Roy Halladay

THE MAGIC WORD during the near-15- minute-long briefing of Roy Halladay's recent surgery and upcoming rehab from Phillies team physician Dr. Michael Ciccotti? Possible. As in, all things are possible. Is it realistic to expect Roy Halladay back on a major league mound this season? According to Ciccotti, "It's very possible. " Would more time to recover - and thus, being shut down for the remainder of the season - help Halladay in the long run? "Very possible," Ciccotti said.

Forty games in, here's all we know about the Phillies for sure: They are flawed, but not finished. Sure, they can be infuriating. Twenty-two times in their first 40 games they scored three or fewer runs. In 16 of those games, they scored fewer than two. They have been blanked five times. There are days when you wonder whether manager Charlie Manuel is throwing out a lineup filled with eight-hole hitters. The biggest question coming out of spring training was the right arm of Roy Halladay, and that's one of the few conclusive answers the Phillies have received.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - In some parallel universe, there lives a successful insurance salesman named Roy Halladay. Nice guy, good family man, almost made it as a big-league baseball player. In that version of reality, Halladay is sent to single-A ball by the Toronto Blue Jays, but his wife never happens upon Harvey Dorfman's book. Halladay never meets the no-nonsense sports psychologist. There are no Cy Young Awards, no perfect game, no Hall of Fame career. Dorfman, who died Monday at 75, had that big an impact on Halladay's career.

ROY HALLADAY was at Citizens Bank Park on Monday when he saw his phone buzz. He picked it up and read the incoming message. "You're my hero," the text message read. It was from one of his two sons and Roy Halladay was so impressed and inspired by it that he relayed the very personal, encouraging message to the press corps following the latest discouraging effort on the mound. Following a 7-2 defeat to the New York Mets, a game that saw Halladay out before recording an out in the fifth inning, the 35-year-old pitcher said the 14.73 ERA he is sporting after two starts has nothing to do with his mechanics or his shoulder or his legs or his back.

PHOENIX - A surgeon will cut into Roy Halladay's shoulder Wednesday, one day after the pitcher turns 36. Halladay, a self-labeled optimist, refuses to focus on the possibility he will never pitch again, not for the Phillies or any major-league team. He insists he will return before 2013 is over. "It's too easy to look at the bad stuff," Halladay said. But, if this is how it ends, Halladay had something he wanted to say. He called an impromptu meeting with reporters before Friday's game at Chase Field and spoke for eight minutes.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Roy Halladay threw his regular, in-between-starts bullpen session Wednesday while the vast majority of the Phillies enjoyed a rare day off. It was the first time Halladay took the mound since departing his start Sunday with a stomach illness after just one inning. Halladay said he lost about 10 pounds as a result of the bug, which sapped him of energy and strength before he resumed baseball activities Tuesday. On Wednesday, pitching coach Rich Dubee watched the two-time Cy Young Award winner's mound session.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Roy Halladay started on the foul line and jogged toward center field. He was alone Tuesday morning, with only two conditioning coaches to watch his movements on a back field. He repeated his route again and again, jogging in one direction and walking in the other. Less than two weeks until the season starts, this was progress for Halladay. For days, he could not digest any food. A stomach virus cut 10 pounds from his frame. But last Sunday night, when he spoke to Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr., Halladay was most upset about his inability to throw more than 25 pitches.

Charlie Manuel offered a history lesson Tuesday afternoon. He was talking about Roy Halladay, once a Phillies ace but now unrecognizable, and brought up Brad Lidge's name. The former Phillies closer is the quintessential example of Manuel's loyalty. Lidge blew 11 saves in 2009, pitched to a 7.21 ERA, but remained the closer as the Phillies won the pennant. "I looked down there and, to me, Brad Lidge was probably still the best I had," Manuel said. "If I was going to lose the game, it was going to be with Brad Lidge.

TAMPA, Fla. - One of Rich Dubee's favorite sayings is, "He's fine. " The Phillies pitching coach will summon it in any situation - good or bad - when pressed about a particular arm. Dubee has repeated it over and over since Roy Halladay's discouraging Tuesday start. When Halladay displayed similar signs of distress last spring, Dubee said it then, too: "He's fine. " But Dubee knew it was not the truth. Halladay missed seven weeks during the season with back and shoulder issues.

OF THE THREE players who reported to Clearwater as the Phillies' biggest question marks, mysteries or X-factors, only one is departing camp with the same uncertainty: Roy Halladay. The Phillies have a pretty good idea what they have in Ryan Howard and Chase Utley after their healthy Grapefruit League campaigns. In the final weekend of exhibition games in Florida, the middle-of-the-lineup duo hit back-to-back homers on consecutive days. They've played regularly, too. But Halladay?

Roy Halladay's trip down rehab road has officially started after Wednesday's surgery in Los Angeles went as well as could be expected, according to Phillies team physician Michael Ciccotti. Neal ElAttrache, the team physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers, repaired Halladay's shoulder and rotator cuff in an arthroscopic procedure. ElAttrache also removed the bursa that cushions the shoulder. A bone spur that was found in Halladay's shoulder did not need to be removed. "The major attachment sites of the rotator cuff - the cable, we call it - in the front and the back, they were still attached," Ciccotti said during a news conference Thursday at Citizens Bank Park.

THREE MONTHS ago, before the official announcement, Roy Halladay endorsed Cole Hamels as the new leader of the Phillies' rotation. Halladay had started 10 straight times on Opening Day, dating back to his days in Toronto, but in the early part of spring training the aging veteran acknowledged it was Hamels' time. "It should have been his spot a long time ago," Halladay said in February about the then-undecided assignment. "I think it's something he's going to embrace . . . I talked to him about it when we're going out and doing drills, stuff like that, it's time for him now to kind of step up and take charge in those situations and establish himself as the head of the staff.

IN THE SAME inning that saw Cole Hamels' day end, the Phils also cut the Cleveland Indians' lead to 5-3, thanks to a two-out, two-run double from Jimmy Rollins. Despite Hamels' lackluster effort, the game was well within reach. But in the next four innings, four different relievers entered and matched Hamels in allowing five runs. A middle of the bullpen tabbed as "mediocre" by general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. less than a week ago was just plain bad. The bad news: There's a chance the relief corps could get worse in the coming days.

THE MAGIC WORD during the near-15- minute-long briefing of Roy Halladay's recent surgery and upcoming rehab from Phillies team physician Dr. Michael Ciccotti? Possible. As in, all things are possible. Is it realistic to expect Roy Halladay back on a major league mound this season? According to Ciccotti, "It's very possible. " Would more time to recover - and thus, being shut down for the remainder of the season - help Halladay in the long run? "Very possible," Ciccotti said.

Forty games in, here's all we know about the Phillies for sure: They are flawed, but not finished. Sure, they can be infuriating. Twenty-two times in their first 40 games they scored three or fewer runs. In 16 of those games, they scored fewer than two. They have been blanked five times. There are days when you wonder whether manager Charlie Manuel is throwing out a lineup filled with eight-hole hitters. The biggest question coming out of spring training was the right arm of Roy Halladay, and that's one of the few conclusive answers the Phillies have received.

PHOENIX - A surgeon will cut into Roy Halladay's shoulder Wednesday, one day after the pitcher turns 36. Halladay, a self-labeled optimist, refuses to focus on the possibility he will never pitch again, not for the Phillies or any major-league team. He insists he will return before 2013 is over. "It's too easy to look at the bad stuff," Halladay said. But, if this is how it ends, Halladay had something he wanted to say. He called an impromptu meeting with reporters before Friday's game at Chase Field and spoke for eight minutes.

PHOENIX - Cliff Lee saw the newest member of the Phillies rotation in a leather recliner Thursday and went to shake his hand. "Welcome back," Lee told Tyler Cloyd. Cloyd nodded. The Phillies will use their seventh starter in their 37th game Friday night. Cloyd is the arm to replace Roy Halladay in the rotation, which makes him the fourth homegrown pitcher in the rotation. He made six starts in the majors with a 4.91 ERA at the end of last season after winning honors as the International League's pitcher of the year.

A SHOULDER like the one that Roy Halladay described to reporters yesterday does not just occur over the course of a month or 2. What we have witnessed over the last year is the culmination of years of abuse, and if you think that is not the appropriate word for it, spend a few minutes studying the physiology of a pitcher's delivery. Delivering a ball in an overhand motion at 90-plus mph is not a task the human body was meant to perform, and over the last decade few pitchers have performed it as often as Halladay.

SAN FRANCISCO - The news of Roy Halladay's shoulder surgery has a trickle-down effect on the entire 25-man roster, and Jonathan Pettibone is one of those who could be most affected. The 22-year-old pitcher was competent again during a 4-3 loss Wednesday in his quest to secure a permanent rotation spot. Pettibone was not hit hard. He threw 112 pitches in 52/3 innings, and it was the last one that bothered him most. Barry Zito, the opposing pitcher with a lifetime batting average of .103, shot a single past a diving Kevin Frandsen at first base for an insurance run in the sixth.

PHOENIX - A day after his 36th birthday, Roy Halladay will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right shoulder. The Phillies announced the news before last night's game against the Diamondbacks. Halladay had been mulling his options but decided to have the procedure done in Los Angeles on Wednesday by Neal ElAttrache, the doctor who examined him earlier this week. "I liked him, I thought he was spot-on," Halladay said on Wednesday in San Francisco, when he announced that he would need surgery.