Phillies' Howard picks perfect time to swing into action

THE WORLD is back in order.

The Ryan Howard that hit .234 with 17 strikeouts and one home run in his first 13 career playoff games; the Howard to whom teams chose to pitch rather than face Chase Utley in the third slot ahead of him; he is gone.

He has been replaced by the one the world knows better, the slugger who surged into the MVP race in September: This Howard hit two homers and drove in five runs last night.

"It's the kind of stuff you dream of when you're a teenager," Howard said.

When Howard was a teenager, his postseason dreams did not include flailing continuously.

"You go through these runs. Unfortunately, it started for me at the beginning of the playoffs," Howard said. "I think everybody would rather have me hot right now."

Howard last night dropped the bat head on Andy Sonnanstine's lazy slider as it floated toward the outside part of the plate and drove it over the leftfield wall: a three-run shot.

He then turned on a low, sizzling Trever Miller fastball in the eighth, a two-run shot that would have broken a seat had it not been filled with a delirious Howard supporter.

They were his second and third homers of the postseason. They were his third and fourth homers in 16 career playoff games.

The first one gave the Phillies a 5-1 lead. The second made it 10-2, the final in Game 4 of the World Series.

They changed everything.

Utley had walked on four pitches in his first at-bat. He had fanned on an evil slider from Sonnanstine just before Howard's homer, an at-bat in which Sonnanstine clearly wanted none of Utley's best.

Then, the Howard homer.

When Utley next hit, in the sixth with a runner on second and no outs, reliever Edwin Jackson, a righthander, came hard at Utley with a runner on second and no outs. Utley struck out again, but he got pitches to hit.

Howard didn't.

Jackson intentionally walked him.

Not coincidentally, the birds began to sing, the sun slipped from behind a cloud, still brooks started to babble and the laughter of children filled the air.

"There's a difference between great hitters and real, real great hitters," said Phillies manager Charlie Manuel. "I look at Ryan Howard, and he's a carrier. He can put you on his back and carry you."

Howard was lugging last night.

Utley walked again in the eighth, against Miller, a lefthander who struck Howard out in Game 1.

Things went differently last night.

Things went more according to the natural order of things.

Howard's five RBI tied the team World Series record set by Milt Thompson, also in a Game 4, in 1993 against the Blue Jays.

Thompson is Howard's current hitting coach.

"I wish he had broken it," Thompson said.

Howard led the majors with 48 homers and 146 RBI this season, eight more homers and 22 more RBI than the No. 2s. His 14-homer, 38-RBI stretch over his last 31 games helped the Phillies win the National League East for the second straight season.

It was a typical late Ryan run in a typical Ryan production year, albeit with a pedestrian .251 average and 199 strikeouts. The strikeouts tied the major-league record he set in 2007 (broken this year by Mark Reynolds) and helped account for the poor average.

Howard walked just 81 times, about 26 times fewer than each of his last two seasons - mainly because he was intentionally walked just 17 times, about 20 fewer intentional walks than each of his last two seasons.

Managers got wise. Howard was much more likely to strike out than anything else. So they let him.

Rays manager Joe Maddon is wiser than most. He made Howard prove that he was in a groove.

"We have not been pitching around anybody to get to to him," Maddon insisted - despite Utley's walk frequency in certain situations. "He's good. He's good. We never take people like that for granted. Ever."

Maddon likened Howard's playoff struggles to those of David Ortiz, the Boston slugger who came alive and gave the Rays a scare in the ALCS: "I trust him. Guys like that, when they hit them, they normally come in bunches."

Yes, Howard had gone 6-for-12 in the last three games against the Dodgers, but he walked just twice and drove in two runs.

Howard began the series against the Rays with an 0-for-4 outing with three strikeouts. The third came after Maddon instructed his pitcher to intentionally walk Utley to get to Howard.

Howard was then a harmless 2-for-5 in the Game 2 loss.

"I'm mortal," Howard explained. "I bleed."

After an hour-long session in the batting cage on the off day Friday, Howard showed signs of reverting to his aircraft-carrier self.

But, even though Howard homered in Game 3, he also struck out twice.

He managed a weak grounder in the first inning last night, then singled in his second at-bat. Then came his third, and the slider, and the homer . . . and the walk . . . and the homer . . .

And, normalcy. *