PHILADELPHIA -- One team has made 10 straight visits to the playoffs. The other team hasn't seen the other side of Mount .500 in eight years.

One team has started three pitchers this week who have won a total of 619 games in the major leagues. The other team has started three pitchers this week who came in with fewer career wins (54) than Jose Lima (58).

	“	It seems like the emotions out there in the country have brought out the emotions in our fans. And that's what's driving us right now. ”
		— Rookie shortstop Jimmy Rollins

One team is the mighty Atlanta Braves, a team used to putting its playoff tickets on sale somewhere around the second week of spring training. The other team is the Philadelphia Phillies, an outfit so anonymous, it hasn't played an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball Game since 1995.

So what has happened this week on the exotic NeXturf of Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium probably hasn't fit the preordained scripts most of America had for how the National League East was going to turn out in September. But this is a time in our land when many strange forces, many strong passions and many unlikely tales are thundering across your TV screens.

So the Philadelphia Phillies are fitting right in.

They beat the Braves for the third straight game Wednesday night, 5-2. That Atlanta lead in the NL East -- which was 3½ when this four-game series began -- is down to a measly half-game now.

	Jimmy Rollins is greeted by Pat Burrell, who homered earlier in the game, after scoring the go-ahead run in the sixth.

This time, the winning pitcher was David Coggin, a 24-year-old right-hander who had gotten exactly zero outs the last time he'd started a game -- but twirled seven innings of five-hit, two-run baseball in this one.

This time, it took all the way until the seventh inning for Scott Rolen to drive in his regularly scheduled game-winning run du jour.

This time, the Braves left seven runners on, cooperatively stroked three double-play balls and had their manager ejected 5½ innings into the proceedings.

It has all been quite a sight to behold, all right -- a sight that practically defies logical baseball explanations. But maybe, in this case, logical baseball explanations don't apply.

"I don't have any explanations," said Rolen, after driving in the go-ahead run, on a looping single to left, for the third straight evening. "And I don't want to have any explanations. I just hope we keep playing well."

Before this week, the Braves hadn't lost the first three games of any September series since they got swept by the Rockies on Sept. 12-14, 1997. So this is not an experience they've had much practice at.

But if ever there were a team equipped to withstand the emotional tidal wave they've run into this week in Philadelphia, Atlanta is it.

"If we had our choice, we'd like to do it easy, but I know from the teams I've been on that it almost never is," said Wednesday's losing pitcher, John Burkett. "I've been on a team (the '93 Giants) that blew a 10-game lead, so I know something about how emotions can change over the course of a season.

"But I also know these guys in here believe in themselves. We were down eight games at one time this season, and these guys never drooped their heads. I think this team welcomes the challenge, to be honest with you."

Well, if they do, they've sure got one on their hands. But trying to discern where that challenge came from is a source of great fascination.

A couple of weeks ago, before the world turned upside-down, the Phillies were playing as lousy as any team in any league. They'd gone six straight series without winning even one. They'd gone from 15 games over .500 to five in just three weeks.

They were grumbling about their pedal-to-the-metal manager (Larry Bowa). They practically interrupted local programming for a special bulletin every time they scored a run.

They did not, in other words, have the look of a team that was about to come charging back into the race by winning three straight games started by Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Burkett.

But things are different now -- for them, for everyone.

We knew there would be a team or two that found a way to channel the powerful emotions stirred by the sad and staggering events in the real world this last week. The Phillies, it appears, are one of them.

"Being on the road (in Atlanta), when everything happened, a lot of guys' families weren't there, so all we had to turn to was our teammates," said Pat Burrell, who turned this game around with a 440-foot homer that disappeared down a center-field exit ramp. "So we all stuck together. It was such an awkward time. No one really knew how to react, because nothing like that had ever happened in our lifetimes."

So for four days, they were thrown together like few other teams were. They spent two days spellbound in front of their TVs at their Atlanta hotel. Then they embarked on a two-day bus ride home -- one eight-hour trek from Atlanta to Cincinnati, then 10 more hours the next day from Cincinnati to Philadelphia.

"When we got on that bus," Burrell said, "a lot of guys were ticked off to be there. But when it was all said and done, we had a good time. A lot of guys who don't say a lot normally opened up on that trip. We wound up doing a lot of talking and a lot of laughing. It was a fun experience."

And it was, in retrospect, a possibly unifying experience that has made the guys on that bus as close as teammates can be.

"They said they bonded on that bus trip," Bowa said. "So I said, I can call the Players Association. We can have a lot of bus trips next year.' Uh, I don't think they'll go for that. But you know what? They said they learned more about each other those days in Atlanta and on that bus than they have playing all year."

Before we start calling this team the best advertisement for buses since Ralph Kramden, though, we have to report there's one minor problem with that bus theory: The Phillie who has played best this week -- Rolen -- wasn't even on the bus.

He'd gotten stuck, following an off day in Florida, when the air-transportation network became paralyzed. So he had to drive to Atlanta, then keep driving all the way back to Philadelphia.

But if the wheels on the bus don't explain Rolen, the passions he felt in his ballpark when he returned to it Monday night might.

He hit two home runs off Maddux on Monday. His team won a game that might have saved the season. Tears flowed. Flags waved. It awoke something in Rolen. It awoke something in the Phillies. It awoke something in the people in the seats.

"There's been a different feel in the stands here this week," Rolen said Wednesday night. "No doubt."

There were only 24,036 paying customers in those stands Wednesday. But by the time Jose Mesa struck out Ken Caminiti for the final out, they sounded like 64,000.

"It seems like the emotions out there in the country have brought out the emotions in our fans," said rookie shortstop Jimmy Rollins, rapidly becoming a leader in a clubhouse perennially in search of one. "And that's what's driving us right now. You look up and see all those white (rally) towels waving all around, it's a great feeling. I haven't seen that in my time here."

Two weeks ago, this was a team wracked by tension, much of it brought on by the division between its old-school, hard-line manager and a group of mostly 20-something players who didn't know what to make of him.

Now, it's as if all that tension has melted away, after a week in which we all realized the stuff we used to worry about wasn't such a big deal.

"I think people have a different perspective on life in general now," said outfielder Brian Hunter. "They realize life is much more important than our little problems. We don't focus on the little things anymore. After what happened in the world, we don't let those things bother us so much."

Oh, they're still the team in second place. They still have four games left with the Braves -- one more Thursday in Philadelphia (Kevin Millwood vs. Randy Wolf) and three more in Atlanta in the first week of October. They still have 12 other games left with the Marlins and Reds, too.

And they still have a manager who has been through many a race to remind them: "We've still got a long way to go, believe me."

But something has happened in Philadelphia these last three days that has turned the NL East into a race again. And it's plot lines just like this one that made this season well worth resuming.

Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer for ESPN.com.