ESPN MLB Playoffs 2008

PHILADELPHIA -- Wait. What just happened here?

That couldn't have been the great CC Sabathia serving up that shocking Ruben Quevedo impression Thursday night, on the biggest night of his Brewers career. Could it?

Impossible.

This was going to be CC's stage, CC's moment. Everybody knew that.

This was going to be the night he single-handedly saved the Brewers' first visit to October since the Reagan administration, evened the NLDS and then took the controls of the team charter and flew it back to Milwaukee all by himself. All while serving steaks to his teammates that he'd just grilled up for them personally -- to order, of course.

It was all scripted for him, all laid out by the baseball gods with perfect precision.

If only that was how October works.

Instead, what October served up was the most disastrous outing of Sabathia's Brewers career -- all 18 starts of it.

What October served up was 3 2/3 tortuous innings by a man who started the night with a 1.65 ERA in this uniform. Five runs. Six hits -- every darned one of them an extra-base hit. One grand slam to a 160-pound Hawaiian (Shane Victorino). Four walks. And 98 exhausting pitches -- 19 of them just to the opposing pitcher (Brett Myers) -- in an outing that didn't even last four innings.

What October served up, most of all, was a devastating 5-2 loss to the Phillies that left the Brewers buried, two-games-to-zilch, with their man CC not scheduled to start for them again until next Tuesday. If ever.

This was not how those Milwaukee Brewers laid it out, not how anybody outside the 215 area code saw this night unfolding. But that's life in October. What's scripted and what happens are often two different things.

"No one's perfect," said Phillies closer Brad Lidge, a man who ought to know since he hasn't blown a save all year. "That's just how baseball is. ... Everybody in baseball is talking about how great CC Sabathia is. And everybody in baseball is just expecting it to be 1-1 after today. But that's baseball. It's not that easy."

For his three months as a Brewer, however, the amazing CC had made it look almost as easy as playing catch on the beach. He didn't lose for 14 starts. He went nine innings any old time his team needed him to. He was like a behemoth out of a 1914 time warp, launching 122 pitches on short rest and acting like it was no big whoop.

So why WOULDN'T the world have expected him to rise up -- in his fourth straight trip to the mound on three days' rest -- and rescue the franchise one more time? That's what superheroes do. And that's exactly what he has been doing for months now, over and over and over again.

But when he was asked after this game if people expect too much of men like him on nights like this, Sabathia shook his head firmly.

"No," he answered, "because I expect that out of myself. And this is where I need to be. This is the situation I want to be in. This is the situation I NEED to be in. And I need to come out here and pitch a good game [Thursday]. And I didn't do that. So you can blame this loss squarely on me."

That's not the same thing as saying you can blame this loss ONLY on him, of course. His team's offense, after all, has mustered seven hits in two games -- just three in this game off Myers and the back end of the Phillies' bullpen.

But part of being a great player is accepting responsibility when things go wrong. So CC Sabathia accepted every last ounce of it -- because no one needed to explain to him what he was supposed to do on this night, but didn't.

There were a million excuses out there to be made. Sabathia made none of them. He was the first pitcher since 2003 (Danny Graves) to make four straight starts on three days' rest, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He was the first in 16 years (since John Smoltz in 1992) to do that in a stretch that included ANY starts in the postseason.

But when he was offered that alibi, he wanted no part of it.

"I don't feel like starting on three days' rest had anything to do with it, or anything like that," he said. "I just think [on Thursday] I didn't make pitches when I needed to."

Even in the other clubhouse, though, they didn't see it that way.

"I know he's a horse. I know he's their go-to guy. But he's got to be tired," Phillies reliever Scott Eyre said. "Guys just don't do what he's done anymore. They don't gear pitchers to pitch on three days' rest anymore -- especially not as much as he's done it."

Whether he was running on fumes or not, however, this was a night unlike just about any Sabathia had spent on a mound in his career. And he'd been out there 258 times before this, counting the postseason. But here's what made this game such a shocker:

• This is a man who gave up six earned runs in the entire month of August. He gave up five in the second inning just in a span of FIVE HITTERS.

• This is a man who had allowed only one extra-base hit in his previous three starts on short rest. He allowed three extra-base hits in this game just in his first trip through the batting order, then served up that crushing Victorino slam two hitters later.

• Only four other times in those 258 starts had Sabathia given up six extra-base hits in one game. But he'd never had a start where he gave up all those extra-base hits and not one measly single.

• And he'd never made a start in which he gave up this many extra-base hits without at least getting through the fourth inning.

Nights like this happen to everybody sooner or later. But for Sabathia and this team he has lugged to October like a human tow truck, this wasn't exactly the time they had in mind.

For three months, said Craig Counsell, Sabathia has been the ultimate security blanket. For three months, Counsell said, "your feeling when you've got your ace on the mound is that you know he's going to give you a chance. And you know it's going to be tough on the other team. That's what it's been like. It's been a great feeling. But today, Victorino got him. He put a good swing on a pitch, and he got him. It happens."

Oh, it happens, sure. But it was the way it all happened that was so stunning. Because the hitter who changed everything was a guy who, by his own admission, is "a terrible hitter."

That man is Brett Myers. And Albert Pujols Jr. he's not. He went 4-for-58 (.069) at the plate this year. Over the past three years, he's six for his last 127 (.047). And while he's a .116 lifetime hitter, let the record show he hasn't actually topped .100 since 2005.

So what happened when Myers stepped in to face Sabathia in the second inning was one of those eerie, unexplained phenomena, kinda like Stonehenge. They'll be doing documentaries on this on the SciFi Channel any day now.

Sabathia jumped ahead of him, 0-2. Next thing they both knew, Myers was fouling off one unhittable pitch after another, the largest crowd in Citizens Bank Park history was apoplectic, Sabathia was heaving his ninth pitch of the at-bat -- and (did this really happen?) leaving it low for ball four.

And this game seemed to turn right there. Four pitches later, Sabathia had walked Jimmy Rollins to load the bases. And four pitches after that, he'd hung a 1-and-2 cutter to Victorino, watched it sail into a sea of rally towels and pivoted in frustration as the home team's ballpark erupted in utter bedlam.

It was 5-1, Phillies. And it was such a shocking, surreal moment that even Victorino said he asked himself, as he was roaring around the bases, "Did that really happen?"

Good question. It was the first grand slam in Phillies postseason history. It was the first grand slam in the history of Shane Victorino's lifetime. And it was the second slam ever surrendered by CC -- in a career in which he has faced more than 7,000 hitters. So we're still not sure it really happened.

"That was a big, big hit," Rollins said, "because it made that mountain they've got to climb just a little higher."

The Phillies never did score again off Sabathia. But they made him sweat for 10 more hitters, thumping two more doubles, getting four of those final 10 hitters on base and getting one more improbable 10-pitch at-bat out of the suddenly inexhaustible Brett Myers.

Before this night, Sabathia had faced 58 pitchers in his career. They'd gone 4-for-49 against him, with 28 strikeouts and one walk. Not one of those pitchers had ever extended an-bat against him beyond seven pitches.

Myers, meanwhile, had never had a 10-pitch at-bat in his career -- against anybody. But he had one on this night. Against CC Sabathia.

Is this sport insane, or what?

Asked if he was worried about Myers taking his job as leadoff man -- after grinding through those 19 pitches in two at-bats -- Rollins laughed: "Nah, he doesn't have enough speed. If he gets on, he's not going to be able to steal any bags. So I think I'll be safe there."

What might be safer, however, is that 2-0 series lead the Phillies have just taken. Since the Division Series went to its current 2-2-1 format in 1999, 21 teams have jumped out to a 2-0 lead. Only three of them lost the series -- the 2003 and 2001 A's (against the Red Sox and Yankees, respectively) and the 1999 Indians (against the Red Sox). And none of those teams, you'll notice, did that in a National League series.

So while nothing is impossible, especially with the Brewers heading home, their next two starting pitchers -- Dave Bush and Jeff Suppan -- went winless in four starts against the Phillies this year, allowing 39 baserunners in 22 2/3 innings. But the Brewers will need to win games started by both of them just to get their main man CC back on the mound one more time.

Those numbers suggest the odds aren't good. But if it's any consolation for the Milwaukee Brewers, they can look at it this way:

Those odds can't be any worse than the odds of CC Sabathia becoming the second pitcher in postseason history (along with Darryl Kile in the 2000 NLCS) to give up six extra-base hits without getting out of the fourth inning. Can they?

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com. His book, "The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History," was published by Triumph Books and is available in bookstores. Click here to order a copy.