Warning Track

Jason Christiansen barely avoided being forever known as the pitcher who gave up homers 63 and 64 to Mark McGwire. McGwire, who hit homer No. 63 off Christiansen on Tuesday, flied out to the warning track in left against the Pittsburgh reliever last night as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pirates, 4-0. The way Christiansen saw it, there was never a doubt the ball would end up in Turner Ward's glove instead of the stands. "I thought if that one went out, I was walking off the field," Christiansen said.

Here's a new one: Wednesday's Grapefruit League game was delayed for about two minutes while a stadium employee attempted to corral two children dressed as a lime and an orange. The kids were part of a between-inning race in foul territory from third base to first. But the lime kept running past the finish line and around the warning track. Players from the Phillies bullpen in left field kept waving the lime around as the stadium employee chased him. The orange followed. The lime made it all the way around the field, back to the Phillies dugout, where he high-fived Luis Castillo.

Freddy Garcia needs to find the man with the Freddy Garcia voodoo doll and pull the pins out. Or take him out. The Phillies righthander opened the season on the disabled list with tendinitis in his right biceps and is 1-2 with a 6.05 ERA in his first four starts. Then yesterday during batting practice at AT&T Park, he ran into a maintenance cart that had stopped unexpectedly on the warning track and suffered a bruised left shin. There is some doubt as to whether Garcia will make tonight's scheduled start against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field in Phoenix.

The ball came off the bat of Cubs pinch-hitter Kevin Roberson with two outs and the bases loaded in the eighth inning last night and headed down the leftfield line. No problem, Pete Incaviglia calculated at first glance. Within the next few seconds, though, Incaviglia was crumpled on the warning track. Roberson was on third with a triple. And three runs scored to sentence the Phillies to their third straight defeat, 8-5, at Veterans Stadium. Instead of curling toward the corner, as a ball off the bat of a lefthanded hitter would normally do, this ball faded back toward fair territory.

A spectator at the Kansas City Royals' home opener yesterday was injured when he fell 12 feet from the left-field bleachers to the warning track. Nathan Michalski, 22, of Lee's Summit, Mo., was taken to a hospital with a compression fracture of the spine, a broken foot and abdominal pain, the Royals said. A friend said Michalski was trying to jump down to the outfield when he fell. Officers who reached Michalski tried to pull him to his feet, but he collapsed back to the track.

When the Phillies last visited Riverfront Stadium, during the second week of the season, the Reds were already listed in critical condition. They were well on their way to losing eight of their first nine. Since then, however, they have made a near-miraculous recovery. They have, in fact, built the best record in the National League on top of the ashes of that start. After beating the Phillies, 1-0, last night they are 57-32 and a season-high 25 games over .500. It is the Phillies who are flat-lining.

Lenny Dykstra was not on the field for the last two innings of the Phillies' 10-2 win over the Pirates last night. However, by the time Jim Eisenreich took over center field in the eighth inning, Dykstra had packed in at least a game's worth of highlights. He led off the first inning with a double and scored his 97th run in 105 games. He doubled in the team's fifth run in the fourth inning. Then he added an RBI single as the Phillies batted around in the fifth. Perhaps most significant, however, was his running catch of Kevin Young's screamer to the right-center-field wall in the top of the third.

It was one small step for Milt Thompson, one giant step for the Phillies. Thompson moon-walked, leaped and caught Mark Lemke's line drive before going splat against the padded blue wall to turn back one final Atlanta threat in a dramatic 2-1 victory that snarled the NLCS at two games apiece. Mitch Williams came on to pitch to Lemke in the eighth, with two men on. Lemke, who had bobbled Darren Daulton's grounder in the fourth to open the gates for two unearned runs, lashed a liner to left.

There was, at the time, no clear and present danger. The Phillies were up on the Mets by six, it was the bottom of the eighth last night at Shea Stadium, Jeff Parrett was just trying to get some work in. But when the Mets' Dave Magadan launched one toward the gap in right, Ron Jones didn't stop to think about those things. Instinct took over. He raced back to the wall and made a nice running catch on the warning track. In the dugout, the pride manager Nick Leyva felt was abruptly cut short.

Warning tracks are dug into baseball fields to help outfielders avoid running into fences. St. James centerfielder Warren McIntire had no warning track at his disposal yesterday, but just the same, he was happy to have a fence to run into. In the sixth inning of a game against St. John Neumann at Ninth and Wharton Streets, McIntire was tracking a fly ball when a pit bull charged him from the perimeter of the field. "I was thinking about it before the ball was even hit, when I first saw the dog out there at the beginning of the inning," McIntire said.

READING — Aside from showcasing Major League Baseball's stars of tomorrow, the minor leagues are notorious for smaller, homey stadiums and promotional events that range from borderline wacky to clinically insane. As far as these promotions go, Monday's Reading Phillies game was considered by most to be relatively mundane, pushing the game time back about 10 hours. For the 11th consecutive season, the Reading Phillies (who are 5-5 with one postponement in those games) hosted a morning game.

There's only one Placido Polanco Detroit traded second baseman Scott Sizemore to Oakland for lefty reliever David Purcey Friday. What does this have to do with Phillies third baseman Placido Polanco ? The Tigers let the 2006 ALCS MVP walk after the 2009 season, figuring Sizemore would replace him at second. It didn't quite work out. Sizemore was never able to keep the job. After losing his roster spot in spring training, he was recalled from triple-A but hit just .222.

Here's a new one: Wednesday's Grapefruit League game was delayed for about two minutes while a stadium employee attempted to corral two children dressed as a lime and an orange. The kids were part of a between-inning race in foul territory from third base to first. But the lime kept running past the finish line and around the warning track. Players from the Phillies bullpen in left field kept waving the lime around as the stadium employee chased him. The orange followed. The lime made it all the way around the field, back to the Phillies dugout, where he high-fived Luis Castillo.

All right, now the numbers are starting to add up a little, like the leaves that fall quietly from the trees and suddenly there is a stack of them there on the lawn. The Phillies have played four postseason games and scored a total of 16 runs, seven of which came in a game when the Cincinnati Reds decided to leave their gloves in the dugout. They have 28 hits in those four games and are batting .212. This isn't a lull any longer, a momentary downturn, a hiccup as the postseason begins.

Greg Dobbs said he doesn't pay attention to the statistics, so when he was asked about his struggles as a pinch-hitter, he had a question of his own: "What's my numbers?" Dobbs was told before last night's game that he was 1 for 17 as a pinch-hitter this year "That's pretty terrible, isn't it?" Dobbs said. True. He is now 1 for 18. He struck out in the sixth batting for Jamie Moyer. After a breakout 2008 in which Dobbs batted .355 as a pinch-hitter and established himself as a legitimate lefthanded threat off the Phillies' bench, he is hitting .139 (10 for 72)

Brad Lidge summed up his rehabilitation with two numbers last night in his Triple A appearance for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs: 2008 and 2009. After a scoreless inning of 14 pitches against the Pawtucket Pawsox, the Phillies closer said he feels more like he did in 2008 when he recorded 48 saves in 48 chances than 2009, when he battled injuries in finishing with no wins in eight decisions and blew 11 saves. After undergoing surgeries on his right elbow and knee, he feels his form coming back.

IT STARTED as a vague thought, nagging at the back of his mind. It began to come into sharper focus the first day of the California road trip when, jogging around the warning track at Dodger Stadium before the series opener, he hurt his back. Mike Schmidt was 39 years old, in a slump, playing for a Phillies team destined for another last-place finish. Nobody had a clue that within a week he would stun even those closest to him by abruptly announcing his retirement. Six days later, standing near third base at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, he was about to make one of the biggest decisions of his baseball life.

GIANTS centerfielder Randy Winn was on second with one out when first baseman Mark Sweeney field out deep, almost to the warning track in center in the top of the first. Winn didn't tag up, and was unable to move up to third on the play. And with that, the boos rained down from the blue seats at Citizens Bank Park. Oh, all right. Maybe it was because Barry Bonds was walking slowly to the plate from the on-deck circle. The baseball schedule has a certain another-day-another-city aspect to it. For the Giants, that familiar game of musical chairs landed them in Philadelphia for their only appearance of the season last night.

Freddy Garcia needs to find the man with the Freddy Garcia voodoo doll and pull the pins out. Or take him out. The Phillies righthander opened the season on the disabled list with tendinitis in his right biceps and is 1-2 with a 6.05 ERA in his first four starts. Then yesterday during batting practice at AT&T Park, he ran into a maintenance cart that had stopped unexpectedly on the warning track and suffered a bruised left shin. There is some doubt as to whether Garcia will make tonight's scheduled start against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field in Phoenix.

The Detroit Tigers got their AL championship rings, then treated thousands of hardy fans to the same roller-coaster experience of last October. Curtis Granderson hit his first career grand slam as Detroit built a nine-run lead yesterday, and the Tigers held on for a 10-9 victory over the visiting Toronto Blue Jays. "This lets us know that we can go ahead and hold teams off, and that's one of the things we're going to have to do over 162 games," Granderson said. Coming off their first pennant since 1984, the Tigers lost Monday's opener, 5-3, in 10 innings.