Phillies can't stop Yankees from 27th World Series title

NEW YORK - It ended just before midnight in the middle of the Bronx, with a stream of pinstriped players swarming a Hall of Fame closer in the middle of the field. It ended with Shane Victorino running to first, and Carlos Ruiz running to third, and Chase Utley standing on deck, and Charlie Manuel watching it all from the front corner of the dugout, his arms on the padded rail. It ended after 372 days, and 177 games, and the first back-to-back trips to the World Series in franchise history.

After it was over, after Mariano Rivera closed out a one-sided 7-3 win to eliminate them in Game 6 of this World Series, several members of the Phillies sat motionless in the visitor's dugout, staring vacantly onto the field as the Yankees celebrated their 27th world championship and the grounds crew hurriedly erected the same makeshift stage on which a year ago the Phillies had stood.

"Obviously, you want to be on the other side," said Ryan Howard, whose two-run home run in the sixth inning off an otherwise solid Andy Pettitte represented one of the Phillies' few offensive highlights of the night. "But those guys went out there and won. You have to give them credit."

It ended as many feared it would - with not enough out of the starting pitcher, with not enough out of the bullpen behind him, with not enough offense against a 37-year-old starter pitching working on 3 days' rest.

All of them had overcome long odds just to reach this point. Pedro Martinez climbed off his couch in mid-July to bolster the team's rotation down the stretch. The bullpen suffered enough injuires to start a new season of "M*A*S*H." The lineup endured an epic first-half slump by its leadoff hitter and an injury that limited the the second-half production of its high-priced leftfielder.

But there is a big difference between reaching back-to-back World Series and winning them, and in this six-game series, the Phillies did not have enough to cross that distinct line.

By the end of it - a convincing defeat sparked by Japanese-born slugger and Series MVP Hideki Matsui's record-tying six RBI - the details were both murky and irrelevant.