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The Dodgers' Joe Torre has never been one to panic easily.

AP

Although baseball is said to be a game of inches, the difference thus far in the National League Championship Series may very well be 409 feet. That is the distance of the deepest part of Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

The Dodgers could have returned to L.A. with a split or a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series if the ball that Manny Ramirez crushed in his first AB in Game 1 was a few inches higher or to the right. The Phillies might be the ones reeling if Casey Blake's fly ball in the seventh inning of Game 2 was hit to any other part of the park.

Some folks undoubtedly will classify Game 3 as a "must win" for the Dodgers after Joe Torre's team lost the first two games. I prefer to call it an utmost-importance-to-win game.

If this were a best-of-five series, then yeah, I'd agree the Dodgers need to win Sunday to keep playing. But now is not the time for the Dodgers to panic. Torre's calm disposition is perfect for Dodgers, who could use a big hit from someone besides Ramirez. But some questionable decisions by Torre in recent Octobers have made me wonder whether somebody slipped a panic pill in his green tea. The first one that comes to mind is starting Kevin Brown in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. (I didn't expect Brown to be among the players invited to the closing ceremony at Yankee Stadium last month, either.) Benching Gary Sheffield in Game 3 of the 2006 ALDS against Detroit made about as much sense as dropping A-Rod to eighth in the batting order for Game 4.

During his 12 years with the Yankees, Torre used to say that Game 3 was the most important because the situation often presented one team with an opportunity to take a commanding lead in the series or the other team to get back in it. With the Phillies up 2-0, this is surely the case.

In his first season in the Bronx, Torre's Yankees came back from a 2-0 deficit against the Braves in the 1996 World Series and went on to win it. Twice in the 2001 postseason the Yankees lost the first two games before winning the next three, first in the best-of-five ALDS against Oakland and later in the World Series against Arizona, although the later continues to be a recurring nightmare to Yankees fans.

Even if the Dodgers lose Sunday and find themselves on the brink of elimination,  their manager has first-hand experience, albeit a painful one, that 3-0 leads are not insurmountable. Derek Lowe and Ramirez, members of that 2004 Red Sox team that staged the most improbable comeback in playoff history, will wholeheartedly back their manager up when Torre says something like, "I know all too well it has happened before."

It probably wouldn't hurt for Manny to remind his teammates that the earth isn't going swallow everyone up if the Dodgers lose the series.