It had come to this. Hours of push-pull, grind-it-out baseball, with pitching changes and a game-changing injury, had been played in weather that was too cold at an hour that was too late.
It was already Columbus Day in Philadelphia when the scoreboards in Coors Field lit up with Major League Baseball's 2009 postseason motto. There were still three innings to play. The temperature had dropped to 27 degrees.
"This is Beyond Baseball," the scoreboard blared.
Gosh. You think?
Ryan Madson, the sometime closer during Lidge's nightmare 2009 regular season, had been pressed into duty in the seventh after lefty Scott Eyre was injured. Madson hadn't been warming up. He came in cold, with runners on first and third and nobody out.
"I was happy to go in there," Madson said. "I thought it was going to be fun."
Madson held the Rockies to just one run there. He had to strike out Todd Helton with a 96-mph fastball to do it. It probably helped Madson that Helton had fouled off a couple of equally hard pitches and was shaking his hands to try to get the feeling back in them.
Then, in a foreshadowing of what was to come, Chad Durbin pitched a clean eighth inning to keep the game tied and give the Phillies a chance. In the top of the ninth, the Phillies scored a single run by taking Rockies fans on that same white-knuckle thrill ride with Colorado's closer, Huston Street.
After all the talk and speculation, all the fretting and finger-crossing, Lidge was the last legitimate candidate to close the game remaining in the bullpen. It had to be him. With the chance to take control of this series, it had to be Lidge.
"People were talking about who the closer would be," centerfielder Shane Victorino said. "I wanted the ball in Brad's hand."
