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.

SAN FRANCISCO - Roy Halladay slouched on a couch Wednesday morning and kept a large cup of coffee at his side while the rest of the Phillies clubhouse stirred before another day of baseball. He watched Atlanta against Cincinnati on TV. They played the game to which he has dedicated his life. A surgeon will soon cut a small incision in Halladay's right shoulder, and it will be months before he can pitch again. Still, he smiled Wednesday. He vowed that it would take more to pry baseball from his prized but defective arm. "I have no regrets at any point in my career," Halladay said.

Harvey Dorfman's contributions to Roy Halladay's rise from a struggling young starter with the Toronto Blue Jays to the best pitcher in baseball have been well documented. The Mental ABC's of Pitching, a book authored by the recently deceased Dorfman, became Halladay's baseball bible, a how-to course on narrowing focus in order to maximize performance. Less well known are the influences of Carlos Delgado, a former big-league slugger, and swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete in history.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At least now they know. The uncertainty surrounding Roy Halladay was, metaphorically speaking, like a bone spur fraying the fabric of the Phillies' 2013 season. It is the kind of uncertainty that had a devastating impact on the two previous Phillies seasons. Two years ago, it was Chase Utley's mysterious spring-training disappearance. Last year, it was Utley and Halladay and Ryan Howard. It isn't easy for a team when a key player is unavailable because of injury. It is much harder when the missing player's status is shrouded in mystery.

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.