The Rotation (30 page)

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.

J
uly 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 treatment.

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 25
^th
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.