Game 5B proves to be right World Series approach

Baseball finally figured out the attention deficit generation. By accident, maybe, but hey, that's how some of the greatest discoveries happen.A three-inning game. One hour, 18 minutes. Barely longer than two episodes of Family Guy.Skip the national anthem because standing still for 90 seconds is hard to do. Make the visiting team take the field to start with because it's weird. Make the last spot in the batting order lead off because that's weirder.Most important, pack it as full of action as one of those tedious nine-inning, three-hour affairs. And while you're at it, make almost every strategic move backfire, just so the kids will have something to make fun of.This is how you reclaim baseball's lost generation.The Phillies won the first Game 5B in World Series history. In the process, they left everyone plenty of time to start rubbish fires afterward and still get to bed on time.If this catches on, it could really save on player payroll. With starting pitchers needing to go only one inning, you would need only a couple of them. The middle- inning reliever would become a more accurate moniker. He actually pitches the middle inning. The one role that doesn't change is that of the closer -- in this case, the incomparable Brad Lidge."This is what we all play for," Lidge said amid the bedlam of the celebration on the field afterward. "This is the pinnacle. It's everything. It's indescribable and I'm so happy we did it at home in front of these fans."The lesson for Joe Maddon, manager of the vanquished Rays, came straight from the Sundance Kid:You just keep thinking, Joe. That's what you're good at.To borrow from Will Ferrell, Maddon came up with all kinds of "strategery'' in the 46 hours between Games 5A and 5B and almost none of it worked. Maddon is a very bright and interesting fellow, but he may be a little too fond of the unconventional.Mistake No. 1: He began 5B by letting right-handed reliever Grant Balfour face left-handed pinch hitter Geoff Jenkins, who did not have a postseason hit until ripping Balfour's sixth pitch to right-center for a double. A sacrifice and a single later, the Phillies led.Mistake No. 2: After left-handed reliever J.P. Howell retired left-handed hitters Chase Utley and Ryan Howard to close the bottom of the sixth -- the top of the first for you kids -- Maddon let Howell bat because he needed a sacrifice bunt, then sent him back out to the mound to face right-handed Pat Burrell, who doubled. That turned out to be the winning run.Mistake No. 3: Having tied the game at 3 in the seventh on a home run by the inspirational Rocco Baldelli, the Rays had a chance to go ahead when shortstop Jason Bartlett singled and advanced on a sacrifice. When he tried to score from second on Akinori Iwamura's infield single, Utley threw him out by 10 feet.In fairness to Maddon, that last one was more likely third-base coach Tom Foley's "strategery" than his. Give Utley credit for a crafty decoy, pretending to throw to first. Carl Crawford opened the next inning with a hit that would have delivered Bartlett from third.Phils manager Charlie Manuel's strategery wasn't that much better. He elected to start setup man Ryan Madson in the bottom of the first -- top of the seventh for you old-timers -- and Madson promptly surrendered Baldelli's homer.Still, Manuel got to the last inning with a one-run lead and the perfect Lidge -- 47-for-47 in save opportunities going in -- on the mound. Lidge gave up a one-out single to Dioner Navarro and a stolen base to pinch runner Fernando Perez.With the tying run on second, pinch-hitter Ben Zobrist drilled a shot to right."I knew it was kind of shallow and I was hoping we were playing in enough that it was going to be at him and I saw him charge it and catch it and I was like, 'All right, you got too much plate on that one, make sure this next one, you get it down,' " Lidge said.And so he did, finishing baseball's shortest game with a strikeout on a backbreaking slider."There's a lot of nerves, a lot of adrenaline and you've just got to take some deep breaths out there and stay within your game and we were able to do it," Lidge said.When Manuel mounted the television platform at second base for the trophy presentation, the full house began to chant his name in appreciation of the best three-inning manager in baseball history."I felt like it was going pretty fast and I liked it," Manuel said.He's not the only one. For a game often criticized as too slow and too boring for the video game generation, World Series Game 5B was just the ticket.(Contact Dave Krieger of the Rocky Mountain News at kriegerd(at)RockyMountainNews.com.)