2006 Chachi #18 Ryan Madson

I was exhausted at work today, but it was worth it. I was one of the hundreds (thousands?) of Phillies fans in the Delaware Valley who stayed tuned in to the bitter end of Sunday night's/Monday morning's NLDS Game 3, and then reported to work this morning. The game took four hours and six minutes to play, with Raul Ibañez catching the final out at 2:14 AM. I won’t go into the travesty of scheduling a crucial playoff baseball game at this late hour. Others more eloquent than I have opined on the greed and short-sightedness that allows Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig to deem 10:07 EST (on a Sunday night) as an acceptable start time for a Major League baseball game. What's truly a shame here is that this was a great ballgame, and not many Phillies (or East Coast baseball) fans were able to witness it.

Some other random thoughts and observations:
- I like how the Phillies manufactured their runs in this game. Their first run came on Chase Utley’s 1st inning solo home run, but the rest of their runs came from playing station to station baseball.

- Pedro Feliz grounding into a double play to kill the team’s 4th inning rally almost sent me to bed. Almost. His complete lack of patience at the plate (at times) drives me crazy.

- Should the Phils just start intentionally walking the Rockies' Carlos Gonzalez? He’s a one-man wrecking crew and he added three more hits and scored three more runs in Game 3.

- Great clutch hitting by Carlos Ruiz to knock in two runs with RBI-singles in the 4th and 6th.

- Great clutch relieving by Ryan Madson to get out of first and third, no out situation in the 7th while allowing only one run to score on a sacrifice fly.

- The Utley incident . . . In the top of the 9th, Chase Utley reached on what appeared to be a foul ball that bounced off his leg. Except the umpires didn't call it that way and Chase never stopped running towards first. Any other baseball player would have probably stopped and a foul ball would have been called. Chase instinctively ran towards 1st and the play was key to the go-ahead 9th inning run the Phillies would eventually score.

- Brad Lidge gets the save. I groaned out loud when Scott Franzke announced Lidge was the only pitcher warming up in the bullpen prior to the bottom of the 9th. He made it interesting, but he got the job done.