LITTWIN: Theme for the night was walking

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 13, 2007 at midnight

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PHOENIX — Nobody threw bottles from the stands this time.

You have to admire the fans' restraint.

All the excitement came on the field Friday night, which for those of you watching at home, turned into Saturday morning.

OK, it was different.

For 17 innings, over most of two games here , the fans — by which I mean, the idiot fans of the night before— provided the only spark the Arizona Diamondbacks had seen.

And then came the ninth, when the Diamondbacks tied the score in an inning that will be long remembered for the runner, who could have been the winning run, walking off second base, straight into an out.

This was the kind of rally-killer you rarely see. But walking would be a theme for the night.

The Rockies, who don't know how to lose, found a different way to win.

An infield hit.

A walk.

When you walk Jamey Carroll to load the bases and Willy Taveras to bring in the winning run, you deserve to lose.

Four hours and 26 minutes after it began, the Rockies had won for the 19th time in 20 games, spanning 27 days. This game alone felt like it lasted a month.

Yes, let's just say the fans definitely showed restraint.

The runner was Stephen Drew. He was on first when a groundball scored the tying run from third. The Rockies were thinking double play, but the toss from Kaz Matsui pulled Troy Tulowitzki off the bag.

You saw it, if you were still awake.

I saw it.

The umpire saw it.

The fans saw it. The fans were going wild by this time.

When Drew comes to bat, they yell Drewwwwww — not boo. The fans were booing much of the night, on every umpire's call, and every close call seemed to go against the Diamondbacks.

Everyone saw this play, though — everyone except Drew, who, strangely, was looking straight at the umpire. The umpire signaled safe. The umpire signaled that Tulowitzki had been pulled off the bag. The umpire might as well have yelled in his ear, "Dude, this is the break you've been waiting for!"

Drew saw only what Diamondbacks had become used to seeing — a runner sliding into second and terrible things happening.

This was billed as a series for the serious baseball fan, which, as we know, is hardly a recipe for ratings success. For most baseball fans, being "serious" means getting to the concession stand twice before the national anthem — not memorizing the stats of players they literally can't tell without a scorecard.

Nobody seemed to care about this series outside of Denver and Phoenix, and, let's face it, you had to be generous to include baseball-mild Phoenix in that calculus.

But then Game 2 came along, mostly uninteresting Game 2. It goes extra innings, and everything gets serious.

I hope somebody saw it.

The game started Friday night at 10:19 Eastern Time, which was already past the bed time of many children and a large majority of middle-aged men.

It was 2:45 a.m. in the East when the game ended. It was 12:45 a.m. in Denver. It was the baseball version of Survivor.

Looking back, Game 1 was small stakes as far as fan violence goes. This wasn't a Tarantino movie. It wasn't like battery tossing, an old staple at some parks. It wasn't like a Miami college football game. It wasn't soccer, where, in the most famous case, Honduras and El Salvador went to war — or so the story goes — over a match.

The bottle throwing here at Chase Field — where the biggest reaction is usually when the roof gets retracted — wasn't even particularly malicious, any more than the Justin Upton slide into second base was malicious, the one that the umpire ruled as interference.

But what would come a day later? That's what people tuned in to see.

No dust-ups this time.

Just a strange chill in the air-conditioned air here in the 11th inning, when Micah Owings, the pinch-hitting pitcher, the Diamondbacks' own Natural, brought his Wonder Boy to the plate. He had hit four homers, seven doubles, a triple and knocked in 15 runs this season.

But you know which way the magic is going. Owings hit a fly ball to the outfield. Chris Young struck out, and the Rockies had a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven series — two wins away from a trip to the World Series.

I'm not sure how you beat that.

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com

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