Phils Take Lead in NLCS

Chase Utley and Pat Burrell both hit homers and Cole Hamels went 7 strong innings as the Phillies beat the Dodgers last night in Game 1 of the NLCS. The win gives the Phils a 1 - 0 series lead, with the NLCS continuing this afternoon with a Happy Hour starting time.

Hamels struggled a little bit in the early going of this game, giving up consecutive doubles in the first inning to Andre Ethier and Manny Ramirez to give the Dodgers a 1 - 0. The Dodgers extended the lead to 2 - 0 in the 4th inning, off a double from Matt Kemp, who was eventually advanced and chased home on a sacrifice fly from Blake DeWitt.

Offensively, the Phillies struggled mightily to do anything with Derek Lowe in the early going. The made some noise in the bottom of the 5th, getting two out singles from Chooch Ruiz and Cole Hamels, before Jimmy Rollins flied out to end the inning. That set the stage for a 6th inning of fireworks from two of the Phillies big guns.

Shane Victorino led off the inning by getting on base via a Rafael Furcal throwing error. Chase Utley then hit the first pitch of his at bat into the first couple of rows in right field, evening the score at 2. Utley's homer revived the home crowd, who was put to sleep by the Phillies pounding the ball into the infield for the better part of 5 innings. The Phillies eventually took the lead in the 6th inning, when Pat Burrell took a 3 - 1 pitch out of the yard to left in what could be charitably described as a flower box shot.

Hamels, meanwhile, got through the 7th inning by striking out two of the three batters he faced and that ended his evening with 8 strikeouts and 2 runs allowed. Ryan Madson pitched the 8th inning and Brad Lidge closed matters with a 1-2-3 ninth inning.

As mentioned earlier, the Phils and Dodgers play again today at Happy Hour (4:35pm) with Brett Myers facing Chad Billingsly.

Notes:

- Like you, I thought Manny Ramirez's double in the first inning was out of the park from the bat. Apparently, so did Manny. If he had run that ball out, it would have possibly been a triple and he might have scored on the passed ball incurred by Chooch Ruiz in the first inning.

- TJ Simers is trying his best to take shots at us in his columns of late (today's offering is here). And for the record, I'd much rather live in a passionate and substantive city like "Angryville" than the shallow and fake "Fairweatherville" that is the city of Los Angeles.

- Good offering in yesterday's USA Today on some of the previous playoff clashes between the Dodgers and Phillies. The symmetry of Davy Lopes and Larry Bowa's careers is something I touched on here in the beginning of the season.

Phils Win; Rollins Jeered

The Phils pulled out a 5 - 4 win over the Washington Nationals last night on the strength of a Jayson Werth home run in the bottom of the 8th inning. The homer capped a comeback for the Phils, who were down in the game 4 - 1 after the 4th inning.

But the big story of the game was the return to Philadelphia of one James Calvin Rollins, who recently made some comments you may have heard about.

In a purely unscientific guess as to the ratio of cheers and boos when Rollins first came to bat in the first inning, I'd have to guess it was about 60 or 70 percent booing, with the rest of the folks cheering.

Let there be no doubt, however, that in the 5th inning, when Rollins hit into a rally killing 4-6-3 double play, the natives were pissed and reacted accordingly and loudly. There was no mixture for that particular slice of fan reaction; the Phils had just scored on a sacrifice fly from the bat of Geoff Jenkins and had just turned the lineup over, when Rollins (batting left) rolled over on an 0-1 pitch.

The crowd did give Jimmy a nice hand when he smoked a 3-2 pitch from Steve Shell for an apparent home run, only to have the wind knock the ball down for a long, loud out.

In non-JRoll news from the game, Joe Blanton pitched 5 innings and seemed to labor. He seemed to be high in the zone and fortunately, the wind kept balls in the park last night, or else the score might have been higher for both sides. Blanton gave up all 4 runs and struck out 3. He gave way to Chad Durbin and Ryan Madson, who kept the Nats at bay and Brad Lidge came in to nail down save number 31.

The series continues tonite with Brett Myers facing Collin Balester. However, I suspect that the focus will continue to be on how the crowd reacts to Jimmy Rollins. I suspect that the vitriol will subside as the days go by, but this self-inflicted wound will heal much quicker if Rollins creates the kind of offensive wave we all know he's capable of.

Notes:

- Greg Dobbs and Chris Coste accounted for the other Phils RBIs.

- Donovan McNabb felt the need to render his opinion on the Rollins situation to Philly.com. Mostly empathetic to JRoll......

- Mike Missannelli had two interesting guests in the past few days weigh in on the Rollins situation. Both have had unique relationships with the Philadelphia sports fans over the years. Former Phil player and manager Larry Bowa weighed in, and I'm paraphrasing here, saying that playing in the Northeast can come with a bit of fan negativity. Charles Barkley weighed in with a very similar sentiments (audio link not up on 950's website....I'll post it if it goes up).

Photo: (AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)

Davey Lopes and Larry Bowa

First of all, I wish nothing but the best to Phils coach Davey Lopes, who earlier this week was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

I always thought it was strange that a guy like Lopes, such a staunch competitor of the Phillies during the Dodger hey-days of the late 70s, early 80s, would go on to be a coach of distinction with the Phillies.

But when I saw the picture of Larry Bowa today in a Dodger uniform, the reverse symmetry of the whole thing with Bowa and Dodgers and Lopes and Phillies was just too weird. It also gave me the uncontrollable urge to use my meager mspaint skills (see results below).

In the late 70s, early 80s, both men were fiery competitors on their respective clubs and shared many characteristics. Lopes was a fiery lead off man for the Dodgers, hitting 28 homers one year and leading the NL in steals twice. Bowa, equally fiery for the Phillies, was more of a singles hitter, but he also showed speed on the basepaths (9 seasons with 20 or more SBs) and was as slick of a fielder at shortstop as there was during his era (2 gold gloves....one he won at SS the same year as Lopes won one at 2B....1978).

(Bowa photo courtesy of ESPN.com AP Photo/Nati Harnik)