Ryan Howard

Baseball is a game of numbers, but more than anything it is a game of moments. In 2009, Ryan Howard once again had little trouble racking up numbers: His 45 home runs gave him 222 for his career, and his 141 RBI made it four straight seasons with at least 136. But it was a single moment, and a now-legendary phrase - "Just get me to the plate, boys" - that provided the seminal moment of his still-young career. It was Game 4 of the NLDS, in freezing Denver, and the Phillies were one out away from heading back to Philly for a decisive Game 5. Two outs.

MIAMI - Ryan Howard is not a fatalist except when it comes to matters of health, those of which are generally beyond the $125 million first baseman's control. He will take his chances. A cortisone shot reduced the pain from inflammation in his left knee. A doctor examined it and proclaimed him fit for action. So manager Charlie Manuel inserted Howard into his customary cleanup spot Tuesday after a two-game absence. In the short term, the injection did its job, as Howard delivered three hits and three RBIs in a 7-3 victory.

The Phillies beat us to this one by signing Ryan Howard to a 5-year, $125 million extension last week. In a Daily News fan survey conducted with the Sport Industry Research Center at Temple University, respondents who identified the Phillies as their favorite team were asked if they were willing to spend $2 more per ticket if the money went to signing the slugging first baseman to a long-term contract. The results: 68 percent said they would be willing to pay extra, 17 percent said they would not and 15 percent said they were not sure.

Don't pitch to Ryan Howard. Pitch to Pat Burrell instead. That's the fear, isn't it? The bat is removed from Howard's hands? Teams intentionally walked Howard a franchise-record 37 times last season, 32 times after the all-star break. That practice could increase now that Howard, who hit .313 with 58 home runs and 149 RBIs, is just the fourth player in baseball history to win the rookie-of-the-year and most-valuable-player awards in his first two full seasons in the majors.

This swing, majestic like so many Ryan Howard has taken, was nothing more than a silver lining Saturday. The Phillies were stumbling to an 8-2 loss to the Braves when Howard blasted a Mike Minor pitch an estimated 440 feet to dead center in the fourth inning. The ball smashed high off the ivy-covered wall. Atlanta center fielder Michael Bourn barely moved. The jumbotron at Citizens Bank Park informed a stadium of Howard's milestone 300th home run. Howard was the second fastest in baseball history to reach the plateau.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Shortly after 11 a.m., Ryan Howard emerged from a side door at Bright House Field and stared at empty dirt. "Where'd everybody go?" he asked. Howard missed Tuesday's informal infield drills by about 10 minutes. Had he received the memo, he could have been standing on the same infield at the same time as Chase Utley. In recent springs, that has not happened often. Howard missed all of last spring following Achilles tendon surgery and subsequent complications.

Charlie Manuel grabbed a first baseman's mitt hours before first pitch Tuesday night and manned the position. Freddy Galvis and Kevin Frandsen wanted extra work on the infield. The 69-year-old Manuel helped. "We needed somebody," the manager said. What Manuel needs is the man usually at first base, Ryan Howard, to produce more. Howard, typically a slow starter, was off to his worst 18-game stretch entering Tuesday. It is early and the sample size is small, but Howard was trending downward.

K RYSTLE CAMPBELL upset a number of her fellow Eagles cheerleaders when she missed practice to spend time with her boyfriend, rehabbing Phillies slugger Ryan Howard , in his hometown of St. Louis when the Phillies played the Cardinals on July 19-22. We're told that Campbell did not tell her coaches why she was missing practice and that she won't face discipline for being absent. Cheerleaders are supposed to miss practice only if they are ill or there is a death in the family.

Ryan Howard felt a tiny pinch Sept. 18 when a team physician's needle penetrated the numbed surface of a left heel that had been throbbing red-hot for weeks. Within seconds, the syringe's milky mixture of cortisone and painkiller rushed warmly into the tiny, inflamed bursa sac at the base of the slugger's Achilles tendon. Howard and the Phillies were rolling the dice. They hoped the cortisone would ease the pain and, after a brief rest, return him to form for the fast-approaching postseason.

NEW YORK - As Ryan Howard charged after a foul pop, made a sliding over-shoulder-catch, and banged his right foot into a wall in the second inning of the Phillies' first game on Saturday against the Mets, you could almost see a lump form in manager Charlie Manuel's throat. Fortunately for the Phillies, it was Howard's right foot that took a little punishment, not the left ankle that required an injection Monday to the bursa sac to alleviate pain. "I jammed my right big toe into the wall a little bit but played it out," Howard said after the Phillies lost the first game of a day-night doubleheader to the Mets, 2-1. "My ankle's fine.