NO PRISONERS . . . The good teams don't feel a twinge of pity for a loser that comes to their town trailing blue smoke like a Dust Bowl-era truck carrying a family of foreclosed Okie farmers through Death Valley.
The good teams don't look past a lineup littered with deep reserves and minor league callups to a weekend series against an upstart team with a payroll just a million bucks more than the combined $24 million Pat Burrell and Ryan Howard will earn this season . . .
No prisoners . . . It is jackboot on windpipe. You want the same controlled fury Lawrence of Arabia displayed when he unleashed his bloodthirsty Arab army on the fleeing columns of a beaten force of Syrian regulars.
"That's [a sweep] a real good sign of the way we're playing right now," manager Charlie Manuel said after the Phillies swept the five-game season series from the team that rudely shattered their 2007 dream.
Sweep . . . That's what all those great Yankees teams did through the eras and decades of eras they dominated. Woe to the bottom feeders of the American League. The 1927 Yankees were 56-10 against the St. Louis Browns (21-1), Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox. One reason the 1964 Phillies had that 6 1/2 game lead with 12 to play was that Gene Mauch went to the whip against the Mets, Astros and Cubs. The Phillies were 40-14 against them, 52-56 against the other six teams.
Woe to the Colorado Rockies. The team that launched its pennant run last October against the limp bats of the Phillies in a swift division series sweep has gone from young World Series team on the come to double-digit bottom feeder deep in the sludge.
It would have been a baseball crime for the Phillies to have lost a game this week to a lineup that included Ryan Spilborghs, Ian Stewart, Chris Iannetta and Omar Quintanilla.
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but the Phillies' smoking bats turned the three game destructo of the Rockies into a Bobby Flay Throwdown.
What happened in the thrumming Money Pit last night had the formulaic look of a slasher flick. Call this one "Wednesday The 28th, Part V - Chase's Revenge."
In three forgettable games last October, the Rockies pitching hung a 2-for-11 on Utley. He failed to drive in a run.
