Ken Griffey Jr. is doubled up at first for the final out. (AP photos) | ZOOM |

        It all came together Tuesday for the Reds. No, not the resurgence they've been predicting with blind optimism, but the unraveling of a team that appears destined for a dreary September.

        Luckless fielding, shoddy baserunning and more empty offense conspired in one of Cincinnati's worst setbacks of the season, a 5-4 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on an evening thick with humidity and ineptitude.

        The Reds' inability to sustain the kind of charge they'll need to overcome St. Louis' 7¹/₂-game lead in the National League Central became clearer before a crowd of 22,470 at Cinergy Field, where the Reds haven't won twice in a row since July 22-23. Since then, Cincinnati (61-63) has compiled a grisly 4-10 mark at home. The Reds also have lost six of their last eight games, all against teams with poorer records.

        “We were so close a week ago. Now we're taking ourselves out of it here a little bit,” Reds starter Rob Bell said. “We can't keep anything going against the teams we should be beating. Part of it's untimely pitching, and part of it's untimely hitting. When things aren't going right, they're just not going right. Obviously we've been an inning away from being really good.

Dante Bichette leaves the field after he made one of two two-ninth inning errors that led to the Phillies' winning run. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

        That inning we're not good is putting us out of it.”

        Against the Phillies, losers of nine of their previous 11 games, that inning was the ninth, when an unearned run broke a 4-4 tie.

        After Pat Burrell singled leading off against Larry Luebbers (0-2), third baseman Chris Stynes fielded Marlon Anderson's sacrifice-bunt attempt cleanly but double-clutched the ball. His delayed throw arrived at first base a step after Anderson crossed the bag.

        Stynes, who plunged himself into a postgame workout, sent word through a Reds spokesman that he couldn't get the ball out of his glove.

        “That's the key play of the game right there,” Reds manager Jack McKeon said.

Alex Ochoa is greeted by Griffe and Dmitri Young after his first-inning grand slam. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

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        After Tomas Perez's bunt advanced the runners, Danny Graves replaced Luebbers and appeared to get the out he needed as pinch hitter Kevin Jordan lifted a pop-up to shallow right field. But with the infield playing shallow, neither second baseman Juan Castro nor first baseman Dmitri Young had a play on the ball. Right fielder Dante Bichette ran nearly 30 yards to attempt a one-handed basket catch.

        But the ball squirted away, enabling pinch runner Kevin Sefcik to score.

        “I don't think I had it in the glove,” Bichette said. “It hit there, and I kind of juggled it a little for a second. I ran forever after it. I went as hard as I could ... I just couldn't haul it in.”

        That wasn't all:

        • After Alex Ochoa's first-inning grand slam gave the Reds a 4-0 lead, they sent 24 batters to the plate — the bare minimum — for the next eight innings against Philadelphia pitchers Bruce Chen, Vicente Padilla (3-3) and Jeff Brantley (19th save). Cincinnati squandered its meager total of four hits in that span by hitting into four inning-ending double plays. Bichette grounded into two of them and popped up into another to end the game.

        • That final out was recorded when Ken Griffey Jr. was doubled off first base. As McKeon confirmed, Griffey followed orders by breaking on Brantley's 3-2 pitch to Bichette. But Phillies first baseman Travis Lee fanned suspicions that Griffey didn't follow the flight of the ball: “He didn't get a huge jump at all. He must not have looked in (to locate the ball).”

Dmitri Young is out at home trying to score on a shalow fly in the fourth. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

        The Phillies turned another double play in the fourth inning when Dmitri Young tried to score on Benito Santiago's one-out fly to shallow center.

        Bell faltered in the third when he yielded two-out, two-run homers to Bobby Abreu and Scott Rolen that tied the score. The rookie right-hander was effective otherwise, lasting seven innings. But on this evening of discontent, even that didn't please McKeon.

        “A game like that shouldn't get away,” he said. “You get a pitcher four runs in the first inning, you've got to hold them for a while.”

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