2010 Chachi #68 NLCS Game 4/Carlos Ruiz

Giants 6, Phillies 5
NLCS Game 4 - Wednesday Night, October 20th in San Francisco

Composing these game summary posts and creating a Chachi card to commemorate the game is much easier and certainly much funner when the Phillies win.  I'd love to write about the bat-around in the fifth inning that saw the team score four times.  That was fun to watch.  I'd much rather center a game summary post around the back-to-back doubles from Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth in the eighth that tied the game at five-all.  And more than anything, I'd love to have this post celebrating an extra inning win featuring a key go-ahead Phillies' run followed by a shut-down inning from Brad Lidge or starting pitcher/left fielder/relief pitcher Roy Oswalt.

But the images fresh in my mind are Carlos Ruiz getting thrown out at the plate in the fifth, Joe Blanton uncorking two wild pitches in the first, Blanton and Chad Durbin allowing lead-off walks to start the fifth and sixth innings, Chase Utley constantly hanging his head and looking as if someone had just shot his horse, and finally, Juan Uribe prancing around as his sacrifice fly to left scored Aubrey Huff with the winning run.  (And it hurts too that Pat Burrell is having so much fun at the expense of his former team.)

I'm not going to lie here - I'm grumpy.  I have a cold, I'm tired, and the Phillies are on the brink of calling it a season.  With those symptoms, a Doctor is definitely needed.

The Silent Treatment:  It's been well documented that I mute the TV and listen to the Phillies' radio broadcast during the regular season and especially during the Postseason.  (Joe Buck free since '07!)  But here's another little idiosyncrasy - when the Giants came to bat from the sixth inning on tonight, I muted the radio broadcast too.  That's right, I sat in silence and stared at my TV screen.  Seemed less stressful that way.  So I have yet to hear the audio of Juan Uribe's sac fly in the ninth, and I hope to never hear it.  (By the way, just by pure accident, I recently saw the last out of the 2009 World Series for the first time.  I had turned off the TV right before the final out was recorded last November.)