A most painful ending to a great season

FROM KEITH GROLLER

PHILADELPHIA — Move over 1964.

You just might have been replaced as the most agonizing, disappointing ending to a Phillies season.

As painful as '64 was, this one may hurt more.

What happened 47 Septembers ago took a few weeks to unfold. This collapse came in a matter of days.

The Phillies, the consensus favorite to win it all from the moment they signed Cliff Lee last offseason, are going home.

Shockingly, this amazing season that included a franchise-record 102 wins during the regular season is over.

One to nothing. That was the final score.

But for all of those who bleed in red pinstripes, it might as well have been 100 to 0. That might have been easier to take.

To be sure, the Phillies have suffered some tough postseason losses before. Greg Luzinski, the guy who threw out the first pitch Friday night, was in the middle of one of those heartbreaks against the Dodgers back in 1977.

But never before had the Phillies dropped a playoff series in which they had a two-games-to-one lead.

The National League Championship Series that will begin Sunday will feature a rematch of the 1982 World Series between the Cardinals and Brewers, and, for the first time since 2008, it won't feature the Phillies.

Unlike a year ago, the final image won't be of Ryan Howard standing at the plate, bewildered, after a called third strike.

This time, it will feature Howard, the poster boy for the Phillies' offensive woes over the final four games of this series, crumbling to the ground as he attempted to beat out a bouncer to second basemanNick Punto.

Howard's stunning collapse — both at the plate and en route to first — epitomized this team's hard-to-believe crash landing.

Maybe that eight-game losing streak after the NL East title was won was more of an omen that just a team that had too much champagne.

The Phillies may have assembled one of the best pitching rotations of all time, but they still left at least one outstanding hurler out there and he wore a St. Louis uniform on Friday night.

A franchise that has featured the likes of Dizzy Dean and Bob Gibson may have never experienced a grittier, gutsier, more determined effort than the one Chris Carpenter delivered.

In a town that will forever see this as a choke job, give Phillies manager Charlie Manuel credit for giving credit to the other side.

"You know what I saw tonight, actually," Manuel said. "I saw Carpenter pitch a good game. I saw Carpenter throw breaking balls, change-ups and fastballs. I saw him move the ball around, and he pitched a real good game."

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa saw this coming as early as Sunday.

Even with his team down 1-0 in the series, he said it would be fantastic for baseball to have Carpenter and Roy Halladay go head-to-head in a fifth and deciding game.

La Russa can drive even St. Louis fans a little crazy with all of his moves, but he was prescient in this case because this was pitching at its finest.

Not since Jack Morris beat the Braves in the 1997 World Series had a postseason game ended 1-0.

The Cardinals were fortunate to get to Halladay for a leadoff triple by Rafael Furcal and a double by Skip Schumaker, and that was basically it.

Most of the baseball world, and especially the 46,575 inside Citizens Bank Park, kept waiting for the best team in baseball, the team that the Vegas oddsmakers and a majority of the analysts predicted to win, to feed off Halladay's typically brilliant performance. They expected the Phillies to score and score in bunches.

But the runs — not even one — came.



Class act



It was two hours before Game 5 of the National League Division Series Friday night at Citizens Bank Park and on this night of great anticipation and worry, a gesture of respect cut through the tension.

It happened behind the batting cage.

As the Phillies were wrapping up their batting practice and the Cardinals were beginning theirs, Albert Pujols greeted Charlie Manuel, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley behind the batting cage.

This wasn't just a "How ya doin'? " greeting.

These exchanges came complete with handshakes and hugs and you sense that there was mutual admiration in those gestures.

And why not?

This better-than-expected series between two of the most successful franchises in the National League — the Phillies were in their fifth straight postseason and the Cardinals were playing in their eighth in the last 12 years — was baseball at its classiest.

"it's been a good series," Manuel said. "Might be fitting that it goes down to the fifth game. We're a good team; they're a good team."

Cardinals skipper Tony La Russa has praised the Phillies professionalism throughout, saying: "It's really fun to compete against somebody at that high level because they're going to do things that are championship-like and you try to compete with them."

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