Cole Hamels returns to be ‘the center’ of the Bank once more and retire a Phillie

Nine years after Cole Hamels made his final start for the Phillies — a no-hitter mic drop on a Saturday in July at Wrigley Field — and four years since he threw his last major-league pitch, one question is unanswered.

Would he have started a theoretical Game 7 of the 2009 World Series?

Even Hamels never knew for sure.

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“I’ve talked to [then-manager] Charlie [Manuel] a little bit about that,” the erstwhile Phillies ace said this week. “I know I was in a bad place at the time. I really do think Charlie was going to let me start, and the moment I got in trouble, I think he was going to pull me.”

Nobody will ever know, of course, because it never came to that. The Phillies’ most recent reign as World Series champions — 371 days in 2008-09 — ended in Game 6 at Yankee Stadium, so Manuel never needed to tell Hamels if he planned to put the ball in the struggling lefty’s hand the next night.

It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Hamels’ stature among the handful of best pitchers in Phillies history is secure. He’s all over the franchise’s 142-year-old leaderboards: third in strikeouts (1,844), fourth in starts (294), sixth in wins (114), ERA (3.30), and innings pitched (1,930).

Oh, and the roster of Phillies World Series MVPs reads more like a list of VIPs.

And so, after deciding last summer to end his 15-season major-league career, Hamels, 40, will be honored Friday night with a retirement ceremony at Citizens Bank Park, where he will throw one last first pitch from the mound where he once reveled in feeling like he was “the center” of the coolest place in all of Philadelphia sports.

“We had a lot of opportunities with postseason games and just that atmosphere of what it’s like to paint the city red during football season,” Hamels said in a lengthy conversation with The Inquirer. “It has that sort of takeover of the energy in the city. I always had that mentality of, ‘I’m playing for the postseason. That’s when I’m going to deliver.’

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“And I was the center. The game doesn’t start, the inning doesn’t start, a pitch doesn’t start until I decided. So, you have that power in a way, and I really had to realize how to utilize it.”

Hamels learned to harness his surpassing talent in the Phillies’ farm system. Jimmy Rollins nicknamed him “Hollywood” for his leading-man looks, surfer-dude inflection, and ice-cold demeanor on the mound. If you were going to cast a pitcher in a movie, it would have to be Hamels.

But before all that, Hamels overcame a complete fracture of the humerus bone in his left arm in the summer between his sophomore and junior years at Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, an injury that caused him to fall into the Phillies’ lap at No. 17 overall in the 2002 draft.

There were also bouts of immaturity, including a late-night bar fight near the Phillies’ spring-training complex in Clearwater, Fla., in January 2005, when he broke a bone in his pitching hand and required surgery.

But 16 months later, at age 22, Hamels threw five scoreless innings in his major-league debut in Cincinnati. Seventeen months after that, in 2007, he started Game 1 of a playoff series. In 2008, at age 24, he was on the mound for Game 1 of the World Series.

In 13 career postseason starts for the Phillies, Hamels had a 3.09 ERA, including a 1.80 mark in October 2008.

So, when Hamels says he “grew up” in Philadelphia, it’s more than a figure of speech.

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“A lot of it was the mentality of, ‘Hey, this is why you drafted me as a first-round pick. This is why you risked it all,’ ” Hamels said. “If you looked at our lineup, the majority of us were homegrown, and I was like, ‘I’m in this group and there’s a reason I’m in this group, and I’m going to live up to my end of the bargain.’ ”

Hamels was the last member of the 2008 Phillies to retire. Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard brought their careers full circle in 2019 by ceremonially retiring with the Phillies. Hamels decided he wanted that, too, especially after flying in from his home in Texas for the last two postseasons.

The Phillies are asking fans to be seated by 6:25 p.m. for the pregame ceremony. The guest list includes Jamie Moyer, Roy Oswalt, Joe Blanton, Tom Gordon, Carlos Ruiz, Manuel, and former pitching coach Rich Dubee. Hamels’ number won’t be retired, but outfielder David Dahl will give up No. 35 for No. 31 out of respect for Hamels, with whom he rehabbed an injury last season in San Diego.

“The big chunk of my career was in Philly, and the big chunk of my accomplishments were in Philly,” Hamels said. “What I really wanted to do was to acknowledge how special the opportunity was, how thankful I am for the support. The majority of what I am today is because of what I lived and learned and the relationships that I built in Philadelphia.”

There was a time when Hamels thought he might actually pitch for the Phillies again.

In 2018, three years after the Phillies traded him to the Rangers at the deadline in the first move of a full-scale rebuilding process, Texas was pivoting for a similar teardown. General manager Jon Daniels asked Hamels where he wanted to be dealt.

Hamels’ answer: Phillies or Cubs. Unable to work anything out with the Phillies, the Rangers sent Hamels to Chicago.

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A few years later, when Hamels was trying to come back from a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder, he gauged the Phillies’ interest before signing with the Dodgers.

“That was a lot safer than, say, going to Philly and expecting me to be the Cole Hamels of old,” Hamels said. “I knew I wasn’t there. I was never going to be 100% what they were used to.”

Hamels never did pitch for the Dodgers in 2021. Or his hometown Padres after signing with them last year.

And he didn’t get to redeem a nightmarish 2009 postseason in a Game 7 that never happened. Not that Hamels has any regrets, nor should he.

“I was kind of a mental mess,” he recalled. “That whole playoff I was like, ‘I need a third pitch. I’ve got to establish a curveball. They’re sitting on my changeup.’ I kind of psyched myself out and got away from my game plan. I wasn’t myself.

“But I think Charlie would’ve given me the opportunity to start and just rode me as long as he could before he could’ve thrown J.A. Happ and then probably Cliff [Lee]. And I think we would’ve won that game.”

It would have been another Hollywood ending for “Hollywood” Hamels, who made a career out of them.