But he cannot shake this nonsense, this image, mostly because he doesn't always walk around with his Cali-to-South Philly dictionary.
Dubee did the whole this-is-ridiculous thing again yesterday outside the Phillies' dugout. He did it because Hamels had just been asked a series of questions about why he wasn't pitching on 3 days' rest in this series, while the Dodgers' Derek Lowe was.
The implications are obvious: Lowe can pitch three times in the series that way, while Hamels can pitch only twice. But as Hamels said, and as Dubee said, the reason he isn't pitching on 3 days' rest is because the team will not allow it.
"I think it wasn't even in my mind," Hamels said. "I think because they've convinced me or they've talked to me enough to where, because the amount of workload that I've gone through throughout the season, they don't want to push me to my limit.
"I think pitching every 5 days is a good assessment of what I can do and what I'm capable of doing. And I can be at my best. I don't think they want to risk it with me trying to go an extra day early for one more win, because it takes four . . .
"[With] the competitiveness in me, I'd love to do it, but because I've never done it, I don't want to risk it in the postseason. I think it's something I definitely can try in the season, like Jamie [Moyer] and Brett [Myers] were able to do this year.
"And I think it will be something where it will show what I'm truly capable of doing, whenever we make the postseason again," Hamels said.
The Phillies have made a simple, logical calculation: that with this still-young kid, they like the odds of getting two strong, well-rested starts from him more than the uncharted waters of one rested start, one short-rested start, and one more rested start if the series goes that far. It makes perfect sense.
"He's got 242 innings," Dubee said. "To have him twice is nice. To have him three times, would it have been nicer? If we thought the risk was worth it, but we weren't certain about it."
