"For three innings Monday, Roy Halladay thought he could push through the heat and humidity. After the fourth, he hoped he could make it a few more frames. Just a few pitches into the fifth inning, however, he just wanted to leave the field under his own power.

"I felt like I could get through it, and then in the last inning it was just the point where I felt like I was about to get wheeled off the mound," Halladay said Tuesday.

It was a scary scene as Halladay repeatedly hunched over on the mound gasping for breath and dripping with sweat.

On the mound, he was dizzy and dehydrated, having difficulty even seeing the signs from catcher Carlos Ruiz.

Five pitches into the fifth inning, his day was done -- the shortest outing of his career.

For the next two hours, he sat in the trainer's room and didn't emerge until long after the game, his wife and children waiting for him outside.

Halladay returned to his hotel still feeling a bit out of sorts, but by the time he arrived at Wrigley Field on Tuesday, he was feeling normal once again.

"It was just one of those odd things," Halladay said. "I've never really had something like that. I've got fatigued and I've got tired, but nothing like that."

Halladay said he had prepared for the start as he normally would, and he has a strict regiment of hydration techniques he uses before each game -- beginning the day before."