HILADELPHIA - These Phillies can hang with the American League champs.

They'll probably be the underdogs, especially if the Yankees finish off the Angels to get back to the World Series for the first time since 2003. The Yankees are big and bad and bruising with a postseason ace in CC Sabathia and a postseason stopper in Mariano Rivera. Plus, Alex Rodriguez is crushing the ball. All very good reasons they have a 3-1 lead in the ALCS.

But make no mistake, the Phillies will hang around. And don't be surprised if, early in November, baseball has its first repeat World Series champion since the Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000.

The Dodgers presented the more-eagerly anticipated storyline — a possible matchup between L.A. manager Joe Torre and the Yankees, the club he guided to four World Series titles — but the Phillies are, as Torre said after his team lost 10-4 in the Game 5 clincher Wednesday night, "confident, they're talented, and they're going where we all want to go right now, the World Series."

The Phillies can hit — they slugged 10 home runs and scored 35 runs in five games against the Dodgers. And they have an unstoppable force in Ryan Howard, the NLCS MVP. This is a player who, after slugging 153 homers from 2006-08 and winning the championship last year, dedicated himself last offseason to leading his team back into the Fall Classic.

"My focus was, hey, we just won and I want to do it again," Howard said. "I just wanted to make sure I got myself in good shape coming into this year … So I went and took the initiative and started working out with (coach) Sammy (Perlozzo) on my defense and started working out, changed my diet, tried to drop some weight and just be in good shape."

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It has paid off. Game 5 was the first game this postseason the slimmed-down superstar failed to drive in a run, mostly because the Dodgers walked him two of the four times he came to the plate. Still, he finished the NLCS with a .333 average, two homers and eight RBIs.

Jayson Werth hit three homers against the Dodgers; Shane Victorino hit two and three other Phillies hit one out of the park. "I think if you look down through our lineup, we've got guys who are dangerous and our power shows up, even in our seventh hole," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said.

These Phillies can pitch, too. They fashioned a tidy team ERA of 3.07 against the Dodgers, and that includes the unsightly 6.52 ERA from starter Cole Hamels. Take him out, and the rest of the staff was at 2.10 against L.A. Of course, you can't really take Hamels out of the equation. He was the 2008 World Series MVP, and he'll get a start. And then there's the matter of facing either the vaunted Yankees lineup or the uber-consistent Angels lineup.

"We're going to have to have better consistent starting pitching," Manuel said. "But we are very capable of doing that."

And then there's the presence of Pedro Martinez in the Phillies' clubhouse. He threw seven shutout innings in his lone World Series start — in 2004 for the Red Sox — and, as a starter who spent seven years in Boston, knows a thing or two about the Yankees, the Phillies' potential opponent.

Martinez tried to deflect questions about facing his former rival while dodging champagne sprays and beer showers in the postgame celebration Wednesday, but couldn't resist when a reporter said, "Pedro, you have a long history with the Yankees."

He stopped, leaned in and said, "No, the Yankees have a long history with me."

So, you know, there's that, too.

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