Phillies Come Out Swinging to Stay Alive

PHILADELPHIA -- Phillies hitting coach Milt Thompson didn't need any detailed analysis to get his players to understand what they needed to do differently against A.J. Burnett.

The game plan might as well have consisted of one word: "Swing."

"Be ready to hit the fastball," Thompson told FanHouse after the Phillies walloped Burnett for six quick runs en route to a season-saving 8-6 victory in Game 5 of the World Series. "We let him get first-pitch strikes on us last time and he got his confidence and started getting his curveball over. Tag the fastball. That's all."

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Burnett, who held the Phillies to one run in seven innings in Game 2, continued to dump first-pitch fastballs into the strike zone, and one in particular ruined his chances of locking up the Yankees' 27th championship. Chase Utley belted the first pitch he saw into the right-field bleachers for a first-inning three-run homer, putting the Phillies up 3-1 and sending the message that this series was going back to New York.

For good measure, Utley added another homer in the seventh, his record-tying fifth of the World Series.


"He's looks like one of the best players in baseball to me," Thompson said. "That's why he's an All-Star, a perennial All-Star."

Utley was no secret in major league circles. The guy had been an All-Star each of the past four years, and he has consistently hit 25 to 35 homers. He's a left-handed hitter with a stroke so short and quick that left-handed pitchers can't get him out any easier than righties – four of his homers in the series have been against lefties, three against CC Sabathia.

Utley was merely the brightest hitting star on a night that the Phillies offense finally showed up in all of its glory. Sure, they had scored a respectable, 16 runs in the first four games, but they were a quiet 16 runs. They had hit seven solo homers.

"It felt like we were up 3-1 in the series. The guys were upbeat, having fun. We just had a kind of looseness."
-- Ryan Madson Utley's three-run blast was the kind of crushing blow they had administered to the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. The Phillies hit four three-run homers in their five-game victory to win the pennant.

The Phillies also worked Burnett for four walks, two of which led to runs. Essentially, they grinded him up the way they had done to so many pitchers all season. Throw a strike, they'll crush it. Throw a ball, they'll take a walk.

"I think we're very capable of playing that type of game, day in and day out," Jayson Werth said.

The Phillies' offensive breakthrough was a pretty clear indication that they weren't squeezing the bats too tightly or feeling the heat that a 3-1 series deficit ought to create. No, these guys are, perhaps in the mold of the infamous "idiots" on the 2004 Red Sox, not into overthinking their situation.

"It felt like we were up 3-1 in the series," reliever Ryan Madson said of the pregame environment. "The guys were upbeat, having fun. We just had a kind of looseness."

Manager Charlie Manuel had said before the game that he might talk to each of his players to deliver a message, but Ryan Howard said that never happened.

"I think he came in here and saw everyone messing around, so I guess he thought he didn't need to say anything," Howard said. "Everyone was relaxed and loose."

The result was a sea of runs. Although it got a little dicey at the end, when the Yankees started getting to Cliff Lee and Madson, they eventually locked up the victory and a trip back to New York. There, they will try to finish off one of the more improbable comebacks in World Series history. Of the 18 teams that fell behind 3-1 while playing the middle games at home, only three have come back to win the series, taking games 6 and 7 on the road: the 1958 Yankees, the 1968 Tigers and the 1979 Pirates.

For the Phillies to join that list, they'll need to keep doing what they did on Monday night.

"We're a very confident team, at home and on the road," Howard said. "The situation we're faced with now is we've got to go on the road and try to win on Wednesday."