Dramatic Game 4 victory gives Phillies championship feeling

PHILADELPHIA -- Some games live on. Some wins stick in your memory for years.

Sometimes, the championship isn't clinched on the night the champagne flows.

It feels like that with the Phillies now. It feels like they just won it -- won the National League pennant for a second consecutive year, maybe even won another World Series.

It feels like this was the win that did it, this incredible 5-4 Game 4 win over the Dodgers that had the Phillies' blood pumping and their voices jumping even an hour after Jimmy Rollins doubled home two runs off closer Jonathan Broxton with two out in the ninth inning Monday night.

Broxton threw a fastball clocked at 98.8 mph, the fastest pitch Rollins has seen all year. Rollins sent it flying to right-center field, and in the seconds the ball was in the air, everyone in the ballpark realized that instead of losing, the Phillies were going to win.

Instead of being tied with the Dodgers at two games apiece, the Phillies had complete control of this National League Championship Series at three games to one. Instead of knowing that they would get on another plane for Los Angeles and a certain Game 6, the Phillies know they can wrap up the NLCS at home if they can beat the Dodgers again on Wednesday night.

Any doubts now that they will, even if the Dodgers lead by 10 runs in the ninth inning on Wednesday, even if they bring Sandy Koufax out of the stands and Fernando Valenzuela out of the broadcast booth?

"You never know with these guys," Phillies closer Brad Lidge said. "They're capable of doing some incredible things. No matter the score, no matter who is pitching, they actually believe they're going to come back.

"And when they don't, you're surprised."

The Phillies have this feeling now, this championship feeling, this feeling that winners have.

We all wondered going into this postseason whether their bullpen would hold up. We forgot that with the Phillies, it's more often the other team's bullpen that doesn't hold up.

We focused on their blown saves. We forgot that they kept pinning blown saves on other closers, too.

You wonder what will happen if they end up playing the Yankees in the World Series, wonder if it will be the same against Mariano Rivera as it already was against the Rockies' Huston Street and the Dodgers' Broxton.

And you wonder, even if they go on to win the World Series, whether they'll have another win that feels like the one they had Monday night.

"I think this one is the biggest one we've had this year," said Ryan Howard, whose first-inning home run made history (he tied Lou Gehrig's record with an RBI in eight consecutive postseason games), but was nearly forgotten by game's end.

This one seemed over in the eighth, when George Sherrill struck out Howard with two on and one out, and then Broxton retired Jayson Werth on a fly ball to right to end the inning and end what seemed like the Phillies' last best hope.

But then came the ninth, and suddenly things started happening.

Matt Stairs, who hit the big home run off Broxton in Game 4 last year, drew a four-pitch walk. Broxton hit Carlos Ruiz with a 96 mph fastball.

Then, with two out, Rollins' double changed everything.

The Phillies charged out of their dugout, even before Ruiz had crossed the plate.

"I think we were all going to home plate and telling him to slide," reliever Scott Eyre said.

Not all of them. Howard was heading to third base to find Rollins, and soon enough that's where all the Phillies were.

Jimmy Rollins is the object of affection after his walk-off heroics. (US Presswire)

"Yeah, I was the first one there," Howard said. "And then I was the first one on the bottom of the pile."

They went to the clubhouse and toasted Rollins, the longest-serving Phillie, with Don Julio tequila (no champagne yet, mind you). They chanted, "One more! One more!"

"That's what it comes down to, one more in three games," Eyre said. "Hopefully one more in one game."

They realized that this one was special, that even for a team that prides itself on comebacks, this one felt different, this one meant more.

"That one's hard to even wrap your brain around," reliever Chad Durbin said. "That was awesome."

They have a day to take it in, because there's no game Tuesday. The Dodgers have a day to get over it, but you get the feeling they'll need all winter to get over this one.

If all goes well for the Phillies, they'll spend all winter reliving it, talking about how this time Stairs took four pitches from Broxton.

He'll tell everyone one more time that he was thinking of the home run from 2008, thinking of hitting another one ("I had one thought in my mind, and it was to go for the Budweiser sign," he said).

It's what he does, or what he normally does.

"I'll be swinging at fastballs till I'm 50," Stairs said. "They might be slow-pitch fastballs then."

These weren't slow, but he didn't swing. Ruiz didn't swing, either.

But Rollins sure did.

"He likes to be in that moment," Howard said. "You've got to want to be in that situation. That's him. That's just him."

That's the Phillies, and we should all know it by now.

They want to be in that situation, and they sure as heck want to be in this situation. They want the feeling they had Monday night to last for a few more days, and then for a few more weeks.

And then, maybe, for a few more years.