The Phillies haven't even gotten the requisite happy ending yet. But the mythmakers are already hard at work trying to make Chase Utley into Reggie Jackson now that he's tied Jackson's epic 1977 record of five home runs in a single World Series. But the comparison is just more proof that numbers too often obscure the real soul of the game.

No matter how perfectly their statistics align, Utley isn't the next Reggie Jackson. He's becoming the new Derek Jeter, right before our eyes.

Any comparisons between Utley and Jackson should be disqualified strictly on something Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said about Utley on Monday night, shortly after Utley's second, two-homer game of this World Series kept the Phillies alive for Game 6 tonight in the Bronx.

"He don't like for you to say a whole lot of things about him," Manuel said.

No one ever uttered that about Jackson. In the mind's eye it's easy to imagine Jackson talking when he was born, talking from his bassinet, talking his way through pre-school and high school and A ball in Modesto, not just after he landed in New York and then lit up the city 32 years ago with an epic five-homer Series against the Dodgers that still glows in memory.

Nowadays Jackson is a Yankees advisor and he'll still amiably talk to anyone who asks him a question. He's still as extroverted, enthusiastic and funny as ever, still highly opinionated and given to spasms of ego that seem more amusing with time. Even at 63, Jackson still exudes the sense that he's Somebody, even if you just run into him on the street (or, in the case of a Swedish-born friend of mine, at a Connecticut golf course a few years ago. She didn't have a clue who Jackson was.