Quintanilla delivers rare finishing touch to 12-inning game

By Jack Etkin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 24, 2008 at 5:35 p.m.

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David Zalubowski © AP

Colorado's Garrett Atkins hits a fly ball off Reds starting pitcher Johnny Cueto in the first inning. Cincinnati right fielder Jay Bruce dropped the ball for an error and allowed the Rockies to score a run on the play.

Photo by David Zalubowski © AP

Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, left, congratulates Omar Quintanilla after he hit a game-winning, solo home run off Reds reliever Mike Lincoln to give the Rockies a 4-3 in the 12th inning of Sunday's game at Coors Field.

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The improbable scene came at the end of a long, strange and even unsightly afternoon. There was utility infielder Omar Quintanilla, of all people, trotting down the third-base line Sunday, tossing his helmet aside and about to jump into the mosh pit of jubilant Rockies at home plate.

Quintanilla concluded a game that was entertaining in some ways and grotesque in others when he homered in the 12th to give the Rockies a 4-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds.

The Rockies left a franchise- record 18 runners on base, at least one in each of the first 11 innings. They went 0-for-16 with runners in scoring position. And their only RBI came when Quintanilla hit his second homer in 427 career at-bats, including 195 this season.

The Rockies were the only National League team that had not savored a walk-off homer this season - Cleveland, Minnesota and Toronto still await that joy in the American League. And this was the Rockies' first walk-off homer since Sept. 18, when Todd Helton did it against Los Angeles closer Takashi Saito here in the second game of a doubleheader.

That two-run shot gave the Rockies a 9-8 win and a doubleheader sweep in the early stages of their epic sprint to the postseason.

If that sort of drama is missing, Quintanilla's homer nonetheless enabled the Rockies to gain a game on Arizona, putting them eight games behind the Diamondbacks and five behind second- place Los Angeles.

The last position player on the Rockies bench, Quintanilla entered the game in the top of the 12th. When he came to the plate with one out against Mike Lincoln, it was the first time Quintanilla had batted - or for that matter, even played - since Tuesday at Los Angeles. He started that day against the Dodgers after not playing the previous four games.

"Not always in this game do appropriate things happen," manager Clint Hurdle said, "but that was very appropriate that that happened for him (Sunday) because he does his work so professionally. Shows up every day. I've never heard him complain about anything."

Quintanilla's homer enabled the Rockies to win the three-game series with a second consecutive one-run victory. The Reds committed five errors, their most in a game since they made six on Sept. 23, 2006, and those gaffes helped the Rockies score two unearned runs.

The first two came in the first inning, days, it seemed, before the end of the 4-hour, 24-minute marathon. The Reds made their final two errors in the ninth, when the Rockies tied the score on right fielder Jay Bruce's throwing error, loaded the bases with one out but couldn't avoid extra innings.

Ubaldo Jimenez allowed four hits and four walks in six innings but his ill-advised throwing error on Corey Patterson's slow roller in the fifth set up the Reds' second run.

Jimenez gave up a leadoff homer to Chris Dickerson in the sixth and walked the bases loaded before escaping a 35-pitch inning that finished him.

"It was another outing without his best stuff, (where) he battled, he kept us in a ballgame," Hurdle said. "He stayed away from one bad pitch, one big inning, so there's growth there."

Five Rockies relievers combined to work six scoreless innings, allowing just one hit - Edwin Encarnacion's two-out single off Brian Fuentes in the 11th - to continue the current roll. Colorado's bullpen has given up five runs in 34 innings in the past nine games.

Quintanilla was a spectator in eight of those games and hadn't had a hit since Aug. 1. He was hitless in his past 18 at-bats when he came up against Lincoln and sent his 1-0 pitch over the scoreboard in right field.

"I was just looking for a fastball, somewhere down the middle, in," Quintanilla said. "He got it in a little bit, and I just put a good swing on it."

As bench players typically do, Quintanilla went to the indoor batting cage during the game to prepare for the possibility of playing. With this game spinning into extra innings, Quintanilla said he "took about a million hacks in there."

When finally called on, Quintanilla watched Clint Barmes pop out, walked from the on-deck circle, delivered his walk-off blast, then saw his ecstatic teammates waiting to mob him as he trotted toward home plate.

"That is my first one," Quintanilla said of his walk-off. "It's an unbelievable feeling. There's nothing else that can beat that.

"I'd been on a rough stretch. I just went up there relaxed and just tried to put a good at-bat together. I only (saw) two pitches, but it was a good pitch to hit, so I couldn't take it."

Hurdle, clearly elated to see the hard-working Quintanilla emerge a hero, perhaps put it best. He summed up the game, which for all its shortcomings, ended dramatically and ended well for the Rockies by saying, "There's too many games you feel terrible about when you lose. You got to feel good about this game."

• August 24, 2008

  6:58 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  mrfxx writes:

  Would somebody - anybody - mind explaining to me why BOTH papers have the same picture of Atkins at the plate when it was Quintanilla who scored the winning run? Don't they at least have "file pictures" of Quintanilla - or couldn't they get one from the Rockies?

• August 25, 2008

  7:30 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Yankee writes:

  It took 13 pitchers 451 pitches (184 balls, 3 wild pitches, 1 balk) to walk 17 batters and give up 15 hits as the teams committed 6 errors (more like 7) all of 4 hours and 24 minutes to score a grand total of 7 runs. This is incompetent baseball played by two teams who could't care less.

  At some point the press has to start leveling with the readership.

• August 25, 2008

  7:35 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  kmeissner writes:

  Way to go, Rox! Keep it up. It's nice to see a walk-off HR from a player who usually doesn't hit them over the fence.

• August 25, 2008

  8:54 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Yankee writes:

  Maybe not.

• August 25, 2008

  2:47 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  SDcat writes:

  Don't quite see how you can see the Rox don't care. We actually think we are still in it. :) Stranger things have happened.

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