Chase Utley

SAN FRANCISCO - If it wasn't for Hunter Pence, Cliff Lee may have very well shut out the San Francisco Giants on Monday night. In his first game against his former team, Pence tried to be a one-man wrecking ball in the Giants' lineup. He homered in his first at-bat and attempted to start a rally with an eighth-inning, leadoff double in his last at-bat. He went 3-for-3 and scored the only two runs San Francisco scored in a 6-2 defeat to the Phillies. "He looked good," manager Charlie Manuel said yesterday afternoon at AT&T Park.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Phillies flew here to escape the noise, the grisly sights from a weekend of baseball at home and the burden of a disabled ace. Their first task was to conquer the powerful Giants, a team with six straight wins and Madison Bumgarner, owner of a 1.55 ERA, on the mound. For one night, the Phillies eased the pain of a disappointing start to 2013 with one of the more rounded efforts in the season's first 33 games. They won, 6-2, Monday night, and it was never in question because of Cliff Lee and Michael Young, two players who experienced such heartbreak at this ballpark.

I CAN'T put any blame on Phillies management for this. If your two-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher tells you he feels fine and wants to pitch, you send him out there. I can't put too much blame on Roy Halladay, because he's a competitor. The reason he has won 201 major league games and a Cy Young in both the National and American leagues is because of his mentality to take the ball when it is his turn and fight through adversity to the bitter end. Still, there has to be some better means of communication between player and front office.

CLEVELAND - Cliff Lee arrived for the first time as a visiting player in the city where he forged one of the best lefthanded arms in the game. He gazed at an empty Progressive Field, a building he had not seen in four years, since the Indians dealt him to Philadelphia, and shrugged. "I was expecting it to be different," Lee said, "but it looks a lot the same. " That drum in the left-field bleachers was still there. A man pounded it and pounded it Wednesday night during the early innings of a 6-0 Phillies defeat.

CLEVELAND - The last time the Phillies came through Ohio, they played three consecutive games without drawing a single walk. They scored four runs. They were swept in three games by the Cincinnati Reds. Two weeks after departing Great American Ball Park, the Phils arrived at Progressive Field in Cleveland and changed things up a bit. After getting beat by a dozen runs by the Indians on Tuesday night, they let Trevor Bauer go wild. Bauer led an Indians pitching staff that issued seven walks to Phillies hitters Wednesday night.

Philadelphia's Top 50 Baseball Players By Rich Westcott University of Nebraska Press. 272 pp. $24.95 Reviewed by Larry Eichel   According to local baseball historian Rich Westcott, someone named Bob Johnson is one of the top 50 baseball players in Philadelphia history. Never heard of him? The man known as "Indian Bob" (he was one-quarter Cherokee) played for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1933 through 1942, spending most of his time in left field.

READING - The gang, such as it is, will be back together Sunday in New York. Catcher Carlos Ruiz returns from his 25-game suspension for using the banned substance Adderall and the Phillies hope it becomes a trigger point for a team that has stumbled out of the starting gate for the second straight season. Returns, of course, have become as commonplace for the Phillies in recent years as they are the day after Christmas. They were able to survive and recover from the lengthy absences of shortstop Jimmy Rollins in 2010 and second baseman Chase Utley in 2011.

HARRISBURG - Reading second baseman Albert Cartwright has been on a tear to begin the season and more importantly, from his standpoint, he has felt fine physically. Cartwright entered the weekend with a .356 average and 13-game hitting streak. He was obtained from the Houston Astros in January 2011 and didn't have the best of introductions to the Phillies. During his first week in spring training in 2011, he tore his right Achillies tendon while participating in conditioning testing and missed the entire season.

Phillies centerfielder Ben Revere did not start for the first time this season in Thursday's 6-4 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates at Citizens Bank Park. Revere said he has a quadriceps injury that worsened Wednesday during a 5-3 loss to the Pirates. He was asked if he expects to be in the lineup this weekend at Citi Field against the New York Mets. "I think so," Revere said. Manager Charlie Manuel "may give me one more day, but if I tell him I feel pretty good, he may put me in there [on Friday]

THERE ARE two ways to tread water. You do it with calm and confidence, using the water instead of fighting it. Your ability to stay afloat appears effortless. The other way involves a lot of flailing, a lot of splash, with little confidence that such efforts will stave off a fatal demise. The Phillies needed to tread water in April. We all said the same thing this spring - reporters, television and radio analysts, the guy in the seat next to you at your local bar. If the Phillies could just keep their heads above water, stay within striking distance of the Braves and Nationals until Carlos Ruiz was activated from his 25-game suspension and Delmon Young's ankle was healed completely, they wouldn't sink before they were able to really swim.