Roy Halladay gets long-awaited opportunity

When Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay showed up at the ballpark Tuesday morning for the first postseason workout of his exceptional career, he was greeted by slate-gray skies, rain and temperatures in the 40s.

Welcome to the playoffs. Don’t forget your jacket and mittens.

Truth is, though, that after spending a dozen years with a team that finished higher than third in its division only once, Halladay would have gladly scraped snow off the field with a toothbrush if that’s what it would have taken to get him to the mound for Wedneday afternoon’s National League division series opener with the Cincinnati Reds.

“There is definitely more excitement,” he said. “You almost feel a sense that you’ve done the heavy lifting and now you get to enjoy it. You get to do what you wanted to do.

“You work all off-season, all season to get to this point. It’s definitely something I’m looking forward to. It’s a great challenge. It’s something I’ve wanted to do my whole career, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity.”

It’s an opportunity Halladay earned after coming to Philadelphia from Toronto in a December trade. The 33-year-old right-hander rewarded the Phillies with a baseball-best 21 wins, nine complete games, four shutouts and 250 2/3 innings.

“As much as I enjoyed Toronto, I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity that I felt like, down the road, I’d be upset that I missed out on,” said Halladay, who could have vetoed the deal. “I have a short window. I need to try to win.

“You never really know how long you’re going to play. The biggest factor for me was where can I go that I have a chance to win right away? And not only right away, but hopefully have a couple of chances at it.”

With two World Series appearances and a championship the last two autumns, the Phillies certainly fit that bill. They’ve become such old hands at this postseason stuff that Halladay’s wide-eyed enthusiasm has rejuvenated what can be one of baseball’s most dour clubhouses.

“He’s very hungry. I think he’s starving,” Manager Charlie Manuel said, to laughs, in his down-home Appalachian twang. “He’s intense and he wants it.”

That’s because a championship is about all that’s missing from Halladay’s resume after seven All-Star appearances and one Cy Young Award. Yet, it’s a success that hasn’t come easy, nor been taken for granted, since Holladay’s career very nearly ended before it started.

After earning a spot in the Toronto rotation coming out of spring training in 2000, Halladay gave up 107 hits in 67 innings and walked nearly as many batters as he struck out. A trip back to the minors didn’t help, with Halladay posting a 5.50 earned-run average there. So the following spring he found himself demoted all the way back to Class A.

Halladay was so disconsolate — and scatter-armed — that at one point he told his wife he would jump out the window of their third-floor apartment if he could be sure he wouldn’t miss the ground. Brandy Halladay couldn’t be sure her husband was kidding. Desperate to help, she headed straight for a nearby bookstore where she happened upon “The Mental ABCs of Pitching” by sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman.

The advice in the 272-page handbook — some simplistic, some profound — immediately arrested Halladay’s slide into oblivion. A decade later, he still keeps a copy close at hand.

But the book alone didn’t save Halladay’s career. Hard work played a big part, too. Despite the awards and the accolades, the 20-win seasons and the All-Star selections, he still works harder than even the most chipper rookie.

Minor league pitchers who showed up early at the Phillies’ training facility in Florida last winter found it difficult to keep up with the team’s new ace who was at least a dozen years older than most.

In Toronto, it was just as difficult to beat Halladay to spring training — or beat him to the clubhouse once the season started. Some Blue Jays still speak in reverential tones about the time Halladay, hit in the head by a line drive a night earlier, was found running in the outfield alone more than six hours before the next game.

“He’s always working. You’ll never see him in his locker,” Manuel said. “On days he pitches, whether he wins or loses the game, as soon as he comes back in the clubhouse, he’s in the weight room or somewhere working out.

“Who he is and his presence and how he goes about things and his heart and his will to win, I think that definitely rubs off on our team.”

Halladay’s work ethic is so strong that a talented but immature A.J. Burnett went to Toronto four years ago hoping that some of Halladay would rub off.

“I went there for a reason, I believe,” said Burnett, who became a team leader with the New York Yankees last season, winning a very important thing that has eluded Halladay — a World Series championship ring.

“This guy’s for real. He loves the game, and he wants to be on a winner,” Manuel said.

“He wants a ring.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com