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Roy Halladay and 46,480 Phillies fans left Citizens Bank Park with smiles on their faces Saturday night.
Somewhere, Harvey Dorfman was smiling, too.
Dorfman was the famed sports psychologistperformance-enhancement specialist that helped Halladay transform himself from a near washout to arguably the best pitcher in baseball a decade ago. Dorfman died in February, but Halladay still lives and pitches by the lessons he learned from the master of mental sharpness. Halladays performance in the Phillies 11-6 win (see game breakdown) over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night was a testament to all he learned from Dorfman.
Dont worry about whats already done, Dorfman used to say to Halladay. Control your emotions. Stick to your plan. Move on. Breathe. Execute the next pitch.
Halladay called on all those teachings in recovering from an ugly first inning that saw him and his team fall behind, 3-0, when he grooved a sinker to Lance Berkman, who smacked it into the rightfield seats for a three-run homer that not only stunned the huge crowd but Phillies players as well.
I was like, 'Damn,said Shane Victorino, recalling his thoughts as he watched Berkmans drive sail out of the park.
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Halladay had similar thoughts -- ever so briefly.
Yeah, manager Charlie Manuel said. He was kind of like a Rocky movie. He got mad after he gave up the homer. That ticked him off and he hung in there and kept going. But hes special. Hes everything that people talk about.
After Berkmans homer, Halladay allowed no more runs and just one hit over his eight innings of work. He left the game with an 11-3 lead, before reliever Mike Stutes struggled in the ninth inning. Halladay walked one and struck out eight. He finished his outing by retiring the last 21 batters he faced. He wasnt as spectacular as he was when he no-hit Cincinnati in Game 1 of the NLDS last October, but he was still pretty darn good. Most impressive was the way he maintained his focus and composure in recovering from that messy first inning and kept the game close until Ryan Howard (three-run homer) and Raul Ibanez (two-run shot) could rescue the Phils with longballs against Kyle Lohse in the sixth inning.
Halladay opened the game by allowing a single to Rafael Furcal and a one-out walk to Albert Pujols. He then tried to sink a fastball away to Berkman and left it over the heart of the plate.
Three-nuttin
The pitch to Berkman was a bad pitch, thigh-high, center-cut, about as bad as you can put it, Halladay said. I couldnt think of a worse way to start, really, than putting your team in a hole like that.
At that point, all those conversations with Dorfman kicked in for Halladay.
You just really have to avoid trying to make up for what already happened, Halladay said. I cant go out and subtract runs. You have your moment of frustration and youve got to move on. Im not going to pack it in. Ive got to stick to my plan.
A decade ago, a disappointing first inning might have beaten Halladay.
Not now.
It took a long time for me to be able to learn that, Halladay said. You have to put things behind you and move on. You cant lose your aggressiveness and the feeling that you still have a chance to win.
The Phillies won Game 1 because Halladay kept his cool and pitched a gem, and because the offense conducted itself beautifully after a terrible start in which it allowed St. Louis starter Kyle Lohse to breeze through the first two innings on 12 pitches. Eventually, Phillies hitters started working counts and getting hits and before you knew it, there was no stopping the home team.
The Phils first three hittersJimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Hunter Pencewere 7 for 14 with 8 runs scored. Rollins led off the bottom of the sixth with a single and Pence followed with a one-out single before Howard changed the game with one swing. Howard worked a full-count then unloaded on a hanging changeup. Three-run homer. Three more RBIs than he had in the postseason last year. Two batters later, Ibanez chased Lohse with a two-run homer, on a 2-0 changeup.
For this offense, the game was a microcosm of the final couple of weeks of the regular season. The Phillies struggled to score runs for a spell that included a late, eight-game losing streak. Then, in the final four games, the Phils scored 24 runs in four wins. On Saturday night, they didnt have a hit for the first 3 13 innings, then ...
We have a lot of confidence in the guys we send up to the plate, said Halladay, speaking for the pitching staff. We definitely feel like we have the talent to come back.
And thats just what the Phillies did. They were 6 for 10 with runners in scoring position, a big improvement from the 8-for-45 (.178) that conspired to knock them out of the NLCS last year.
A game up in the best-of-five series, the Phils send Cliff Lee to the mound against Chris Carpenter in Game 2 on Sunday night. Teams that have won Game 1 of the NLDS have gone on to win the series 29 times while losing the series just three times. The Phils feel good about themselves, but there is still work to do as Spanish-speaking catcher Carlos Ruiz reminded his mates when he wrote the message 10 Mas on the clubhouse white board.
E-mail Jim Salisbury at jsalisbury@comcastsportsnet.com