By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/05/the-snakes-prevail-at-the-circus/People have said “anything can happen” in the postseason to the point where it sometimes becomes
meaningless. Until or unless things happen the way they did in Phoenix Wednesday night.
This is one time when a score such as 11-8 tells you something above and beyond a couple of teams
taking it to each other. Baseball above and beyond the call of sanity is one way to put what the
Diamondbacks and the Rockies did, even if it’s the Diamondbacks moving on to a division series
date with the Dodgers.
The only thing missing in Chase Field was a high diving act into the middle of a pair of synchronised
swimming teams in the pool behind right field. Those who mourn the demise of the Ringling Brothers
and Barnum and Bailey Circus should have loved the National League wild card game to death.
Maybe the public address system should have opened the game with the Beatles’ “Being for the Benefit
of Mr. Kite.” But at this circus, the animals had the keys.
When a near-perennial National League Most Valuable Player candidate steps to the plate in the first
to face a pitcher who throttled him 0-for-11 with five strikeouts on the season, but sends a three-run
homer seven rows into the left field seats in the bottom of the first, and it only proves the show-opening
parade, there isn’t a ringmaster on earth who could possibly find words.
Other than welcome back to the party, Paul Goldschmidt, that is. Nobody likes to see fan favourites
throttled in front of the home audience. Goldschmidt’s treatment of Jon Gray’s hanging curve beat
any pile of portly pachyderms any day of the week.
When a third-year, good field/modest hit, Seattle reject shortstop hits three triples including one
each from both sides of the plate, he becomes a new fan favourite faster than the most agile tiger
flies through a hoop of fire. Take your bows, Ketel Marte, and we’ll try not to be shocked if you can
swallow a sword—or the record book you entered, as the first to triple from both sides in a post-
season game—while eating fire, too.
When a one-time Cardinals postseason hero, who made a stop with the Rockies on his way to
Arizona, and who’s a .240 lifetime hitter with a lifetime .318 on-base percentage and a lifetime
.359 slugger, hits a two-run homer with one out off Colorado reliever Tyler Anderson in the
bottom of the third, there aren’t enough jugglers to top that. This Coors is for you, Daniel
Descalso.
When the Rockies pick themselves up from the ground in the top of the fourth with an RBI single
snuck past Arizona starter Zack Greinke, a run-scoring grounder hard to first base, a shuttlecock
down right field that finds its way to the wall and sends home a run, and a pinch hit first pitch
line single sends home a fourth run, cutting the early Snakes lead to 6-4, the laughing hyenas
are demanding equal time with the tigers and jugglers. Standing O, Gerardo Parra, Mark Reynolds,
Jonathan Lucroy, and Alexi Amarista. (Alexi who?)
Special thanks to Nolan Arenado (beating out what might have been the end of a double play)
and Trevor Story (broken-bat line single for first and second in the first place). And, while you’re
at it, step up onto your own podiums for those back-to-back bombs on 1-1 counts each in the
top of the eighth.
When the man Snakes manager Torey Lovullo hoped to have open the division set against the
Dodgers gets pressed into the bullpen and comes out firing to keep the Rockies off balance
and maybe falling off the tightropes they’re walking with reasonable aplomb, with a single run
charged to him when his own relief surrendered a run-scoring bunt scored a sacrifice, he wins
the battle at the possible expense of losing a larger war.
But that’s for later. Right now, Robbie Ray, you’re the trampoline artist of the hour. Have a big
bounce and a tall cold one.
When a starter turned reliever gets the last out of a mildly testy Colorado seventh, hammering
down the final out, then gets to bat for himself in the bottom and whacks a two-run triple that
one-hops the left center field wall off the edge of the track, Harry Houdini himself would have
an impossible time finding himself performing its equal. Who the hell does Archie Bradley think
he is?
“It’s the type of at-bat you dream about, you know?” said Bradley after the game. And of course,
Henry the Horse dances the waltz. ”Being a guy in the bullpen and getting to have a big at-bat in
the eight inning of a wild-card game with guys on base? And then to drive them in, is a moment
I’ll never forget.”
Neither will the Rockies forget the pair of runs Henry the Horse gave back almost at once, thanks
to Arenado’s and Story’s back-to-back blasts, pulling the game to within a run.
Or, that Greg Holland, their usually magnificent closer, couldn’t keep it to within a run after he
came in following Goldschmidt’s one-out single in the bottom of the eighth. Sure, he got J.D.
Martinez to force Goldschmidt, but he couldn’t stop Jake Lamb from dumping a quail over Arenado’s
head into left or A.J. Pollock from channeling his inner Marte and tripling home Martinez and
Lamb.
Nor could Holland keep from getting burned after putting Descalso on to work on the weak-hitting
Snakes catcher Jeff Mathis, when Mathis pushed a bunt past Holland himself to sneak Pollock
home with the eleventh Arizona run. ”I feel like that’s a game we would have won had I kept
it to a one-run game,” said the crestfallen pitcher afterward. “I just had that sense, that
feeling.”
Late-game insert Ian Desmond—who spent three spells on the disabled list during his first Rockies
season—managed to score in the top of the ninth when he opened with a single and came home
two Fernando Rodney strikeouts later when Carlos Gonzalez finally found a hit in his bat and lined
a single up the pipe. Maybe the last at-bat and hit of Gonzalez’s life as a Rockie.
But Arenado grounded out to Descalso at second and the show was over at last.
Rodney didn’t even walk the high wire as he customarily does. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself
to spoil the evening’s earlier entertainment. As if even he could turn a four-run lead into the clowns
pouring out of the toy sedan. If he had, Lovullo probably would have had him shot on sight.
“After one day, I think I’ve seen everything,” said the skipper. “And this was an incredible game.”
“Right away, all hell broke loose, and from then on it was a heavyweight fight, going back and forth,”
said Bud Black, the manager who experienced little enough beside futility managing the Padres
before taking the Rockies to the wild card game in his first year as their ringmaster. “We got close
a couple times. They stretched the lead. We came back. Obviously, it was a crazy game. It was
really something I don’t think any of us scripted.”
There isn’t a comedy or drama writer on the planet who could have scripted this circus. Neil Simon
and Tennessee Williams would have been pounding sloe comfortable screws to death at P.T. Barnum’s
saloon at the very idea.
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