"We don't have to rely on one person," Jimmy Rollins was saying last night, after Lee beat he Colorado Rockies by 5-1 in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. "Last year was pretty much rotating around Cole. Joe Blanton did one heck of a job, super job, but he was still new to us and we weren't quite sure what we were going to get from him. But we knew what we were getting from Cole every night.
"Cliff Lee came over here - previous Cy Young Award winner. We faced him so we knew what type of stuff he had. Everything you heard about him was good. He started out on the right foot in San Francisco and it was like, 'Well, here we go. Now we've got somebody to push Cole.' "
And so they begin. Lee is 31 years old. He has been a major league pitcher for eight seasons. He has won a Cy Young Award. But he had never pitched in the postseason until yesterday.
Yesterday: Game 1. Wind howling. Towels waving. Six hits. One run. Complete game. Got a hit himself. Stole a base. Fans chanting "Let's go Lee" in the ninth.
At the end, it all touched him. He is known around the team for being pretty matter-of-fact, but he did allow himself a moment to let it all wash over him.
"It was in the ninth inning, right before I gave up that double in the gap, so I wish I wouldn't have done that," Lee said. "I wanted to give myself a chance to really absorb it and take it all in. Maybe it cost me a run, but we still won so that's the bottom line."
The last time a Phillies pitcher threw a complete game in the postseason, it was in the 1993 World Series. It was the night after the Phils gave up six runs in the eighth inning and lost Game 4 to the Blue Jays, 15-14. The game, played in a Hound of the Baskervilles kind of mist, took an excruciating 4 hours, 14 minutes. The Phillies used six pitchers that night and somewhere in the 700-level at the Vet, a fan walked around with a sign that read, "Will Pitch Middle Relief for Food."
