Granted, the Phillies had plenty of chances and failed in the clutch any number of times. However, to ignore the impact of the two blunders by the home plate umpire is like talking about the sinking of the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg. Giving Rocco Baldelli a walk after punching him out gave the Rays a run, and missing Jimmy Rollins HBP in the 9th took a run from the Phils. There is your two-run deficit. Was that Kerwin Danley behind the plate, or Tim Donaghy?

And we're even from game 1. Except the umpire took a win away from the Rays in game 1. The replay and pitch f/x both showed that Chase Utley was struck out two pitches before he hit his home run. That had just as much impact if not more on game 1 as these terrible calls. Not to mention the non-balk call.

Both teams have won a game because of, not what I'd call questionable calls, but flat out wrong calls. Lets hope this doesn't continue. I hope the umpires are invisible from here on out.

re: is it the phils not hitting or tampa bay pitching really well?

while one supposes you could blame the phils for not hitting in so called "clutch" situations, the fact remains that the tampa bay staff is a high strikeout rate staff that doesn't allow a lot of balls into play, and doesn't allow a lot of hits.

thus while they walked hitters and allowed occasional extra base hits, and got into some jams, they also struck out two or three batters in a row to get out of those jams because they had the juice to do it.

both tampa starters were very fast, and the bullpen guys are also very, very fast. they remind me a lot of the anaheim bullpen a few years ago from the series, and gee, wouldn't you know it, joe madden was a bench coach there in anaheim and has assembled a team that looks and plays just like the angels of 2001--pitching, speed, defense and more pitching.

that matt garza for delmon young trade is starting to look exceedingly brilliant, by the way.

but so is the phils deal for joe blanton, who's been excellent in the post-season.

this goes to show the importance of adding a #3 or #4 starter to an existing good ballclub to seal the deal for a pennant or world series drive.

but getting back to game #2, rollins, howard and burrell weren't striking out because they were swinging badly, it was because they rays pitchers were throwing heat, low heat, high heat, inside heat, and in some cases, some pretty good spitballs and shine balls that dropped about two feet down. I was pretty impressed that they could pull an illegal pitch out once in a while on top of the filthy stuff they already had.

they're just a nasty bunch of pitchers.

The phillies are going to need to win this the old earl weaver way--pitching, defense and the three run homer.

--art k