[Photo by crwelling]
INQUIRER: When the Phillies allowed three runs in the eighth inning last night, Ruben Amaro Jr. began to think about the trip home. With Game 4 appearing lost, the first-year general manager resigned himself to logistics. “I was thinking about the flight home,” he said an hour later, standing in the corner of a wild visitors’ clubhouse at Coors Field, quiet and exhausted. “Thinking about whether Cole [Hamels] would be ready for a Game 5 start, and about how tough it would be to stop their momentum.” Amaro did not know that Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, and Brad Lidge would lead the Phils to defeat Colorado, 5-4, clinching a strange and intense National League division series in four games and earning the right to play the Los Angeles Dodgers for a World Series berth. MORE