WINNING UGLY, IN SIX

By RICHARD CORLISS

It was supposed to be a replay of baseball's first international thriller: the Great White North vs. the South that Rose Again. In last year's rousing World Series, the Toronto Blue Jays snuck past the Atlanta Braves, and everyone was ready for Round 2 this October. Canada's Team had repelled a Yank assault to cruise to its American League East title. The Braves had staged one of the sport's come-from-behind astonishments to nip the San Francisco Giants on the last day of the season. This year all that separated the heavyweight champ and the top contender from their inevitable rematch were exhibition bouts against unranked palookas: the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies. No contest. The challengers would be, in boxing parlance, moiderized. And indeed, Toronto, spurred by starting pitcher Juan Guzman, laundered the Sox in six sleepy games. The White Sox were like boxing's white hope of a decade ago, Gerry Cooney: slow, muscle-bound, awed, overwhelmed. But the Phillies were Rocky. After vaulting from last place to first in their division in one year, and after being gassed by the Braves in two of the first three postseason games, the Phils got mad and even. They would not be cheesesteak cream puffs; they would be winners. The town's legendarily cranky fans answered the ''tomahawk chop'' of Atlanta admirers with the sign TOMAHAWK SCHMOMAHAWK, while the Phils summoned a very '90s street attitude. ''Beat this,'' they told the Braves, and took Atlanta four games to two. America's city in 1776 is the U.S. capital of baseball in 1993. Philadelphia, the largest small town in America, is used to being slighted. Where other cities have megalopolitan pride, Philly carries a provincial grudge. So it was happy to see the sporting public embrace Atlanta. In beauty contests, the Phils couldn't win, didn't try. They had a different personality, drawn with the brute simplicity of a police artist's pencil. They were the skungiest bunch of biker types and overfed beef this side of Meat Loaf. In this high-priced age of media sports, a team has to have sex appeal, charisma and watchability, and the Phillies fill the bill. If the phrase ''winning ugly'' had a face, it would belong to left fielder Pete Incaviglia, who thunders toward a pop fly and doesn't catch it so much as consume it. If ugly had an attitude, it would belong to center fielder and team firebrand Lenny (''Nails'') Dykstra, the Dead End Kid with an endless muddy stream of epithets and tobacco juice. If it had a clotheshorse, it would be John Kruk, the Shmoo-shaped first baseman who tore his pants lunging for a ball early in the final game and, either defiantly or absentmindedly, left his underwear on display for the next seven innings. And if ugly had a poster boy, it would be Mitch (''Wild Thing'') Williams, the reliever who has destroyed nearly as many games as he has saved but is the beneficiary of something like divine luck. Infernal, for the Braves. They won 104 games this season, a franchise record. They have solid management, savvy hitters and an awesomely polished quartet of young starting pitchers. Everybody knows the Braves are the best team. But after losing honorably in the past two World Series, they didn't want to be baseball's version of the N.F.L.'s Buffalo Bills, thrice defeated by stronger squads in the Super Bowl. The Braves have an eerier heritage: they are losing to teams deemed weaker. And they have the stats to prove it. The Braves outscored the Phils 33 to 23; their hitters had a much higher batting average (.274 to .227), their pitchers a much lower earned-run average (3.15 to 4.75). The Phils were out- everythinged, but they didn't care, because the Braves were out-won. Or worn out. They had endured playoff-style pressure in their season-long chase of the Giants -- a vexing road tour that may have left them emotionally exhausted by the time their show opened in Philly. Karma certainly hung over the Braves like crepe in the pivotal fifth game, when they rallied from a three-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth, had a man on third base with one out and the profligate Williams on the mound -- and couldn't force home the winning run. That came to the Phillies in the 10th, off the bat of Dykstra, a nerveless sort who gorges on pressure. Rocky whupped Apollo, and it was Philadelphia that was gonna fly now to the World Series. No need for analysis. As the Philadelphia Daily News advised in a back-page headline, WHY ASK HOW? The Blue Jays, with their pristine hitters, are the Series favorites. In Game 1 they looked as dominating as any Apollo Creed, and the Phils looked rocky in an 8-5 loss. But the bad boys of Philly don't mind being the junkyard underdogs. Hell, they've had so much fun this far, they just might party all year.