PHILADELPHIA – Cole Hamels is history. Should the clouds part long enough to permit the World Series to resume tonight, Philadelphia manager Charlie Manuel's first order of business will be to select a pinch hitter for his ace pitcher.
Hamels is scheduled to lead off the bottom of the sixth inning whenever baseball's autumnal tournament gets going again, but that's not a realistic option unless the storm decides to hunker down here indefinitely.
“He's not coming back pitching in this game,” Manuel said yesterday afternoon. “There's no way. I can tell you that.”
Losing Hamels as a casualty of climate in a potential clinch game is a bitter blow to the Phillies, a freak of nature, an ill wind at gale force. It's a twist of fate so twisted that it may ultimately be untangled as an omen.
Should the Phillies fail to finish off the Tampa Bay Rays when Game 5 is rejoined, Hamels' fans will think themselves accursed he was not there.
And they would probably have a point.
The lanky lefty from Rancho Bernardo High has been the dominant pitcher of this baseball October and is already on the short list of prospective guests for both David Letterman and Jay Leno. Hamels had won each of his four postseason starts preceding Monday's World Series monsoon, and he can still win Game 5 if the Phillies can immediately break the 2-2 tie when they pick up the proceedings.
Clearly, though, Tampa Bay has caught a 95-mph break here. They have eliminated the Phillies' best pitcher in the face of their own elimination, which is akin to passing Go (and collecting $200) when your Monopoly opponent operates hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place.
“That's a pretty good feeling, obviously,” Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said yesterday of Hamels' exit. “He has been so good, and to scratch out the runs that we've had has been very difficult. It's not going to be an easy task by any means, but we have a lot of the bullpen fresh now, too. So getting him out is important.”
Because they lead the best-of-seven series 3-1, the Phillies still have three chances to close out this series with a trophy presentation. Presumably, yesterday's decision to push the series back an additional day improves Hamels'prospects for a significant role in the event a Game 7 is played Friday (at the earliest) in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Still, the Phillies were just 12 outs from a champagne celebration when Hamels was allowed to start the sixth inning Monday night in a howling wind and a driving rain on a field overpopulated by puddles. Should the Rays recover to win the World Series, it will not be difficult to deduce the turning point or to persuade Phillies fans that justice is both blind and moist.
That the Rays were able to tie the score under awful conditions was a tribute to the talent and toughness of B.J. Upton and Carlos Peña, but it was also an unfair and virtually unplayable test for a game of such significance.
“That was probably the worst conditions I've ever played under in my life,” Peña said. “It was really, really cold, windy, and it was raining nonstop. I mean, when do you ever see a puddle at home plate?”
The standard sports rationalization about bad weather is that the conditions are the same for both sides, but in this case they really weren't. The Phillies were in the field for the worst of it, and played one more inning on defense than did the Rays.
Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia's Gold Glove shortstop, was unable to field the unthreatening grounder that Upton eventually converted into the tying run. As well as he pitched, Hamels had difficulty making the ball behave.
“I think he did have problems getting a feel because of the dampness on his hands and the dampness on the ball,” Manuel said. “I think it was picking up moisture and he was having a hard time wanting to cut loose with his fastball. And also, if you go back and notice, he was throwing a lot of change-ups, and he was having a hard time getting his change-up.”
Hamels threw 75 pitches altogether, 48 of them for strikes, a workload that typically translates as having another two innings in the tank. Stopping the game an inning or two earlier would not have allowed Hamels to finish what he started, but it could have meant his bullpen would have been protecting a 2-1 lead instead of a 2-2 tie.
“I have confidence in our hitters and our bullpen to win this,” Hamels said.
Not nearly as much confidence, however, as they have in him.
Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com
