Jimmy Rollins and the Phillies are one win away from reaching the World Series for a second straight season. If the make it to the Fall Classic, they will be the first National League team since the 1995-1996 Braves to do so in consecutive seasons.
The responsible thing, work-wise, was to go to bed.
The responsible thing, fan-wise, was to fight the yawns stay by your team's side.
The compromise was to crash on the couch and catch a couple winks between innings and hope to wake up when memorable things happened.
The last thing the Southpaw remembers is Jayson Werth's lazy fly ball in the eighth inning.
Then there were dreams of dancing Phillies in his head.
The Southpaw woke up with a start at 3:15 a.m. thinking he'd slept in.
Then, realizing he was on the couch and had another hour of sleep, he checked ESPN to see if there was a game recap.
Hope crept in. Maybe the Phillies had won.
Then he saw "Phillies walk-off" on the screen, smiled and trudged up the stairs for another hour or so of sweet oblivion.
That's how the Southpaw didn't know about Jimmy Rollins' dramatics until 5:20 this morning.
- Let's get sentimental.
The match-up between the Phillies and Dodgers starter Randy Wolf was not one the Southpaw was looking forward to.
At one point, Wolfie was the Southpaw's favorite player. He is the one former Phillie that it would have been nice to have seen on the 2008 roster.
Back before the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area sold its soul, the Phillies had their Triple-A team in Scranton and one of our all-time favorite Red Barons was Wolfie, who went 9-7 in 1998 and had a 3.61 ERA during a brief span in 1999.
Then Wolf became a stalwart in the Phillies rotation for seven seasons, going 69-60 with a 4.21 ERA.
When he opened Citizens Bank Park we thought he would be one of the pitchers who would lead the Phillies to the playoffs. That never happened.
So it's nice to see Wolf pitching in a playoff game at the Bank and it wouldn't have bothered the Southpaw if Randy Wolf went six strong innings only to have the bullpen blow it. - Billy the Bear is Australian for "My Hero."
- When Joe Torre was in New York, one of the knocks against him was that he didn't use young players well. In Los Angeles, he's shown several times that he trusts his youngsters. First of all, he used Clayton Kershaw in Game 1. In his bullpen, he also relies on Ramon Troncoso and Ronald Belisario. This comes a year after he used Blake DeWitt at second and his young outfielders when there were several veterans he could have relied on.
- There's an extra special treat this morning: Bill Lyon waxes poetically about Ryan Howard.
- Speaking of great columnists, Bill Plaschke writes about the ghosts that are haunting the Dodgers.
The NLCS returns Wednesday at 8:07 p.m.
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