Amazing win for Phils, yes; launching pad, no

In the punchy, slap-happy Phillies clubhouse early yesterday morning, it was easy enough to believe that an improbable, 19-inning win over the Cincinnati Reds affirmed that they are still the team to beat in the National League.

Now, it's true that sometimes Lady Luck smiles on a team from wire to wire. Everything goes right. Its bloops fall in. The other team's line drives are caught. Borderline calls go their way. This breeds confidence which, in turn, breeds more success.

A variation on the theme involves clubs that win a battle of the wills. An example occurred late last July when the Phillies went into a brutally hot getaway day game in St. Louis just two games over .500. Cole Hamels allowed just one hit in eight shutout innings. And didn't get a decision. The Phillies finally broke open a scoreless tie and won in 11 innings.

From that point to the end of the season, they were the hottest team in baseball. They went 49-19 the rest of the way.

There were elements of both in their unabridged win over Cincinnati. So it's easy to get a little giddy, a little carried away. And maybe the Phillies are now poised to run away from the rest of the league.

The view from this shaded lawn chair, though, is that as wildly entertaining as it was to watch Wilson Valdez shake off signs from catcher Dane Sardinha and to see catcher Carlos Ruiz playing third base and to keep track in wonderment as reliever Danys Baez' pitch count mounted inning after inning, it was nothing more than that.

The Phillies didn't get on a roll last year because they out-toughed the Cardinals that blistering afternoon. They took off because they traded for Roy Oswalt a week later and because hitting coach Milt Thompson was fired. Not that Greg Gross necessarily told the hitters anything that Thompson didn't, but it was a clear signal to the clubhouse that the front office was losing patience. And that if things didn't turn around, more changes were possible.

They didn't flatten the Reds, 10-4, yesterday because of what happened 12 hours earlier.

And if they make it back to the World Series this October for the third time in four seasons, it won't be because the Reds managed to have four straight batters reach base on a hit by pitch and three walks and somehow managed not to score a run in the 11th or because the Phillies were able to finally take advantage of a Cincinnati reliever who ended up throwing 95 pitches.