Even When He’s Tired, Phillips Revs Up Angels : Baseball: His ability to get on base and his intensity level keep the team energized.

Tony Phillips had long since moved from left field to third base, but by the beginning of August, it was starting to look as if he had hit the wall anyway. His legs were sore, his average was drooping and the man who has energized the Angel lineup with his on-base percentage and his intensity level appeared to be dragging.

Phillips even allowed that his mind and body were “a little tired,” which for him is akin to admitting real men only play football.

Phillips is 36 and in his 14th season, but it didn’t take him long to suck up a second wind. Monday night, he scored three runs and hit his career-high 20th homer during a 6-4 loss to Boston. He has seven hits in his last 19 at-bats, with seven runs scored and three runs batted in.

Jim Edmonds may be an MVP candidate, Garret Anderson may have a headlock on rookie of the year honors, but Tony Phillips is the guts and gusto of the team. And his moxie provided the Angels with their first run Monday, after he tagged up from first on Edmonds’ fly to right. Phillips just beat the throw from Chris James to avert an inning-ending double play, but the risk paid off when he scored on Chili Davis’ single to left.

“The ball wasn’t going out of the park, but it was hit deep, so you go back and tag,” he said. “If [James] was moving forward when he caught it, you stay put, but he caught it flat-footed. That’s just part of the game.”

He likes to say that home runs are not part of his game, but in the fifth inning, Phillips slugged a 388-foot homer into the seats down the left-field line. It’s only the third time in his career he’s hit more than 10 homers in a season. He hit 19 last year, however.

“I guess I’m getting a little stronger and I’ve had enough at-bats to learn how to swing by now,” he said. “But I don’t want to talk about home runs. If I happen to hit the ball out of the park, that’s fine and dandy, but that’s not my job.”

The Angels, of course, were looking at Phillips’ on-base--not his slugging--percentage when they traded for him in April, and they haven’t been disappointed. His ability to get to first hasn’t diminished as his new-found power has increased.

Phillips has reached base by either a hit or a walk in all but 11 games that he’s started and when he doesn’t, he comes back with a vengeance. In the games following those in which he hasn’t gotten on base, he’s hitting .426, with six walks, 13 runs, seven doubles, two homers and nine RBIs.

He has walked 36 more times than all of the Angel leadoff hitters last year and he walked and scored in the third inning Monday. But the at-bat he’ll remember came in the seventh when he hit into a double play after Greg Myers and Rex Hudler opened the inning with hits.

“Anything but a double play, man,” he said. “I killed that whole inning. If I get a hit there, things could have been different.”