Ryan Madson News

What's the connection? Every main closer in the playoffs had a major blowup that cost their team at least a late lead, if not the game itself.

Burnett puts the Yankees in a 6-1 hole three innings in, though not surprisingly, they rally from an 8-2 deficit to bring the tying run to the plate in the ninth.

I feared throughout the regular season that Brad Lidge would blow the Phillies' chances at becoming the first team to repeat since the 2000 Yankees.

The Yankees' plan has not worked against Chase Utley. Or maybe the plan simply has not mattered.

Maybe this is just a one-night mirage, a short delay before the inevitable Yankees championship.

A mere 15 minutes after the Phillies were dethroned as the champions of baseball late Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, Ryan Howard was in the losing clubhouse at his locker sharing a laugh with batting practice pitcher Ali Modami and playfully giving a verbal jab to teammate Shane Victorino.

Derek Jeter occasionally wears postseason goat horns, too. Last night the Yankees captain had a chance to embellish his November legacy -- he is, after all, the original Mr.

Mark Teixeira swung at Ryan Madson's changeup, missed it, then tried to return to the Yankees' dugout after making the final out of Game 5 of the World Series.

Derek Jeter has teased Mark Teixeira about his rigid regimen, about his robotic approach to the daily grind of baseball.

The Phillies ' bullpen surely has had its ups and downs this postseason, but last night when starter actually went above the run total of his previous postseason starts, the bullpen bailed him out.

The Philadelphia Phillies , who have used Brad Lidge as their closer all postseason, left him sitting in the bullpen Monday.

The Yankees are one victory from winning the World Series for the first time since 2001.

Kate Hudson was talking to Kurt Russell when she suddenly stopped, leaned forward in a second-row box seat and clasped her hands together.

Ninety-nine pitches. Two runs allowed, the second a tiebreaking solo home run by with two outs in that inning.

Quick, which Phillies pitcher is tied with Cliff Lee for the team lead in victories this postseason? It isn't Cole Hamels, J.A. Happ, Pedro Martinez or Joe Blanton, who represented the other four-fifths of the rotation for the last 2 months of the regular season.

The Phillies' bullpen, which was so important to their championship run in 2008, has been a source of woe for much of 2009.

Nick Swisher watches Chase Utley's second homer sail over the right-field wall in the sixth inning.

Middle reliever Phil Hughes has gotten encouragement from Mariano Rivera throughout the postseason.

Call him the embattled Ryan Madson, if you will. But the Phillies' setup reliever, a seeming symbol of his team's seemingly shaky bullpen, may be on the other side of that rough patch.

So far this post-season, one of the biggest mysteries for the Phillies has been who would come trotting to the mound when the bullpen gate swung open.