Signs of life return thanks to Lively debut

It all hit home late Saturday afternoon for Ben Lively, in a baseball park he hopes will become a second home sooner rather than later.

The 25-year-old right-hander from Gulf Breeze, Fla., not only made his long-awaited major league debut at Citizens Bank Park, he brought a ray of sunshine to a place which lately has been experiencing signs of nuclear winter.

Lively, who has been only getting better at Triple-A as the season progresses, stopped by to become the first Phillies starter since Gavin Floyd to go seven innings in his major league debut, leading the Phils to a 5-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants.

Lively allowed just four hits and didn’t seem exhausted after 98 pitches. He is only the second Phils starter (along with Aaron Nola) to go this deep in a game since May 5, shortly after things started to look bleak and feel chilly around here.

But Lively brought with him not only a youthful confidence but a one-day warming trend.

“Well, needless to say,” manager Pete Mackanin did say, “Lively’s my favorite pitcher now.”

He has other admirers. Three of them were jumping out of their family section seats much of the afternoon.

“I was more excited to throw my first pitch,” Lively said. “I was like, ‘Let’s get it out of the way, let’s go!’ But coming off the mound, (out of) the last inning, I kind of looked up, caught eyes with my mom. And she’s a little crybaby, so that’s when it all kind of sinked in.”

He sinked, sank and sunk the Giants for seven innings, although they weren’t going to allow the Phillies (18-35) end their latest losing streak of five all that easily.

After Pat Neshek picked up on the Lively adrenaline and struck out the side in the eighth, Phils would-be closer Hector Neris couldn’t close the deal. The thinhitting Giants (23-34) up and scored a pair of runs off Neris. But exiled closer Jeanmar Gomez came on to deliver a onepitch save, getting Nick Hundley to bounce into a force-out with the tying runs on base.

At that point, the kid from the panhandle could celebrate, just as his dad was undoubtedly doing in the sports bar that sits nearby the dock at Pensacola Beach where his fishing charter was parked after another workday in the gulf.

“No, my dad has to go catch his fish,” Lively said. But even though he didn’t see his mother Ginny until he was through for the day, he knew she, his grandmother Joyce and 21-year-old sister Emily had the times of their lives.

To top his pitching performance, Lively stroked a solid single in the fifth inning for his first major league hit, the TV cameras catching Lively’s three biggest fans in full celebration mode.

But he said the thrill of that was overshadowed by his lengthy achievement on the mound.

“Definitely, going seven. I love going deep in games, that’s one of my things,” said Lively, perhaps aware a starter going deep in games is a rarity here. “Once I get past 6, I’m like, ‘Another gear, let’s go!’ That was definitely special to me.

“Every game I’m out there, I’m trying to go deep, as deep as I can. It’s going to help our bullpen, it’s going to help our ball club.”

To properly gauge the change Lively sparked, struggling Odubel Herrera (.218 before the game) and Maikel Franco (.217) led the way at the plate. Herrera went 2 for 4 with the game’s big blow, a three-run double in the seventh inning, putting Lively in a position to win. Franco also had two hits.

“We got a lot of hits off (loser Johnny Cueto) and swung the bats well,” Mackanin said. “As I said yesterday, this is the kind of game that will kick-start us. ... We’ve got to carry that over through tomorrow.”

It’s certainly a game that will carry Lively over to another start, and probably beyond.

“He’s got deception,” Mackanin said. “The ball seems to come out of his shirt. Deception is a really important part of pitching. We’ve seen pitchers over the years with good deception. He’s got a lot of good deception.

“He was cool, calm and collected. It was really fun watching him pitch.”

But not everything went according to the pitching plan.

“I didn’t have any strikeouts,” Lively said. “I couldn’t even strike out my sister tonight. But they were swinging, putting the ball on the ground, and if they were going to keep doing that, I’ll keep rolling with it.

“It’s great. I’ve had a lot of my buddies come up in the last couple of years and to finally get my chance is very cool.”