No, he is not going to take away the ninth-inning hammer from last season's closer, this season's closee.
You want to have a parent as loyal as the old baseball lifer is to his guys.
Charlie said, "Brad Lidge is the closer" during the blown saves of the early season and I was with him. Nobody could expect a righthander who depended on a straight but perfectly located fastball and two sliders - one feathered for a called strike, the other a filthy rumor to seal the deal - to maintain the excellence that produced one of the greatest-ever seasons of ninth-inning relief work. Charlie handed him the baseball 48 times in save situations last year, seven in the postseason, and his guy was dead-solid perfect 48 times, dropping to his knees after No. 48 sealed the Phillies' second World Series title, fronting a vast civic genuflection. If the joy he spread at that instant had been electricity, this tired old town would have lit the world.
And when it still wasn't better for Lidge at midseason and Charlie refused to entertain other options, saying there were none, I was with him. The rest of the East was a shambles of teams either too injured, too inexperienced or too untalented to take advantage of an unsettled Phillies bullpen that did its best work on a televised fraternity party called, "The Pen."
But the season is about to tuck under the elbow of September and there will be no Mets to slap silly after that. Brad Lidge has become a liability and Charlie Manuel is running out of time to fix the back end of his bullpen.
