HOPEFULLY THEY AT LEAST HIRED A LAWN SERVICE FOR THE KID:

Hamels vs. Bonds would be ESPN classic (Bill Conlin, 5/05/06, Philadelphia Daily News)

IT WAS a sunwashed early September afternoon in the middle of the last century. I can't tell you why I was in the rightfield bleachers of the Polo Grounds for a doubleheader between the New York Giants and the Phillies.

I hated the Giants and knew nothing about the Phillies except they had been baseball's armpit for more than 30 years with no deodorant. Maybe my dad had scored some free tickets during his appointed rounds of the Murder Incorporated gin mills along the docks in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood, made infamous by Marlon Brando in "On The Waterfront.''

I wound up rooting for the Phillies that day and the two young pitchers manager Eddie Sawyer ran out there. And I cheered for the straw-haired centerfielder, who ran like Buster Keaton pursued by the cops in a Mac Sennett silent movie.

The pitchers were Robin Roberts, 21, and Curt Simmons, 19. Roberts had been signed to a big bonus out of Michigan State. Simmons was a stunning lefthander signed out of high school in Egypt, Pa. Both had brief minor league careers.

They came to mind after Cole Hamels, who throws harder than Simmons, matches the radar control of Roberts and has one of the great changeups in baseball today, ran his Triple A record to 2-0 with one walk and 26 strikeouts in 16 innings of scoreless work. I don't recall owner Bob Carpenter, who served as his own GM after the death of Herb Pennock that January, saying he hoped Roberts and Simmons would get lit up for the Wilmington Blue Rocks so he could see how the kids would bounce back from adversity. As Pat Gillick did the other day. I've been around a lot of GMs who were lit, but never heard one advocate that particular derivative of the sink-or-swim philosophy.

I don't recall who pitched which game in that sparsely attended Polo Grounds twinbill. The Giants, a .500 team, swept the second-division Phils. Roberts and Simmons both pitched well enough to make my list of "must-follow'' pitchers. Willie Mays would later call Simmons the toughest pitcher he ever faced - until a bizarre lawn-mower accident snipped a toe from a foot and a yard from Curt's fastball.

The Phillies play Barry Bonds at home on ESPN Sunday night. It's a national stage for Bonds. It could and should be a national stage for Cole Hamels, as well. It's his pitching day, and he is scheduled to start for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons.