Removing Lidge never occured to you?  Was it just me then?  Did anyone else think that Charlie should have pulled him at any point?

Honestly, after my initial anger at Lidge for giving up the go-ahead run on a fastball subsided, I immediately wanted Charlie to yank Lidge.  I was very concerned that he was losing it when he hit Tex, but after the double I really felt like he had lost his focus and/or confidence and we were in danger of having the game get away from us.  I was thinking to bring Eyre in to get Posada and keep it a 1-run game, giving us a shot against Rivera.

When Lidge got to 1-2 on Damon, I was confident too.  I found this quote from Damon in Jayson Stark’s article on game 4:

“I kept chasing that slider down, and I was able to force it to 3-2, and then I kept sitting slider, and he kept throwing the fastball. They really don’t teach you to do it that way. They normally always tell you to look fastball because if you sit slider, it would be too tough to catch up to a fastball. But I felt like his slider made me look silly on a couple pitches. So I kept sitting slider and just reacted to the fastball.”

Sounds to me like Damon was as surprised as I was to see all those fastballs.  Now, it’s entirely possible that, since he was sitting on it,  he would have gotten a hit had Lidge thrown him a slider.  Were I Lidge, I’d certainly had taken my chances though. 

First, Damon admits, and we saw, that he chased the slider.  Second, Matsui and Jeter had done it before him, so Lidge had to know he was throwing it well and having success with the pitch.   Third, Damon fouled off two consecutive fastballs and looked, at least to me, like he was getting on the pitch.  Just baffling to me that he would get away from his slider and stay away from it for the rest of the inning, especially since he was getting hurt on his fastball.

Here’s my take on the 3-1 thing.  Admittedly, it’s rare.  And irrelavant here from this standpoint.  I’d guess that at least half the time its been done, or 2-0 for that matter, the better team, or favorite just got off to bad starts, or the underdog played over their heads.  Say what you want about looking back as opposed to forward, but examples off the top of my head that wound up the better team winning include the 78 Yanks over LA (2 zip). 79 Bucs over O’s (3-1).  I didn’t follow the 1958 Series, but the Yanks came back from 3-1 to deny the Braves a 2nd straight World’s title, and that was in the middle of great Yankee teams.  I say its irrelavant here because the Phils have some let’s call them non strengths and as long as they keep enabling the Yanks to just use their best pitchers, this wouldn’t be a case of the better team coming back.  I wll add that with no disrespect to Detroit or Kansas City, they came back in 68 and 85 (Denkinger series) and were not as good as the Cardinals who fell victim both times.  Nor were the Red Sox a better team than the Yanks in 04.  Lots of subjective opinions in there, take them for what they are worth.

On Bski’s wanting Lidge out after the Alex double.  Funny how perception is on that.  Silly as it sounds, that never ever occurred to me.  I was just thinking damage control assuming Lidge would continue on.   That’d be a very fair question for Charlie.

Last night was really a rip-your-heart-out loss though.  I keep going over it.  The third thing I thought after Feliz hit the homerun to tie it——–the first was I can’t believe he did it, the second was why would Chamberlain throw him a fastball——–was that the top of our order would now get a shot to win it in the bottom of the 9th against everyone else in the Yankees pen and avoid Rivera.  Ugh.