Philadelphia Phillies’ ace Cole Hamels will start in Game 1 of the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers Thursday night. And as the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, the 24-year old pitcher learned in his one postseason start last year that the playoffs are a different animal than the regular season.

But talent isn’t enough in the playoffs, which Hamels realized last season when he walked an uncharacteristic four batters and allowed three runs in his postseason debut against the Rockies. In front of a packed house, with a nip in the air, and the realization that every pitch can hasten the end of a season, the psychology of the game can change.

The X-factor is to harness that change. And, ultimately, to ignore it.

Hamels admitted that in the past he has allowed the emotions of pitching in a big game to affect him. But in Game 1 of the NLDS last Wednesday at Citizens Bank Park, he pitched one of the finest games of his career. He threw eight scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and one walk. He struck out nine.

Hamels attributes the success to a peace of mind he achieved through his workout routine.

“I think when [I’m] so focused on making myself feel healthy and feel strong, then you don’t really think about the game as much,” he said. “You just think about trying to be in the best possible shape I can be in…I think that’s taken a lot of my thought processes away from all the games I had during the season…And I think it’s helped me right now, because I want to be that guy that can go out there into the postseason and have success. And I think the success for me is not necessarily what’s on the scoreboard, but feeling healthy, because I know if I do feel healthy I can help this team out.”

I hope this kid succeeds. He’s got a great head on his shoulders and you can tell in his comments that he respects himself and respects the game. It’s incredibly hard for young players to perform on the postseason stage when they’ve never been there before, but succeeding in the playoffs is what great players do.

Can’t wait to check out Hamels vs. Manny Ramirez.

Not since the 1993 World Series team has the Philadelphia Phillies gone this far. With their 6-2 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the NLDS, the Phillies are heading to the NLCS to face the Los Angeles Dodgers. And as Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes, this Phillies team might be one of destiny.

For the homegrown nucleus of this team – Utley and Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell, Cole Hamels and Brett Myers – reaching the NLCS marks a major milestone. Having grown up in this organization together through mostly futile years, they have lived in the shadow of the 1980 world champions and the beloved 1993 World Series club.

Now it is their time. Now they can write their own chapters in the book of Schmidt and Carlton, of Dykstra and Schilling.

“This team has a lot of heart,” Myers said. “To be the first team to go this far since ’93, it’s huge. We’re going to try to put ’93 in the past where it should be. We’re going to try to take it a little further and actually win this whole thing.”

Rollins, who led off the game with a towering home run to right field, has been this team’s oracle. He predicted 100 wins for these Phillies, a number he realized was still attainable. After all, he never said “in the regular season.”

“We can get to 103,” Rollins said. “That’s the number.”

It would take eight more wins, of course, to get to 103: four against the Dodgers and four more in the World Series.

The Phillies’ 95th victory was a perfect example of what they will have to do to beat a Dodgers team that exploded offensively to sweep the Chicago Cubs in the division series. They will have to continue pitching well, but they will also have to hit the ball. They did just that today, blasting four home runs – two by Burrell, one by Rollins, and one by Jayson Werth. It was the kind of game this lineup hadn’t produced in its six previous playoff games, going back to last year.

I think Philly was fortunate to get a weary Milwaukee team, but that’s not to take anything away from them. They’ll get a great test in the Dodgers and I think it’s a great matchup all the way around.

Cole Hamels vs. Manny Ramirez? Sign me up.

After being swept by the Dodgers in the NLDS, Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that this is the worst Cubs postseason collapse to date.

The Cubs are now 9-22 in postseason play since 1984. They’re 0-6 the last two years. They’re 18-50 since they last won a World Series in 1908.

In this final game of 2008, starting pitcher Rich Harden was average, and everybody else … aw, the whole team simply stunk.

This is the thing about Cubs players and managers. They always say they don’t believe in curses, they don’t believe in any of that nonsense, they only play ’em one game at a time.

This may all be true. Indeed, there are times when I believe Soriano is not sure what planet he is on, let alone what century.

But the fans, the people who live in Chicago, the ones who aren’t on free-agent contracts but who throw in with the Cubs year after year, without fail, from childhood ’til senility — those are the people who get wounded again and again, without let up, without relief.
One hundred years are over, and now we start on another century.

To trust in the Cubs is to expect — and get — the worst.

Cubs fans deserve better. There seems to be the belief that Cubs fans almost want the club to lose so that they can remain everybody’s “lovable losers.” But not true Cub fans – they’re dying right now with each excruciating loss. When a team wins 97 games and runs away with their division, one would think they could produce one postseason victory.

Maybe curses are real.