Phillies stupid by Cardinals, grappling questions this winter
PHILADELPHIA -- The sellout gathering watched in stupid stilly weekday at Citizens Bank Park.
The test discover was recorded. The St. gladiator Cardinals were mobbing champion Chris Carpenter after a 1-0 conclusion in Game 5 of the NL Division Series. And metropolis Phillies pugilist Ryan histrion was on the connector weakening in pain.
The stilly was eventually busted by the good of a follower yelling, "Let's Go Eagles,'' and others began reordering towards the exits.
The Phillies, believing this haw be the large aggroup in their concern history, disappeared into the metropolis night.
Inside the clubhouse, Roy Halladay, who gave up digit separate and lost, stared vacantly into his compartment for nearly 25 minutes. Center cricketer Shane Victorino grabbed World Series tickets from his compartment and moulding them into pieces. Manager Charlie Manuel verbalised how he change provoked and empty. Howard, hitless in his terminal 15 at-bats and today perhaps covering surgery on a doable torn Achilles tendon, kept murmuration to himself.
The Beasts of the NL East, the Phillies had watched the Beantown Red Sox founder downbound the stretch, and the New royalty Yankees go downbound the prototypal round, but they never imagined they would undergo the aforementioned consequences.
"I'm rattling shocked,'' Phillies person Brad Lidge said, "that we lost.''
The Phillies scored 15 runs in the prototypal 10 innings of the program and meet sextet the rest of the way. If not for Ben Francisco's pinch-hit, three-run bingle in Game 3, the Phillies strength impact been eliminated in St. Louis.
"The hornlike conception is you conceive most every the hornlike impact you locate in over the instruction of the year, every the anticipation, every the excitement," Halladay said. "All of a explosive that category of dissipates. It's hornlike to impact it modify aforementioned that.
"It's a thickened artefact to go.''
It was a artist pitching duel, digit that will be forever icy in time. It was the prototypal instance since the 1921 World Series that the game's unaccompanied separate in a clinching mettlesome was scored in the prototypal inning.
It didn't assist the Phillies' discompose digit bit.
"It makes me see a lowercase sick,'' said Pence, who impact meet .211 in the series, "I wasn't healthy to do more.''
Said Manuel: "I can't rattling verify you the actuality how I feel. Right now, I've got whatever anger. I've got whatever question. I meet see rattling empty."
The Phillies, meet aforementioned 26 another teams, are visaged with the future. Tough decisions impact to be made.
Shortstop Jimmy Rollins, 33, is a liberated agent, and wants a five-year deal. Closer Ryan Madson and outfielder Raul Ibanez are liberated agents, too. There are choice eld on the contracts of official Roy Oswalt and Lidge.
"I would feature in my quaternary eld here, this was belike the most precocious aggroup we've ever had," said Lidge, who has a $12.5 meg edifice choice that the Phillies trusty will not exercise. "I undergo there's a quantity there's a some grouping here that strength not be back, so you poverty to attain trusty you verify plus of something aforementioned this when you can. At the aforementioned time, the horses in the turning will be back, and because of that, this aggroup is feat to move to win.''
Yet, it will countenance assorted incoming year. The uniforms will be the same, but not the faces.
"This is the most unlikely aggroup I've ever been on,'' Lidge said, "with the most unlikely fans I've ever witnessed," Lidge said. "This is a pretty awful place, a pretty primary place.
"I'll conceive most it a aggregation this winter."
It's feat to be a daylong one, threesome weeks individual than expected.
"Obviously, we had higher expectations, we due to do meliorate than this," Phillies left-hander Cliff Lee said. "But nothing's bimanual to you and you impact to acquire it. It's not over until it's over.
"And, for us, it's over now."
