Phillies NLDS defeat a loss for the ages

For Philadelphia sports fans, the disappointments are like acid drips. Drip, drip, drip - slowly eating away their insides and altering the DNA of future Philadelphia sports generations. It is the DNA of doom.

We thought that had been reversed, courtesy of a Phillies team that had forged an era of winning and had turned this city into the home of the baseball elite.

Instead, with the Phillies losing in five games to the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League division series, we must now deal with arguably the most disappointing loss in Philadelphia history.

In 1980, we watched a rookie named Magic Johnson light up the 76ers in the NBA Finals with a 42-point performance at center. In 1991, the Eagles were a shoo-in to play in the Super Bowl and then Randall Cunningham got his knee shredded by Bryce Paup. In 1993, Joe Carter hit the shot heard 'round Ontario and the World Series was over in a poof. The granddaddy heartbreak of them all came in 2003, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers shocked Donovan McNabb and the Birds on football's final, frigid night at Veterans Stadium.

But this one tops them all.

It will hit us like stabs to the heart and hammer swings to the funny bone to watch a couple of inferiors, the Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers, play for the right to go to the World Series. This wasn't the way the script was written. This was supposed to be the Phillies' World Series. This team was put together to do just that, and now everything else that was accomplished this season - the franchise record for victories, the consecutive sellout streak, the all-time winning Phils manager - is moot.

We were lied to by the baseball experts who told us that good pitching always beats good hitting. Apparently, the Phillies needed exceptional pitching to beat a spunky, resilient team like the Cardinals. But the Phillies' pitching wasn't exceptional. And frankly, in this series, the Cardinals showed more heart.

Baseball history will record that scrappers like Rafael Furcal, Skip Schumaker, Nick Punto, and David Freese had more to give than Ryan Howard and Chase Utley and Shane Victorino and Hunter Pence. And in the end, the zillion-dollar pitching staff didn't perform to needed expectations.

Cliff Lee had a great year, but he failed to hold a four-run lead in Game 2. That proved to be costly to the Phillies and even more costly to the front office, which will front Lee an additional $10 million beginning next year.

Roy Halladay was masterful at times. And it's difficult to find fault with his effort in Game 5 except for one little thing: He gave the Cardinals the lead on the first two batters of the game. It is inexplicable for a great pitcher like Halladay to struggle in the first inning. But going into Friday night's game, Halladay toted a 3.60 ERA in his first inning of work. And when Furcal tripled and Schumaker doubled, it was 1-0 Cardinals.

With the offense struggling, getting behind, 1-0, out of the chute weighed on the Phillies like a wet, wool winter coat - which they will now have to prematurely dig out of their closets.

We will replay this loss until it gives us headaches, and so here are a few of my replays:

Ryan Howard. The Howard haters will find it fitting that the first baseman has made the final out in two straight playoff years. But even those in the Howard camp are a little sour today. He did lead the Phillies in RBIs in the series with six, including a three-run home run and a two-run single in the first two games. And then he disappeared, going zero for his last 15.

His at-bats were undisciplined, unthinking messes, with the Cardinals throwing him breaking ball after change-up after breaking ball. Swinging on a 3-0 count in the seventh inning on Friday was a selfish act. It was Howard trying to atone for all of his sins in the series when instead a rally was needed.

The whispers in the Phillies clubhouse are getting louder, saying Howard needs to be a better student of the game, he needs to watch video and learn pitchers' habits against him. For him, it's either survive a different way or perish.

Chase Utley. How can a guy be a heady player and a goat all at once? That was Utley in this series. So desperate to generate some kind of scoring chance, Utley, in Game 4, made a foolish dash from first to third on a three-hopper to the shortstop. Albert Pujols jumped off first, snared the throw from Furcal and threw Utley out by 15 feet. That play was Utley yelling loudly that he didn't trust anybody in the middle of the lineup to drive him home from second base. So he desperately tried to get to third, where a bloop, a grounder, a passed ball, anything, would have gotten the Phils a run. How sad is that?

Tony LaRussa and Charlie Manuel. Did Tony La Russa outmanage Charlie Manuel? Sadly, yes. I don't know how La Russa does it, but everything the guy does seems to work out.

He benched Ryan Theriot after a four-hit game, and Theriot's replacement, Schumaker, got two hits his first two trips in the next game. He brought two lefthanded relief pitchers to his team late in the season, and both 100-year-old Arthur Rhodes and rookie Marc Rzepczynski baffled the Phillies. He misguidedly used Carpenter on three days' rest and got away with it when his shaky bullpen blanked the Phillies over six innings. Out of the blue, he played Punto at second base and he made two great defensive plays. He replaced Jon Jay with Schumaker, and Schumaker got the game-winning RBI in the clincher.

Jeez.

Manuel, meanwhile, wasn't brave enough to make even the slightest change to his struggling offense, which (especially Howard) was best when Hunter Pence was hitting fifth. Utley had been moved to second in the lineup because he wasn't driving the ball. But he started to drive the ball in the series and may have looked better in the three-spot with Pence moved back to five. Didn't happen.

Did Charlie goof by not pinch-hitting John Mayberry Jr. for Raul Ibanez in Game 4 against Rhodes? I say he did. Did he leave Lee in too long in Game 2? Probably. Was he blind to the inability of Placido Polanco, weakened by a sports hernia that needs surgery, to even stride at the plate? Should Wilson Valdez have taken his place? Maybe.

Where do they go from here? That's the hardest part. In the movie The Verdict, Paul Newman said, "This is the case, there are no other cases." For the Phillies, this was the year. There may not be any better years. The pitching staff will continue to make them a contender, but age and injuries are wearing them down.

Polanco is on dead batteries. Even if surgery puts his insides back together, it may take him half a season to get back to full strength - just as it did for Ibanez, who had the same surgery.

Will Utley be any healthier?

Will Jimmy Rollins even be signed?

Will Ryan Madson be back?

Left field will be a platoon with Mayberry and Domonic Brown. Will that be enough to stimulate the offense?

There is one tradable player on the whole team, and the Phils may need to pull the trigger on Victorino to bring a couple of players in return. Maybe we'll have a better focus next week, when we're not so sick.