ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Some day, Cole Hamels is going to look back on all of this with wonder.

He's going to learn, eventually, that baseball is a hard game and that its Octobers are piled high with pressure. He will come to appreciate the difficulty of what he's been doing and, just maybe, give himself an ex post facto pinch.

Some day. Not yet.

For the moment, Cole Hamels is living in the moment and striving diligently to avoid the step back that might put his performance in perspective. For the moment, the Philadelphia Phillies' ace is content to plow through baseball's playoffs as if there were nothing more at stake than which side pays for the postgame Popsicles.

"I think I'll still kind of play it slow and easy until the World Series is over," he said last night, "until I really kind of get excited about it, just because that's kind of the mindset I've always had about playing."

If Cole Hamels is not yet excited about his work this postseason, perhaps someone should check him for a pulse. Wednesday night's 3-2 triumph over the Tampa Bay Rays was Hamels' fourth straight victory this October and, in case he missed the memo, the opening game of his first World Series.

At 24 years old, the lean left-hander is already pitching for posterity. Should the Series last long enough for him to make a second start, Hamels will have a chance to become the first pitcher in baseball history to win five postseason starts in the same year.

Some day, he may realize that this is not routine. Not yet.

"He comes with that makeup," Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee said. "He comes with that belief that he's better than hitters, that he's going to get hitters out. He's got a tremendous amount of confidence, and in big situations he's showing that he's able to maintain his presence and his composure.

"He goes out thinking he's going to throw a no-hitter every time. He really does. Last year and maybe a little this year it probably got in his way sometimes because he is such a perfectionist. (But) I think he's learned to go out there and make quality pitches and the results will take care of themselves."

Hamels threw 102 pitches over seven innings last night, and nearly all of them had the quality of hitting the target. The Rays' Carl Crawford hit a two-out, solo home run in the fourth inning, and Akinori Iwamura drove in another run with a two-out double in the fifth, but Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said he didn't see any mistakes.

"From what I saw tonight, this guy could basically choose how he wants to break down his pitch selection (in) regards to percentages," Maddon said. "His command of all of his pitches (was) that good. When you have that kind of good command, you can pick and choose. Even his breaking ball command was better, compared to what I had seen videowise.

"He was on top of his game. He's a very impressive young man."

Phillies second baseman Chase Utley, whose discerning swing spotted Hamels a 2-0 lead with a first-inning homer, said his teammate has had better stuff than he showed the American League champions. But if there was a marked difference in Hamels' dominance, as compared to his two stellar starts in the National League Championship Series, it was not readily apparent to the untrained eye.

Hamels had to work harder last night than he did against the Dodgers. Twice he wriggled out of danger by inducing double-play balls from the hustle-challenged B.J. Upton. But the bottom line was still brilliant, and Hamels' cumulative postseason totals now read 29 innings, 18 hits, 27 strikeouts and a 1.55 earned-run average.

"I've done better, obviously, with the first (Division Series) game against Milwaukee," Hamels said. "I just had everything in control that game.

"This game, because every round you play a better and better team, you definitely have to be a little more focused. You can't screw up as much. And that's what I did ... "

Hamels says this so matter-of-factly that you would think he had been pitching World Series games since he left the cradle. Josh Beckett was like that, too, when he beat the New York Yankees on short rest to clinch the 2003 World Series for the Florida Marlins. Some pitchers have so much talent and so much confidence that they never seem awed by their surroundings or affected by big stakes.

"Going into the game, being on somebody else's home turf, the excitement they have with the crowd, you just have to take a step back and know that you have a job to do, no matter how loud it gets," Hamels said. "And that's what I was able to do."

Some day, Cole Hamels may pause to revel in his success. For the moment, he's just a guy who believes he's better than the batters.

"He knows," Dubee said, "that he has stardom written all over him."

Tim Sullivan is sports columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact him at tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com.

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