The Rotation (26 page)

“I could tell that he did, but I asked anyway,” Graves said. “It's pretty wild out there. They're ruthless.”

A few weeks later during that inaugural season at Citizens Bank Park,
Montreal Expos relievers timed a fan as he booed for 13 minutes straight.

Six years later, Johnson was glad the visitors had been moved upstairs. If they had stayed on the bottom tier, he would have finished his session that June day in 2010 and walked out of the bullpen possibly without knowing Halladay was above him. He can thank the lions and those whining Phillies relievers of 2004 for his up-close look at Halladay's workday.

Fans' interacting with relievers in the bullpen has long been part of the game. Former Boston Red Sox reliever Bob Stanley used to hose down sunbaked fans in the Fenway Park bleachers on hot days. More than a few phone numbers have been exchanged between pretty girls and relievers—bachelors, of course—and an occasional hot dog from the concession stand has made it into a bullpen. One classic bullpen moment in recent Phillies history came when sharp-tongued closer Billy Wagner was warming up in the bullpen in San Francisco. The bullpens in San Francisco are practically in the box seats and a fan was going to town on Wagner, who stands just 5-9.

“Hey, midget,” the fan shouted at Wagner.

Wagner, the hardest-throwing lefty on the planet at that time, kept firing pitches.

“Hey, Frodo,” the fan shouted.

Wagner kept firing.

“How tall are you anyway?” the fan shouted.

Wagner seized his opportunity.

“Five-nine,” he drawled between pitches. “Six-six when I'm standing on my wallet.”

Since the day the Phillies signed Cliff Lee, there was a tendency to think of the club as the Big Four starters and a bunch of complementary players. While the impact of the team's star-studded rotation couldn't be disputed, there was more to the club than four guys named Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and Oswalt.

As everyone from the front office to the clubhouse had mentioned since this campaign began on Valentine's Day in Clearwater, it takes a full team to win a championship. All the pieces matter, as Lester Freamon said in
The Wire
. Whatever the case, the first home stand of May was a good reminder of
all this. The Phillies went 6-3 on that home stand, even though Joe Blanton and Roy Oswalt were hurting. Two of those wins came from Vance Worley, who went from being farmed out in March to a double-digit winner by Labor Day. The other came from Kyle Kendrick. The right-hander replaced the sore-backed Oswalt on May 7 and, in his first start of the season, pitched five shutout innings in a 3-0 win over Atlanta. Worley and Kendrick pitched 17 innings as starters on the home stand and allowed just one run combined.

Not too shabby.

“Those guys are on a different level,” said Kendrick, referring to the big-name starters. “But it is nice to help out.”

Blanton struggled with elbow issues the entire month. He was scheduled to pitch against Colorado at home on May 19. Rain washed out batting practice and most of the players milled about the clubhouse before the game. Even the elusive Halladay, often tucked away watching video or riding a stationary bike to Europe, was there, his attention to his workout regimen interrupted by another passion—aviation. Kendrick was playing with a remote-control helicopter. A number of teammates looked on in amusement as the popular Kendrick, joystick in hand, struggled to get the delicate toy airborne. When he finally did, it stayed up for just a couple of seconds and crashed to the floor amidst the chuckles of onlookers.

Halladay, who says he would have become a pilot if he didn't become a ballplayer, picked up the helicopter and made some adjustments to the blades, as if he were tinkering with the grip on his changeup. He grabbed the joystick from Kendrick and flew the helicopter smoothly for 20 seconds before landing it softly and handing the joystick back to Kendrick. All that was missing was Halladay channeling fiddler Charlie Daniels and saying, “That's how you do it, son,” but anyone who knows Halladay knows he's way too humble to do something like that.

“He's good at everything,” one reporter said to another after watching Halladay pilot the toy helicopter, which was about the size of a middle infielder's glove.

Clearly inspired by Halladay's flawless flight, Kendrick took the joystick and promptly crashed the helicopter into the back of a chair occupied by Blanton, that night's pitcher. It was rather symbolic. Blanton experienced more pain in his elbow as he tried to loosen up and was scratched. He would not make another start until the final week of the season. Kendrick made the emergency start that night and was torched for a pair of home runs by Jason Giambi in a 7-1 loss to the Rockies.

The defeat was the Phils' fifth in six games and they scored more than two runs in just one of them. Their only win in that span was a 2-1 victory over Colorado behind Hamels.

Where were the runs?

It was a question Phillies pitchers asked all month, and, regrettably, would ask again.

Back on May 8, Hamels could have asked, “Where are the runs?” He pitched seven innings and allowed just three runs, but the Phils suffered a 5-2 loss to Atlanta on that Sunday night.

The Phillies began an eight-game road trip in Miami the next day. They didn't reach their hotel until after 3 A.M. Players and coaches arrived in the clubhouse the next day, bleary-eyed but upbeat. The hangover that comes with a difficult loss can't last long when you play nearly every day for six months. Several members of the team's traveling party had been relaxing at the hotel pool a couple hours earlier. One staff member spoke of seeing a 250-pound woman sunbathing.

“Some people just shouldn't wear bikinis,” he said.

A few feet away, Bullpen Coach Mike Billmeyer, the team's ambassador of laughs, perked up when he heard of the 250-pound bathing beauty.

“Did you give her my number?” he asked.

The Phils beat the Marlins that night, with Blanton getting his only win of the year despite pitching through the elbow injury that would eventually scuttle his season.

The second game of the series was another matchup between Halladay and Johnson, and you couldn't help but wonder if Halladay had given Johnson a little too good of a peek in the bullpen at Citizens Bank Park a year earlier. Johnson pitched seven innings and allowed just one run, lowering his ERA to a microscopic 1.63. Halladay and the Phillies lost the game, 2-1. Not only were runs scarce, the defense betrayed Halladay as normally sure-handed shortstop Jimmy Rollins made a costly error to put the go-ahead run on base in the eighth inning. Halladay followed with a rare wild pitch before Chris Coughlin broke the tie with a bloop hit to center. As Coughlin's feathery blooper found the outfield grass, Halladay shouted a profanity. It was an uncharacteristic show of emotion for the stoic pitcher, but it was that kind of night—frustrating all the way.

“That was a tough way to lose a game,” Manager Charlie Manuel said afterward.

Halladay spoke softly, blandly after that game in Miami. It was difficult to tell whether he was more frustrated with himself, the defense, or the lack of offense. But deep down inside, it had to be comforting for the pitcher to know that, across the state in Clearwater, second baseman Chase Utley was about to play in his first minor-league rehabilitation game after missing the start of the season with the most famous case of right knee tendinitis in Philadelphia history. Halladay had once called Utley “the driving force” of the Phillies and compared him to Derek Jeter, the heart of the most recent New York Yankees dynasty. With Utley now playing in minor-league games, it wouldn't be long before his bat and intensity would be back in the lineup.

“One person can mean a lot, especially the caliber of player that Chase is,” Manuel said. “We're going to get better when Chase gets back.”

With the offense struggling, Phillies officials were also keeping an eye on top prospect Domonic Brown, who had recovered from a broken hand and was now heating up at Triple-A. Manuel was eager to insert Brown's bat into the lineup, but he was willing to be patient. He didn't want a player who wasn't ready to contribute, and neither did the pitchers who were starving for consistent run support.

“Go ask Halladay and Lee and them,” Manuel said. “We're here to win. I'm not here to babysit. When Domonic's ready to tear the cover off the ball, he'll come.”

That was the idea, at least.

But in baseball, everything is subject to change.

Especially when the offense stinks.