PHILADELPHIA – One out before they won the oddest championship game in baseball history, the Philadelphia Phillies huddled on their mound. Pitching coach Rich Dubee wanted to make sure that his closer, Brad Lidge, knew what to throw Eric Hinske, the Tampa Bay Rays' final hope.

Only no one could hear a word. The noise from Citizens Bank Park was too loud. This was the culmination of an evening unlike any other, one in which a 30-minute paid commercial from a presidential candidate preceded a Game 5 of the World Series that had been suspended, and that game restarted in the bottom of the sixth inning after a 46-hour rain delay, and the home team led off, and it did so with a pinch hitter against a relief pitcher, and guys wearing Elmer Fudd caps roamed the Rays outfield while their pitcher braved 43-degree cold in short sleeves, and everyone stood for the seventh-inning stretch in the evening's second inning.

Perhaps most peculiar of all was the dawning reality: The Phillies were about

PHILADELPHIA – So, the starting pitcher might get taken out before he throws the evening's first pitch.

Because the first person up to bat is going to be a pinch hitter.

And the starting pitcher – well, he's not exactly the starting pitcher, anyway.

Confused? Sorry. That's what happens when baseball postponed Game 5 of the World Series in the middle of the sixth inning with the score 2-2 and will pick it up 46 hours later. The game will begin with "God Bless America" instead of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The seventh-inning stretch will come in the second inning of play.

And, yes, the starting pitchers are relievers. This much we know: When Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel pinch hits for the game's original starter, Cole Hamels, to lead off the bottom of the sixth, he will insert setup man Ryan Madson in the top of the seventh. Depending on who Manuel uses to pinch hit, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon may stick with right-handed reliever Grant Balfour, who finished the

PHILADELPHIA – This World Series is beyond salvaging. It is a disaster borne of people who think cowbells and haircuts make them fans, owners so greedy they accept late-October baseball and late-evening start times, and a commissioner who unilaterally changes a rule while he's carrying the book in his left hand.

Game 5 is suspended. Rain washed through Citizens Bank Park from the beginning of the Philadelphia Phillies' potential championship clincher to the sixth inning, when the Tampa Bay Rays tied the score 2-2. The game is supposed to resume Wednesday night. It is on Mother Nature, which is a good thing, because if it were up to the baseball gods, they would smite the series before it could continue any longer.

It's awful, embarrassing even, that the country became so indifferent to what once was the most popular championship series in sports. Even worse, Major League Baseball, fat and happy with its coffers growing and ticket sales booming, watched idly as the number of people

PHILADELPHIA – For the last three weeks, Donovan McNabb's text messages went unanswered. He kept sending them anyway. The sports heroes of this city need to stick together, and as Ryan Howard's streak without a home run wore deep into October, the words of encouragement continued.

"Stay strong," McNabb wrote.

Only Howard never responded. Not once. So when the two biggest active figures in this city's enormous sports landscape crossed paths Sunday night in the bowels of Citizens Bank Park following Game 4 of the World Series, the one in which Howard redeemed himself for everything that had gone awry in October with two home runs in a 10-2 shellacking against the Tampa Bay Rays that left the Philadelphia Phillies one victory shy of a championship – well, McNabb had to ask, what gives?

"Sorry," Howard said. "I got a new phone."

Flimsy though the excuse may have been, McNabb was not going to quibble. He wore a red vest and a Phillies hat. He asked Howard to sign a Phillies jersey. He posed

PHILADELPHIA – The monkey started to squeak at 2 a.m. The last thing the Tampa Bay Rays wanted to hear only minutes after the worst loss of their season was some howling primate, and yet there it was, in all its miniature stuffed glory, wrapped around a knob on reliever J.P. Howell's locker.

"That thing is losing its head," Howell said.

It had been a present from a fan. A rally monkey, supposedly. And there was a rally Saturday night, one of the Rays' patented come-outta-nowhere jobs that ends with a mosh pit at home plate and toasts in the clubhouse. Only this one didn't. The Philadelphia Phillies, as the Rays are learning, do not break with nearly the ease of their previous conquests.

This is now a real World Series, even if 99 percent of the country was asleep when it became so. The Rays, charming story and Vegas favorite, frittered away their good fortune with a pair of bad pitches and another ill-timed throw from their catcher. And the Phillies, back at home and feeding off three

PHILADELPHIA – Watch his breathing. If Matt Garza gets squeezed by the home-plate umpire in Game 3 of the World Series, he will unleash a big, violent, angry breath. And then about 15 seconds later, when he has composed himself, taken the sign from his catcher and committed to his next pitch, he will let out another purposeful exhalation, this one slow and steady.

This is the trusting breath, and it personifies Garza's year – how he has learned to trust himself and his gifted arm, and how the Tampa Bay Rays have learned to entrust in him the biggest game of their season.

The breathing techniques are one of many tricks espoused by Ken Ravizza, a doctor of kinesiology whose knack for motivating athletes has turned him into a sought-after sports psychologist. Ravizza's longtime friendship with Rays manager Joe Maddon led him to Garza, a wildly talented right-handed pitcher and mercurial spirit whose mental blowups were the only barrier to greatness.

Since beginning to work with Ravizza in

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Carlos Pena interlocked his fingers. He looked toward the roof of Tropicana Field from the dugout. He said out loud, for all his teammates to hear, "Oh, Lord, please." And then he watched Big Brown rumble.

Rumble, actually, is a kind way to describe the act of Cliff Floyd taking his pieces and parts, all the bones and joints and ligaments that comprise his listed-at-230-but-probably-closer-to-250-pound body, and propelling them forward. It is more like trudge. Or maybe sputter.

It sure isn't running, which is what a squeeze play generally calls for from the man standing on third base. So when Pena saw the sign coming in from the bench calling for Floyd to dash home, out went his request, skyward, for divine intervention, because some sort of deity had to be involved if the Rays were going to drop a bunt then and there.

Naturally, it worked. On the second time, of course. As if Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon weren't mad enough to pull the squeeze with Floyd on

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – They were smiling and laughing. The Tampa Bay Rays had just lost Game 1 of the World Series, on their home turf no less, and giggles outnumbered growls.

Just one loss. It happens. No sweat.

Part of what makes the Rays such an appealing story is this attitude, laid back bordering on narcoleptic. And yet there comes a point at which relaxation runs into complacency, where one loss turns into two and then three and four, and then the inherent flaw in their thinking – espoused by Bob Marley – gets exposed: Every little thing isn't gonna be all right.

Not when you hold the opponent hitless with runners in scoring position over a baker's dozen at-bats, as the Rays did the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night, and still lose 3-2. Gone is home-field advantage, as it was following a Game 1 loss to Boston in the American League Championship Series, and gone, too, is any notion that the Phillies would play Fido to a Rays team coming off a dramatic seven-game ALCS