The Rotation

by Jim Salisbury

  “I think this one has a little more depth to it,” he said.

  The Phillies had four aces. The other great rotations had three or two or one.The Phillies could cushion the blow as long as Halladay, Lee, and Hamels kept throwing well. And as a bonus, they were getting good performances from Kyle Kendrick, who went 1-1 with a 3.00 ERA in three starts, before rookie Vance Worley took his place and finished the month 1-0 with a 1.00 ERA in three starts, including a one-run, seven-inning effort on June 29 in a 2-1 victory against the Boston Red Sox. Phillies Pitching Coach Rich Dubee liked what he had seen from Worley, who had shown he wasn’t afraid to compete.

  Halladay finished the month 3-0 with a 2.00 ERA. Hamels went 2-2 with a 1.31 ERA, while Lee finished 5-0 with a 0.21 ERA. The rotation had a 1.96 ERA in June, the first time a rotation finished a month with an ERA under 2.00 since July 1992, when both the Cubs (a 1.72 ERA with Greg Maddux, Mike Morgan, Mike Harkey, Shawn Boskie, and Frank Castillo) and Braves (a 1.92 ERA with John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Charlie Liebrandt, Steve Avery, and Mike Bielecki) accomplished the feat.

  But Lee’s June rightfully received most of the attention. Since earned runs were first recorded, Elias Sports Bureau found only six other starting pitchers who went 5-0 with an ERA that low in a calendar month in baseball history: Guy Bush in August 1926 (6-0, 0.19 ERA); Fernando Valenzuela in April 1981 (5-0, 0.20 ERA); Nolan Ryan in May 1984 (5-0, 0.20 ERA); Mike Witt in August 1986 (5-0, 0.21 ERA); Orel Hershiser in September 1988 (5-0, 0.00 ERA); and Cory Lidle in August 2002 (5-0, 0.20 ERA).

  “I’ve had better stretches, I think, to be honest with you, but it’s good,” Lee said following his June 16 two-hit shutout against the Florida Marlins at Citizens Bank Park.

  Coincidentally, the same night Lee dominated the Marlins, the Yankees and Rangers—who’d fallen short in the Lee sweepstakes—played each other a couple hours north in Yankee Stadium. Minor-league journeyman Brian Gordon pitched that night for the Yankees. He went 5-0 with a 1.14 ERA in 12 appearances for Triple-A Lehigh Valley before the Phillies released him to allow him to pursue a big-league job with the Yankees. It was his first appearance in the major leagues since 2008 and he was waived a week later.

  “They got Cliff Lee, I got Brian Gordon,” Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman quipped in New York. “I don’t think they have anything to worry about.”

  Lee threw a six-hit shutout against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium on June 22, becoming the first Phillies pitcher to throw consecutive shutouts since Cory Lidle did it in 2004. Phillies fans had seen stretches like this before from Lee, and they loved watching this one. He went 5-0 with a 0.68 ERA in his first five starts with the Phillies in 2009, and 4-0 with a 1.56 ERA in five postseason starts in 2009. In between those special runs, he went 2-4 with a 6.13 ERA, pitching so poorly at times Phillies fans wondered if Lee or Hamels, who had his own struggles that season, should start Game 1 of the 2009 National League Division Series against the Colorado Rockies. But when Lee was on? Forget about it.

  “When he’s hot, he’s smoking hot,” Ruben Amaro Jr. said. “He’s as good a pitcher as there has been in the history of the game when he’s hot.”

  Lee throws darts at the strike zone, making hitters look foolish with his cutter, often waiting until the later innings before unleashing his curveball, giving hitters just one more thing to think about before stepping into the batter’s box. He was fulfilling the Phillies’ expectations, and suddenly October couldn’t come fast enough. If Lee, Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt were on, what team was going to beat the Phillies in a five-game or seven-game series?

  Lee got fans into a postseason lather on June 28, when he faced the Boston Red Sox’s Josh Beckett at Citizens Bank Park. In spring training, Amaro had called the Red Sox the best team in baseball. Boston entered the series with the second-best record in the American League at 45-32, just a half game behind the Yankees, while the Phillies had the best record in baseball at 49-30.

  It was a World Series preview.

  When it was finished, Lee had fans wishing it was Game 7. He allowed a single to Marco Scutaro in the sixth inning and a double to Darnell McDonald in the eighth inning, but they were the only hits he gave up in a 5-0 victory over the Red Sox, making him the first Phillies pitcher to throw three consecutive shutouts since Hall of Fame right-hander Robin Roberts had in 1950.The victory also maintained the team’s 4½-game lead over the Braves.

  “Oh man, he was great,” Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. “He pitched his butt off. That’s why he’s one of the best in the business. He attacks the zone. He’s one of the best, man.”

  Lee finished the month allowing just one run in 42 innings, riding a 32-inning scoreless streak that tied him with Ken Heintzelman (1949) and Roberts (1950) for the third-longest scoreless streak in Phillies history behind Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander (41 innings in 1911) and Larry Andersen (32⅔ innings in relief in 1984).

  True to his whatever personality, the Marlboro Man wasn’t about to get too fired up about his work.

  “I don’t care,” Lee said. “I play to win. Later when I’m done with my career I can look back and that’s something I can be proud of. At this point, that’s good, but it’s not time to pat myself on the back. It’s the middle of the season, and we’ve got a lot of work to do and a lot of games to play.”

  Lee had dominated a potential World Series opponent, but even that was met with a shrug.

  “It’s June,” he said. “We’re a long way from the playoffs. I expect us to do something really special. We expect to win the World Series, but we can’t do that right now.”

  But it could not stop everybody else from dreaming about it.

  JULY

  July provided an illuminating portrait of Roy Halladay.

  The ace of the aces positioned himself nicely for a run at a second-straight Cy Young Award by going 3-1 with a 2.57 ERA in five starts, four of them Phillies’ wins. But the greatness that Halladay showed on the mound was hardly revealing. Phillies fans had come to expect months like this from him. The pitcher was almost robotic in his ability to turn out quality start after quality start. It was as if they came off an assembly line and he was the stoic, emotionless supervisor standing there, arms folded, overseeing everything, making sure it met his high standard.

  But a funny thing happened to the robot in July.

  He proved human.

  He allowed his heartstrings to be pulled at in Toronto.

  In Chicago, his eyes rolled back into his head and he nearly passed out.

  And then there was that night two days before the trade deadline when the man who lives by the cliché of never getting too high or two low got so high that he almost seemed giddy.

  “This is one of the big reasons I was adamant about coming here,” a beaming Halladay said that night, when his World Series dream seemed so close he could touch it.

  Halladay joined the Phils in December 2009 after more than a decade of second-division finishes in Toronto. While American League East rivals the Red Sox and the Yankees played meaningful games in late September, he often found himself packing the contents of his locker in boxes. And while the Sox and Yankees punched their tickets for October, Halladay bought a plane ticket home for the winter.

  This is not to say he didn’t enjoy his time in Toronto. He did. Very much so. He liked the city, his teammates, and the Blue Jays organization. The feelings were mutual. During spring training in 2011, Blue Jays Athletic Trainer George Poulis almost choked up when he talked about how much he missed Halladay—the man. People don’t get these feelings when they believe someone is an ingrate. Halladay is definitely not that. Even as he angled for an exit from Toronto and a trade to a winner in 2009, he was careful not to disrespect the organization or the city that had embraced him for a decade. In fact, he took every opportunity he could to show his appreciation to the team and the city. He did not want to look like an ingrate. He did not want to one day return to Toronto and receive the J. D. Drew treatme
nt.

  On Friday July 1, Halladay learned he had succeeded in letting Toronto and the Blue Jays know they had a special place in his heart.

  The Phillies, rocking a four-game lead in the NL East and the best record in the majors, opened a three-game series against the Blue Jays in Toronto that day. It was Halladay’s first trip back to the city where he had won 148 games and the 2003 AL Cy Young Award, and though he had spent the previous few days telling reporters that it was just another trip, that enough time had passed, that he wouldn’t feel any significant emotion, no one believed him.

  Cincinnati would have been just another trip.

  Not Toronto.

  The Jays wanted to honor Halladay in some way before Friday’s game. It seemed like the perfect time. It was Canada Day—marking the anniversary of that nation’s independence—and the atmosphere at the sold-out Rogers Centre was festive. Though their hearts were in the right place, Jays officials knew they had no shot of honoring Halladay before the first game of the series. Halladay was scheduled to pitch the next day and they knew full well that he wraps himself in a steel cage of mental concentration the day before he pitches. There was no way they’d get him to participate in something like that, not 24 hours before a start.

  The Jays came up with a plan. They asked the Phillies if Halladay would pinch-hit for Bench Coach Pete Mackanin and take the lineup card to home plate before the first game. A video highlighting the pitcher’s time in Toronto would play on the scoreboard and Halladay would not even notice it. Deliver the lineup card. Tip of the hat. Quick. Painless. Get back into the steel cage. No one gets zapped.

  Halladay agreed to do it.

  The applause started the moment he came out of the visiting dugout and didn’t stop until he had tipped his cap not once, but twice.

  The Phillies overcame Jose Bautista’s 25th homer in the seventh inning—“I was trying to be aggressive and I don’t know why,” lamented pitcher Kyle Kendrick, who went against the plan to give Bautista nothing good to hit—and pulled out a 7-6 win in the ninth inning on Canada Day.

  The next day was a Halladay, too.

  Pitching Coach Rich Dubee and a few others were sitting in the dugout when Chase Utley, often the first to arrive for batting practice, came up the stairs with a hop in his step and a playful look on his face. Even on good days, Utley is grumpy before a game, but on this day, before Halladay’s start in Toronto, he was smiling and giving people the business.

  “Another day off,” he cracked as he walked by Dubee on his way to sign an autograph for a fan at the end of the dugout.

  With 12 pitchers to keep track of, there are no days off for Dubee. But Dubee can afford to push the cruise-control button for a couple of hours on days that Halladay pitches. Dubee is an interesting guy. Fifty-four years old. A former Massachusetts schoolboy legend who pitched in the Kansas City Royals system. Son of a cop. Charlie Manuel turns all of the pitching responsibility over to Dubee, and that makes the crusty New Englander the go-to guy for reporters seeking information about the staff. Dubee always provides the information, but reporters occasionally have to jump through hoops to get it. Some days the hoop is coated in sandpaper, some days in barbed wire.

  On this Halladay in Toronto, the hoop was coated in honey. Dubee smiled easily as he gave health updates on his staff, and the time was right for him to learn that his favorite fourth estate foil, Daily News beat writer Dave Murphy, had lost his passport. With no paper on Sunday or Monday (because of the July 4 holiday), Murphy had decided to drive to and from Toronto. He had hit the road for Philadelphia after Friday’s game only to turn up at a Toronto restaurant later that night frantically looking for his passport.

  Murphy somehow made it across the border without a passport the next afternoon, but Dubee had his ammo.

  “Wait ’til I see that idiot,” he said.

  The pregame dugout levity continued when Blue Jays broadcaster Buck Martinez, the Jays former catcher and manager, stopped by to visit with Manuel.

  “Que pasa, motherfucker?” Manuel said to Martinez.

  They both laughed hysterically.

  Manuel, a no-pretense country boy, is a native of the Shenandoah Valley. Martinez, a silver-haired and silver-tongued intellectual, hails from Northern California.

  The two men first met each other in 1971 during winter ball in Puerto Rico. Manuel was playing for Mayaguez; Martinez was catching for Santurce.

  Manuel strode to the plate one day and looked at the name on the back of Martinez’ uniform.

  “Que pasa, motherfucker?” he drawled.

  Martinez looked up from his crouch.

  “Uh, Charlie,” he said. “I speak English.”

  The dugout comedy act was just a warm-up for the featured act that day—and there was no doubt what that was.

  Halladay emerged from the dugout about a half hour before game time to begin his warm-up. He walked by a young fan holding a red foam No. 1 finger. It said PHILLIES on one side, but on the other, in handwritten white paint, were the words: Halladay 32 Forever. Halladay wore No. 32 with the Jays. In the outfield, a bedsheet sign read: Welcome Back, Doc, Please Be Gentle.

  Becoming the best pitcher in baseball, as he is often called, wasn’t an easy journey for Halladay. During spring training in 2001, after more than two seasons in the majors, Halladay was “getting his ass kicked,” as Martinez, his former manager said, and was sent to the low minors to rebuild his confidence, delivery, and pitching style. It was a humbling demotion, but the key event that started Halladay’s ascension to greatness. He went to Class A ball at the end of spring training in 2001 and didn’t return to the majors until . . . July 2 of that year.

  So here was Halladay, back on the mound in Toronto, on the 10-year anniversary of his return to the majors.

  It could not have been scripted better.

  In the bottom of the first, Halladay took the mound to a long standing ovation from the crowd of 44,078. For a moment, it felt as if the Blue Jays were visitors in their own park. The ovation was so long and remarkable that one wondered if Halladay would come out of his steel cage and tip his cap, but by this point, he was so mentally locked into the game that he could not bust through the bars and do that.

  Halladay pitched his sixth complete game of the season and earned his 11 th win in a 5-3 victory that day, and the Jays truly were visitors in their own park. That, at least, was the message delivered by the Toronto Sun the next morning. “Atta boy, Doc” read the headline on the cover of the sports section.

  It was such an amazing day that no one wanted to miss a single pitch. Witness Manuel in the fifth inning: he was dying to say more than Que pasa? to third-base umpire Brian O’Nora after Ryan Howard was rung up on a questionable checked swing with the bases loaded, but decided against it.

  “When you go there it’s an automatic ejection,” Manuel said later. “I didn’t want to have to come in here and sit by myself in the clubhouse. Not today, at least. I wanted to watch Halladay pitch.”

  When it was over, Halladay could finally tell himself the truth.

  This was not just another game.

  “I was definitely anxious warming up,” he admitted. “Walking onto the field was definitely different. It was a cool experience for me. You always want to do as well as you can, and it meant a lot to me to do it here today.”

  Halladay said he’d never forget the ovations he received while delivering the lineup card Friday and taking the mound Saturday.

  He actually thought about tipping his cap during Saturday’s first-inning ovation, but had too much respect for his old team to do so.

  “I obviously appreciated it,” he said, “but I didn’t want to go out there on someone else’s home field and feel like I was the center of attention. I wanted to be as respectful as I could to their team and the Blue Jays organization. I didn’t want to make a huge production.”

  It was a huge production. The whole day. And it took a toll on Halladay. He was supposed to dine with some old friends
that night, but he had to cancel the plans. The often emotionless pitcher was emotionally spent.

  Six days later, the Phillies returned home for their final series before the All-Star break, and it was as big as a series could be in July.

  The Atlanta Braves, just 2½ games behind the Phillies in the standings, were in town for a three-game series. Like the Phillies, the Braves were a team built on pitching. Phillies starters entered the series with a 2.99 ERA, the best in the NL. Atlanta’s staff was second with a 3.07 ERA. With a sweep, Atlanta could go into the break leading the NL East. Now, divisions are not won at the All-Star break, but the Phillies knew the importance, even if it was symbolic, of going into the break in first place. The standings freeze for three days and the Phillies wanted to make sure their division lead stood firm as the baseball world took a breather.

  Dubee took advantage of an earlier off day and tinkered with his rotation to make sure Cole Hamels would pitch the final game before the break. That meant Atlanta had to face Halladay, Lee, and Hamels in the series. All three ranked in the top seven in league ERA. For Atlanta, it felt a little like facing Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz.

  IT’S GOTTA BE THE SHOES!

  The Phillies’ clubhouse staff found itself in a mad scramble for shoes on July 29.

  Not just any shoes. Red Reeboks. The Phillies are one of only two teams to wear red spikes. That makes finding them on short notice incredibly difficult, especially when a trade happens on a Friday night, like the one that brought Hunter Pence to Philadelphia from Houston.

  So Frank Coppenbarger, the team’s director of team travel and clubhouse services, and Phil Sheridan, the home clubhouse manager, got on the phone and started calling sporting goods stores in the area.

  Uh, got any size 12½ red Reebok spikes for Hunter Pence?

  Nothing.

  In a storage room, the Phillies have plenty of extra Nike and Under Armour spikes because most players wear Nike, and Under Armour is the official footwear supplier of Major League Baseball. But Pence has an equipment deal with Reebok, so his spikes needed to be Reeboks. When the equipment guys struck out, Pence reluctantly wore a pair of red Nikes for his Phillies debut on July 30. The shoes were a half size too small, but Pence felt even more uncomfortable wearing a competing brand, so the next afternoon Phillies Assistant Athletic Trainer Mark Andersen spent 45 minutes spray painting his black Reeboks red.