Bill Conlin | There's been no better crisis manager in '07

HERE IS TODAY'S baseball exercise: Take a deep breath and empty your mind of all negative thoughts. Purge every preconceived opinion of Charlie Manuel's work from your head.

Look in the mirror. Now,  repeat after me:

"As the Phillies cross the midseason mark and head toward the All-Star break, has anybody in the National League done a better job of crisis management than Charlie Manuel?"

If you can pin a "Yes" answer to that question, please supply names and specifics.

Remember, the criteria here is who had overcome the most adversity while keeping a team that has reeled from one catastrophe to another in contact with the pennant race. It is not about double moves, bullpen use, lineup decisions or any of the game-to-game flow of the long season. It is about keeping the confidence of the players you have and hanging in there with them.

Crisis management is precisely what the term implies - dealing with significant loss of key players to injury or with projected regulars stinking out the joint.

Pretend you were granted clairvoyance on Opening Day and you learned that at the end of June, the Phillies would look like this:

* Opening Day starter Brett Myers slowly recovering from a shoulder injury he suffered in the role of closer . . . Former closer Tom Gordon on the shelf again . . . Lefty setup man Matt Smith injured and out of the picture . . . Fabio Castro back in the minors where he belonged . . . Ineffective pickup Francisco Rosario on the DL . . . Jose Mesa being plucked off the waiver scrap heap . . . Chubby lefty Mike Zagursky, an unknown in spring training, opening the season in Class A and winding up as a situational lefthander with the varsity.

* Jon "The New 5-for-1" Lieber suffering a possible season-ending foot tendon tear performing the dangerous activity of waddling off the mound to back up the plate . . . $10 million top-of-the-rotation starter Freddy