WORLD SERIES / TORONTO BLUE JAYS vs. PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES : Phillies Accept Schilling Into Their Fold : Game 5: His image fits better with erudite Blue Jays, but clutch performance wins praise from blue-collar teammates.

In a parking lot full of mud-stained Jeeps, trucks and Blazers at Veterans Stadium, there is a dazzling red Lamborghini, with every option available to mankind.

It stands out like a cold bottle of Heineken sitting on a shelf with cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s like a pin-striped Armani suit on a rack of Sears plaid leisure suits.

Philadelphia Phillie starting pitcher Curt Schilling, who bought the $240,000 vehicle from Jose Canseco, never has quite fit in with a group of teammates that prefer beer and potato chips to champagne and caviar.

This is what made Schilling’s 2-0 victory Thursday in Game 5 of the World Series so difficult for the Toronto Blue Jays to accept.

My God, the Blue Jay players said, they just got beat by one of their own.

“I’ll say this,” said Blue Jay outfielder Joe Carter before packing up his cellular phone for Toronto, “he sure doesn’t fit their image. He’s more like one of us.

“I mean, he looks pretty normal, to me.”

This is why it wasn’t until Thursday night, when Schilling’s five-hit shutout was complete, that the Phillies finally went so far as to accept him as one of their own.

“He was the one who made up the quote of us being a blue-collar team,” Phillie reliever Larry Andersen said. “I don’t think his comment sat too well with the guys as he was driving off in his Lamborghini.”

Said first baseman John Kruk: “Maybe there were times when we questioned his gender. There were times when we just weren’t sure what was deep down inside him. I guess tonight, we found out.”

Suddenly, it was OK that this guy was hogging the media spotlight, answering every question until the last TV camera light went off. It was OK that Schilling wasn’t spitting, cursing, and looking like a lost soul from a ‘60s Grateful Dead concert.

When you can shut out a lineup like the Blue Jays’, preventing them from reaching third base in all but one inning, even the Phillies will ease their standards.

This, after all, was the same Blue Jay lineup that pounded out 15 runs and 18 hits Wednesday night in a 15-14 victory, daring anyone to pitch against them.

Schilling volunteered Thursday, and Phillie Manager Jim Fregosi never even had the courage to dial the bullpen phone.

“If Jimmy had even started to dial,” Andersen said, “he would have been facing a few death threats.

“I mean, it was not so much that we told (Schilling) he had to go nine, but him knowing what would happen if he didn’t. It was like, ‘Do you want to go out and pitch nine innings, or do you want to turn the ball over to the bullpen?’ ”

The Blue Jays, who swung at and missed only 10 pitches the entire night, still couldn’t figure out a way to beat Schilling. Certainly, he wasn’t the same pitcher they saw in Game 1. This night, he fooled them with his forkball, and dazzled them with outside fastballs. For only the second time all season, they were shut out.

“It turned out to be pretty damn good strategy on our part,” Kruk said.

What, throwing an abundance of off-speed pitches?

“No, tiring them out,” Kruk said. “They were so tired from running the basepaths (Wednesday), they could barely lift their bats. I was glad, too, because I had a sore throat from talking to all the guys that reached first base the night before.”

The Phillies also claim to have relied heavily on their short memory, or as a few players confessed, their lack of intelligence. Despite blowing a 14-9 lead in the eighth inning Wednesday, and leaving the ballpark as emotional wrecks, it was all forgotten by the time they arrived Thursday.

“Maybe we have no brains,” Kruk said. “Nobody remembered we lost.”

Kruk, Andersen and third baseman Dave Hollins stayed inside the Phillie clubhouse until 4 in the morning Thursday, trying to make sense of their devastating defeat. When they returned to the stadium Thursday afternoon, no one brought it up.

“The only thing we really talked about,” Andersen said, “is how we all had the same nightmare. Everybody thought we lost. I never had a nightmare that lasted that long. It went right from a nightmare to a daymare.

“But tonight, we erased everything on the tape from the previous night. It was like being taken off life-support and getting one of your functions back.”