Bill Lyon: Jamie Moyer waits and works

He did what old men do best.

Wait.

Jamie Moyer, the oldest player in baseball, waited through 22 major-league seasons to get here, in a World Series, so a little longer wouldn't matter.

A man gets to be 45, he learns what's worth spending his passions on. What Jamie Moyer couldn't control was the wind-lashed rain that kept pushing back the time of his first pitch in Game 3 last night.

Eight-thirty-five was the scheduled start time. It came and went. Then 9. Then 9:30. Finally, at 10:06, Jamie Moyer realizes a lifelong dream, corkscrews into that high leg kick, and, with a backdrop of frenzied zealots twirling their white rally towels, becomes the second-oldest starter in World Series history. He delivers a tempting, tantalizing half-fast ball that is called a strike. His second pitch induces a pop-up.

And so the game is on, the game that Jamie Moyer plays so well: fox and hounds. Catch him if you can, but he will lead you on a merry chase, through the briar patch and across rock and down a creek. Catch him if you can. Hit him if you can.

Lately, in the postseason, they have been. In his two previous starts, first Milwaukee and then Los Angeles, he was roughed up. His ERA was a bloated 13.50.

The problem was real estate - with Jamie Moyer, everything is location, location, location.

His game is finesse, not flame. He doesn't get hitters out, he makes them get themselves out.

As Charlie Manuel says: "He's more patient than the hitters."

One more advantage of being an old man.

He uses guile and deception, and the ball flutters about like a butterfly with hiccups.

Against a young, free-swinging team like the Tampa Bay Rays, he is presumed to have an edge. When Jamie Moyer is right, he doesn't throw strikes, he throws pitches that look like strikes, and the big boppers, overanxious, lunge and flail in frustration.

In the first inning of his 638th big-league game, Jamie Moyer allows a two-out walk and then ties up the Rays' cleanup hitter, Evan Longoria, and with the 18th pitch of the inning, strikes him out.

The Phillies promptly stake him to a 1-0 lead, but it is a disquieting and unfulfilling run because they have runners on second and third and none out, and the Rays' starter, Matt Garza, is on the ropes. Garza is 24; Jamie Moyer has socks older than Matt Garza. But as they have done the first two games of this series, the Phillies come away with very little. In such situations they should be putting up crooked numbers, not singletons.

Jamie Moyer gives the run back. A two-base hit by Carl Crawford parachutes in between shortstop Jimmy Rollins and leftfielder Pat Burrell. A steal of third and a long sacrifice fly tie it.

In the Phils' second, Carlos Ruiz, who is known for his catching more than his hitting, turns on fat meat and puts Moyer back in front.

And the fox stays ahead of the hounds. Jamie Moyer works a clean 1-2-3 third, punctuating it with a called third strike against B.J. Upton, who steps in and out, strolls around admiring the scenery, trying to outwait the old man, trying to unsettle him. The fox smiles a thin-lipped smile and throws something that freezes Upton.

Take that, sonny.

And so it will go, as the two slog on past the bewitching hours and this will end up with either the fox last seen disappearing over the horizon, twitching his tail in triumph, with the Phillies ahead in the series, or it will end with the fox cornered and the Phillies two away from elimination.

He works a clean fourth, sawing through the 3-4-5 hitters, with another strikeout of the potent Longoria.

The fox is working inside, brushing them back, throwing high and tight so as to make all that cotton candy low-and-away stuff so effective.

He gives up a leadoff single in the fifth, then retires the next three in order. Of the Rays' first 15 outs, seven are pop-ups or fly outs, evidence that they are just overanxious enough to keep hitting under the ball. The fox is running them through marshland.

They have only two hits through five innings.

In the sixth, he and Upton have another set-to, Upton smacking a one-out single to left and then staging a one-man rain delay. He rakes the ground around first with his cleats, a little gardening to rattle the old man.

Who is not rattled. In retaliation, he throws to first. Twice. Three times. Four. This time, though, the thief wins. Upton swipes second. But he perishes there as the fox strikes out Carlos Pena and retires Longoria on a moon shot that is perilously close to a home run. Moyer wrinkles his face, the fox knowing he has dodged calamity.

He has given them six innings of one-run, three-hit ball. It is a dazzling outing. Six good ones and they usually bring him home to handshakes all around. But this night, they are sending him back out there for the seventh. His pitch count is at 86, which is manageable. Besides, the Phillies would love for the old man to get them directly to Ryan Madson, and the bridge to Brad Lidge.

Moyer tries mightily but the Rays cobble one run and get another to third, and now they come to get the old man. He leaves in redemption. He cannot lose. After two muggings he has atoned.

Sometimes that's what old men do best, too.

The Phillies lost only one game in each of the National League Division Series and National League Championship Series - both by Jamie Moyer.

Last night, the 45-year-old lefthander from Souderton, in his first World Series start, was stronger. Here's how he did last night, outdueling Tampa Bay's Matt Garza, compared to his first two starts in the 2008 postseason:

World Series vs. Rays 6.1   5   3   3   1   5   4.26

NLDS vs. Brewers, L 4   4   2   2   3   3   4.50

NLCS vs. Dodgers, L 1.1   6   6   6   3   3   40.50

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