The Zo Zone

The Phillies lost Fight Night last night in a 5-4 loss in 11 innings to the Florida Marlins at Dolphin Stadium.

The teams cleared benches in the top of the fourth inning. It started when Jon Lieber threw behind the back of Dontrelle Willis in the bottom of the second and Willis "returned the e-mail" when he threw behind Lieber in the fourth. The Phillies said the pitch to Willis wasn't intentional.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight ... Lieber has excellent control. Excellent.

The inning ended and Willis immediately turned and started looking and shouting into the Phillies dugout.

"The guy hasn't hit anybody the whole year and he didn't hit anybody the rest of the game," Willis said. "I have to defend myself. ... I'm not going to sit down and back down from anything."

Who was he screaming at?

"Everbody."

What was he saying?

"You don't want to know. I play the game with a lot of respect for both sides. He threw at me for whatever reason. I don't know."

Said Phillies catcher Rod Barajas: "I looked over and he was walking off the field, staring in out dugout and yelling. You just don't do that."

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Third base coach Steve Smith sent pinch-runner Michael Bourn home on a Greg Dobbs double to center in the eighth inning, which proved to be a terrible mistake. Bourn had stopped at second to make sure the ball dropped, so Smith should have held Bourn at third with no outs. But Smith sent him and Bourn was out by several steps.

"I made up my mind too quickly," Smith said. "It was a bad play. Bad play. Terrible. It was a deep gap out there, the ball was carrying and with his speed ... I feel bad for these guys. They played their (rear ends) off and I made a decision like that."

Dobbs scored on a single from Victorino. and scored him on a single to center to make it 4-4. It should have been 5-4.

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There is so much junk on the left field wall at Dolphin Stadium that from the press box nobody could tell where Miguel Cabrera's ball hit in the bottom of the 11th inning. Could Victorino have caught the ball? Could he have made a play?

Victorino thought Cabrera had homered, so he didn't really pursue the ball.

"I don't think I could have caught it," he said. "I think the ball hit up, where I couldn't have caught it. Maybe I could have played it differently. But I know for a fact there was no way I could have caught the ball."

By the way, Cabrera hit that ball off Francisco Rosario. He's the pitcher most fans wanted to pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning Wednesday instead of Brett Myers.

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These are tough times for Manuel and Ryan Howard, who is expected back in the Phillies lineup tonight.

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As we wrote yesterday, the Phillies have a plan in place if Myers lands on the DL.