Split Salvaged, Phillies Appear in Control as NLCS Shifts to San Francisco

PHILADELPHIA -- Getting into the spirit of NFL Sunday, Philadelphia's baseball club unleashed a spread attack and tied up the National League Championship Series at a game apiece.

Led by an unlikely triple threat -- pitcher Roy Oswalt -- the Phillies won 6-1 by putting together their best all-around game in five this postseason.

Oswalt ran his fastball past Giants hitters to the tune of nine strikeouts, best of his postseason career, but he'll be remembered more for running through a stop sign like a ballcarrier who smells the end zone.

Dusting off cobwebs, the Phillies also trotted out a more diversified offense, whether it was Shane Victorino bunting over the pitcher Oswalt as part of a late surge, or slump-ridden Jimmy Rollins blasting a three-run double off a scoreboard screen, or whiff-prone slugger Ryan Howard reaching base three times.

"We played a good game on both sides of the ball," said Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth, sounding like a football coach.

Even after losing Game 1 on Saturday, the Phillies were still my pick to win a third consecutive National League pennant.

West Coast Bias isn't going to slobber over the Evil Coast team, but I saw a few reasons beyond Sunday's score to believe that Game 1 of the World Series will be in Philadelphia rather than San Francisco.

• Rollins no longer was an easy out. He earned a bases-loaded walk in the first, as part of his plan to see more pitches. With two outs in the seventh and the bases full, he got ahead 2-0 and golfed a 390-foot drive off reliever Santiago Casilla for the game's final three runs. Rollins hasn't been in good form for some time. Coming off a sub-par year marred by leg injuries, he was 1-for-15 in the postseason entering Game 2. He had three strikeouts and a popout in Game 1. Sunday, he rewarded manager Charlie Manuel for keeping him in the sixth spot in the lineup.

"I was glad I was the person up there at the moment and able to come through," Rollins said. "But you don't celebrate until you win four games. And once we get to that point, you can look back and say that was a big hit."

• Howard hit the ball hard twice and also walked. Like many sluggers, he is prone to striking out, but eight Ks in only 15 postseason at-bats denoted a mini-slump. Maybe attending the Eagles' victory over the Falcons across the street on Sunday did him some good.

"The Eagles won and we won -- Ryan ended up seeing both of them," Werth said.

• Giants leadoff man Andres Torres, a newcomer to the postseason, again looked overwhelmed. He struck out four times, dropping him to 1-for-9 in the series and 3-for-25 this postseason. The only fast player in San Francisco's lineup, Torres is a catalyst for the team's manufacturing skills that already are spare. If he's a cipher, the Giants will need to rely even more on the home run. That makes it tougher to beat the pitching-rich Phillies.

"I was glad I was the person up there at the moment and able to come through. But you don't celebrate until you win four games. And once we get to that point, you can look back and say that was a big hit."
-- Jimmy Rollins • The Phillies cranked up their running game. Of the two teams, Philadelphia has far more footspeed, and the Phillies went 3-for-3 on stolen-base attempts. Getting great jumps, Chase Utley twice stole a base and scored.

Making the Phillies look even better, the Giants gave them three extra outs via defensive miscues, two of them early ones by Mike Fontenot, a middle infielder who starts at third base because of Pablo Sandoval's struggles.

The goof the Giants made in the seventh, which led to four runs, was almost excusable if only because the variables were so strange.

Oswalt, who had hit a leadoff single, was running from second base on Placido Polanco's single to Torres in center field when third-base coach Sam Perlozzo gave him the stop sign. Oswalt kept running, and not very fast.

But because Giants first baseman Aubrey Huff also saw Perlozzo's hands extended outward, he cut off the mediocre throw from Torres. Huff then realized that Oswalt was headed home, but his throw was well past due.

"We just got lucky," Perlozzo said.

"No question, we had him dead," Bochy said, although that seemed an overstatement. "He was out by 10, 15 feet."

Oswalt said he was dead-set on expanding the lead to 3-1 against starter Jonathan Sanchez.

"When I got halfway (past third), I saw the stop sign," he said. "I said, 'It's too late now, no turning back.'"

The series will move to San Francisco for the next three games, starting Tuesday. While it sounded like standard jock-speak when both Oswalt and Werth said the Phillies are bent on leaving California with the NLCS behind them, history suggests that's not idle chatter. Philadelphia won the last two NLCS in five games, each time over an NL West champion.

If the Giants don't soon get more offense from someone other than Cody Ross, they'll soon know how the Dodgers felt the last two Octobers.

Ross again channeled a young Willie Mays. Slamming his fourth home run of the postseason and third in two nights, he nixed Oswalt's no-hit bid by rifling a fastball one out into the fifth. Oswalt would allow only two more hits, each a single by a No. 2 hitter Freddy Sanchez. Outside of the three home runs by Ross, the Giants have only one extra-base hit and two RBI in the series. Once the Phillies stop feeding Ross his favorite pitch -- the low inside fastball -- Ross will likely revert to the form befitting his solid but not special career numbers (a .265 batting average and .466 slugging percentage).

"The last three balls that he hit are in the same spot," Oswalt said. "Just bad pitches -- throwing it right into his bat, pretty much. If you make your pitches, you are going to do well. "