 22 of 30 coming into the NLCS, so you get an idea of just how fun this whole thing should be.
"That was a hell of a ballgame," Manuel said appreciatively, sitting alone in his office -- and still in uniform -- nearly an hour after it had ended. "It's going to be a good series.
"That game was an indication of how it's going to be."
