Bill Conlin: Is there a deal Werth making for Phillies?

IF RUBEN AMARO JR. becomes a buyer by the non-waiver trade deadline Saturday, it will not be for the sake of "doing something."

It figures to be a reaLee big something if the beLeeguered GM goes Full Monty - no

offense, Dave.

And the Full Monty in this case would take a big bite out of the history written by the championship Phillies teams of 2008 and 2009. Gone, but not forgotten, would be the World Series rings of rightfielder Jayson Werth and lefthander J.A. Happ.

Rays special assignment scout Mike Cubbage, a versatile middle infielder from the 1970s, continued his Werth vigil during yesterday's harrowing, 5-4 brooming of the Rockies. Werth did not start. During the Hell Week the trade deadline has become for a lot of mentioned players, the sudden disappearance of a prominent regular from a lineup could be a press conference forerunner. In this case, it was just Charlie Manuel having some lineup fun. And weekend hero Ross Gload rewarded his skipper again by triggering a three-run, secondinning rally with a leadoff single.

Werth replaced Gload in right, led off the seventh inning and launched a scout-neutralizing fly to center. The last time Werth homered, June 23, 31 games ago, the Gulf of Mexico was only 1 billion quarts low.

So what are the chances Junior can replicate the blockbuster that put Cliff Lee in the region's collective hearts and minds a year ago?

According to a flurry of tweets and twitters given flight by twemendously connected seamheads yesterday, the Roy Oswalt half of the Phillies nuke probably isn't going to happen. I mean, the Astros veteran righthander was telling his own media more than a week ago that he didn't want to go to a destination with a media that runs a fullcourt press, pun intended. He also sounded pretty adamant about his new team picking up the 2012 option year of his contract.

Had Amaro persuaded the Teflonics to pick up that $16.5 million manhole cover it would have been certification of the popular premise that the Lee trade for second-tier prospects was an act of inexplicable, penny-wise, poundfoolishness.

And everybody who has downloaded a "How to Build a Nuke at Home" kit knows it takes a trigger of conventional explosives to set off the fusion process. And without a Happ (plus some bodies) trigger, whatever Werth generates in return will have to supply the juice.