The Phillies will send Roy Halladay to the hill for a decisive game five tonight in Philadelphia. First pitch is at 8:37pm on TBS. Halladay will be opposed by his longtime friend Chris Carpenter, who the Philllies beat in game one. Carpenter says he’s looking forward to facing his old Blue Jays teammate again.
“It’s been a pretty good friendship for a long time,” Carpenter said. “We’ve pitched together, we’ve vacationed together, we communicate a bunch during the offseason and during the season. He just invited me to go fishing this winter, so I mean, we’ve got a real good relationship. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Halladay turned in an interesting start in game one. Things got off to the worst possible start when he served up a 3-run homer to Lance Berkman in the first inning, but he bounced back and dominated from that point on, sitting down the last 21 batters he faced. This is the kind of game the Phillies went out and got Roy Halladay to pitch. As the reigning Cy Young winner for the best team in baseball, the pressure is clearly on the Phils here, but Roy isn’t letting himself get too wrapped up in it.
“I don’t think you can get too caught up in what game it is, and what it means,” Halladay said. “I think if you go out thinking: ‘Wow, this is everything, all-in-one,’ I think it can make too much out of it.”
Tony LaRussa says that the matchup of these two pitchers in an elimination game like this could make for a classic.
“Well, it may be a better word, but I think classic. I don’t know, I thought about it seriously when we were on the second game, so there was a realistic chance to make it happen. I think it’s just fascinating because we were talking to some people yesterday, it’s not just a match-up of two great pitchers, it’s their background together. I don’t know if it’s ever happened in an elimination game like this that two guys who were teammates, Minor League, Major League, still maintain a friendship, this may be the first time ever”
After this record breaking season, Phils fans likely won’t accept anything less than another parade, but there’s no doubt that no one would be happy with a one and done. Phillies manager Charlie Manuel recognizes this, calling it the biggest game they’ve played all year.
“Yeah, basically tomorrow is the biggest game that we’ve played. I mean, this is the biggest game of the season that we’re going to play is tomorrow. And what you see is our guys can come out — they can come out in a really relaxed frame of mind, really pumped up and ready to play, as long as they can control their adrenaline and everything, and they can concentrate on staying focused on what they’re doing in the game, and we can take it to them, and that’s what I’m looking for.”
Manuel says that he thinks the situation lines up nicely for them.
“I think tomorrow’s setting here is ideal for us. We’re in our ballpark, and we’re going to have a full house, and everything is going to be going for us. I think basically what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to just be ourselves and play like we can, and I think that the results will be there. "