Just another game

Tonight was just another game for the Phillies and Roy Halladay.

Yeah, just another game in which the Phanatic danced with Canadian Mounties.

Yeah, just another game in which the Phillies wore their road grays in Citizens Bank Park and pitched in the bottom of the 9th.

Yeah, just another game in which Roy Halladay faced the Blue Jays:

The Phillies righthander will square off against the Toronto Blue Jays, his former team, for the first time tonight at Citizens Bank Park. That's a big deal. He was that rare professional athlete who embedded himself into the community he worked in. His stellar performance on the field coupled with his good deeds away from the pitcher's mound made him a sporting icon in Canada's vibrant metropolis.
[...]
"It will be a regular start," he said.
No, it won't.
"Fortunately I got that out of the way in spring training," he said.
Nice try. Doesn't count.
"It's a little different being an American League team, obviously guys I've seen a lot but haven't really faced a lot. So do your homework and just go out and pitch like it was any other team," he said.
It's not the Mariners or the White Sox or the Rangers. It's the Blue Jays. And that makes all the difference.

Although, Paul Hagen couldn't get him to bite, Roy opened up a bit to his old friends in the Canadian press:

He briefly allowed himself to think about what it would have been like had these games been played in Canada as originally scheduled. "It would have been fun to go back, [but] in terms of from a media standpoint, it's probably just as well the games are here," he told the Toronto Sun on Wednesday.

No matter what he said, he did pitch like this game mattered a little more than a random interleague game. Halladay went seven innings and gave up six hits and one walk with four strikeouts in the 9-0 win.

Just another game.

The Red Sox and Tim Wakefield play really late in San Francisco. Former Phillie Pat Burrell is not starting, but Aaron Rowand is. Rowand kills Wakefield: 12-19 with four home runs and two doubles - that's a .632/.667/1.368 line.