Bill Conlin: Phillies take 1-0 lead, as usual

THE PHILLIES draw first blood more often than the cast of "True Blood," HBO's paean to the involuntary transfusion.

Children of the night, vot music they make, as Count Dracula used to say.

At 7:42 on the night National League history was made, Reds leadoff hitter Brandon Phillips gave his team's last drop.

Roy Halladay had pitched his way into the rare air of baseball history.

No National League pitcher had ever thrown a postseason no-hitter. Until last night. And he came one mislocated pitch from his second perfect game of 2010.

Yankees righthander Don Larsen, a journeyman, had stood atop the no-hit pedestal for 54 years, his perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series standing alone through all the postseasons dating to 1903.

And Halladay did it with the first-blood intensity that has marked the Charlie Manuel Phillies since the NLDS against the Milwaukee Brewers in 2008.

Since then, the Phillies have won the first game of seven straight series in what has become an October marathon. The Brewers, Dodgers, Rays, Rockies, Dodgers and Yankees all went 0-1. Only the Yankees rallied, coming back with a vengeance to win the World Series in six games.

Halladay went for the jugular with an efficiency that amped The Bank crowd of 46,411 into a frenzied crescendo that rose inning by inning, strike by strike, out by out, into a tsunami of sound that even penetrated the sanctum of concentration where the great righthander dwells, alone with his game plan.

He faced 28 Cincinnati Reds batters. And a remarkable 25 of the 28 first pitches to them were strikes.

That wasn't a statement by Roy Halladay in Game 1 of the NLDS. It was a royal decree that seemed to order, "Off with their bats."

The final score of 4-0 and the modest first- and second-inning offense that produced all the runs and sent starter Edinson Volquez to an early shower became overshadowed as Halladay rolled through the Reds' No. 1-ranked NL offense like a threshing machine through a wheat field.

The only ball struck with authority by Dusty Baker's lineup was a sinking liner to right by reliever Travis Wood.

Yeah, that Travis Wood. The rookie lefthander who took a perfect game into the ninth inning of an epic scoreless battle against Halladay here in the third game of a Phillies' four-game sweep before the All-Star break.