Jimmy Rollins

Baseball rewards panic the same way a pit bull rewards sudden movement. There's no future in simply turning and running from a bad start from a baseball team, or in trying to repair a six-month season with a few weeks of glue and duct tape. The Phillies were constructed for 2013 on the precarious hope that their aging veteran starters would pitch well and that their aging everyday players would regain their productivity. Around that central theme, the front office sprinkled journeymen and prospects who might be good enough if everything else went right.

NEW YORK - Before Ryan Howard smashed a dramatic double, before Chase Utley added another run, before Jimmy Rollins and Laynce Nix touched off the winning rally with two singles, John Buck could not catch a foul pop Sunday. It floated toward the Phillies dugout at Citi Field. Buck ripped off his catcher's mask and looked to the sky. The ball nicked his glove; Nix's at-bat continued. There were two outs in the seventh inning of a 5-1 Phillies win, and Buck could have prevented chaos.

NEW YORK - Time will tell whether the weekend was a respite against a rotten team or a springboard to a turnaround for the Phillies. Either way, they will take their three-game sweep of the New York Mets, a team that would be even worse off if not for the presence of young pitching star Matt Harvey in their rotation and the rancid Miami Marlins in their division. It can be said with certainty that the Mets are on the road to nowhere this season, even though their charter flight took them to Miami after Sunday's 5-1 loss to the Phillies at Citi Field.

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.

CHASE UTLEY stood at his locker Wednesday more than 3 hours before the first pitch was thrown and was asked about a play that happened 3 nights earlier. Utley, it was assumed, forgot how many outs there were during Sunday night's game against St. Louis when he dashed off second and toward home with one out in the first inning. He was doubled off, ending a rally. Utley, however, didn't forget the number of outs. He read the ball as a blooper, took his chances and took off. Major league veterans with All-Star credentials usually aren't prone to mental or physical gaffes, and Utley, as it turns out, was guilty of neither.

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.

IN 1984, Charlie Manuel was the manager for the Orlando Twins, the Minnesota Twins' Double A affiliate. The team wasn't very good - it finished 21 games under .500 - but then-40-year-old Manuel had a savvy, experienced starter in 27-year-old Jay Pettibone. "Sinker, slider [guy]," Manuel recalled on Monday afternoon. "He was smart. " In 1983, Pettibone had pitched in four games with the major league Twins. He also made 25 starts that summer and won 13 games. Thirty years later, Manuel would love to have the same dependability from Pettibone's son. Jonathan Pettibone, called up to fill John Lannan's place in the rotation this weekend, was that kind of pitcher on Day 1 of his big-league career.

THE PITCH was up, and it was crushed, and as Jonathan Pettibone whipped his head toward rightfield, he did so with a grimace. Eighteen pitches into his major league career and he was already down a run. Except that he wasn't. Because as Garrett Jones' line drive screamed toward the turf, John Mayberry Jr. did something that the Phillies desperately needed. He saved a run. "And who knows what would have happened after that?" said Pettibone, who clapped his glove and exhaled after Mayberry robbed Jones of an RBI double with a diving catch that ended the first inning.

Charlie Manuel was locked out of Citizens Bank Park on Sunday morning. After his offense was silenced Saturday, the Phillies manager left his electronic key card on his desk. There was no one to open the door at 10:30 because the first pitch of a 7-3 victory over St. Louis was more than nine hours away. Manuel waited about 20 minutes and thought about his lineup. Once inside, he went to his office and, well, thought about his lineup. "I write everybody down 100 times and I look at it," Manuel said, "and I still come up with the same names.

THEY SHOWED signs of life, which was more than you could say after most of the previous six games. Against a Cy Young-caliber pitcher who has given them plenty of trouble in the past, the Phillies' offense managed nine hits and twice rallied to tie the game. But the only victories were the moral ones as a ninth-inning rally came up short and the Phillies fell to the Cardinals, 4-3, to drop their fourth straight game. "That's the best we've hit in a while," manager Charlie Manuel said.