Rockies win, in extra innings, to break a three game losing streak. Yankees drub the Brewers. Red Sox shut out by Philadelphia. I birdie the eighth at Sunset.
With a little bit of LoDo Magic, the struggling Colorado Rockies beat the Chicago Southsiders 3-2 in the bottom of the 13th inning on Ty Wigginton's bloop single that plated Troy Tulowitzki all the way from first base. I fell asleep after the 12th and had to wake up this morning to find out. The Tuesday night contest had some drama, but I guess, not enough to keep me totally engaged. Both teams left 14 runners on base, as the two teams combined to produce 9 different half-innings of three up, three down. Rookie lefty Rex Brothers (1-0) recorded his first Major League victory with a 1-2-3 top of the 13th. Righty, Will Ohman (0-1), the fifth White Sox hurler in the game, took the loss. Todd Helton appeared in his 1,999th game as a Rockie. We have been very very fortunate to have been witness to one of Colorado's finest professional athletes ever. Put him up there with John Elway, Dan Issel and Joe Sakic.
The White Sox opened the scoring in the bottom of the 2nd, when SS Alexei Ramirez slammed a one-out home run, his seventh, into the left field pavilion off Rockies starter, Jason Hammel, the first of seven pitchers marched out by manager Jim Tracy. The Rox tied the score in their half of the 4th when, with two outs, Todd Helton, with former college teammate, Peyton Manning watching from a Coors Field club suite, blooped a single to left. Tulo drew a walk and Seth Smith drove home Helton with a single to left center off White Sox starter Gavin Floyd. Helton and third base coach, Rich Dauer, took advantage of White Sox left fielder, Juan Pierre's notoriously weak throwing arm to score on the shallow hit by the Rockies right fielder. The RBI was Smith's 34th of the season.
The Pale Hose took the lead right back in the top of the 5th on former Rockie Pierre's RBI double to the wall in right, scoring 2B Gordon Beckham, who had singled with one out, and pushing Floyd, who had walked, to third. 3B Brent Morel walked to load the bases, with one out. Hammel then got RF Carlos Quentin to ground into a double play to end the threat, not just for that inning, but also for the game, as the anemic White Sox did not advance a runner to second base for the rest of the game.
Smith tied the score in the 6th with his 35th RBI on a sacrifice fly to drive in 2B Chris Nelson, who had opened the inning with a single to right. Helton walked to push Nelson to second. Tulo then hit a double-play-grounder but hustled to beat the throw to first, pushing Nelson to third. Smith then drove a pitch to deep center, plenty deep to allow Nelson to scamper home. The Rockies are 9-4 when Nelson gets a hit, 8-1 when he scores a run. Too bad his on-base percentage is only .253, otherwise he'd have more impact in a Rockies lineup that is not firing on all cylinders. The walk-off, extra-inning win was the first of each for the Blake Street club, in their 79th game. The Rockies were the last team in the Major Leagues without an extra-innings victory all season, until Tuesday night. The Rockies had not had a walk-off win at home, until Tuesday. Not much LoDo magic this year, mostly LoDoze.
The Giants and Diamondbacks both won, so the Rockies are 6.5 games behind San Francisco and 4 back of surprising Arizona in the NL West Division. With 83 games remaining, the Rockies are one game below .500 and need to win more than 60% of their remaining contests to top 90 wins. Only one team in Major League Baseball has a .600 winning percentage so far this season, the Philadelphia Phillies, at .625. Currently, ten teams in the National League have a better record than the Rockies, so the Wild Card is a very improbable goal. Colorado needs to win the division to get into the playoffs. Can the Rockies do it? We hope so, but I don't see enough magic, or pitching, or timely hitting. or managerial strategy to warrant much hope. Prove me wrong Ubaldo and Tulo and CarGo and TracoDaca.
Meanwhile, the second-best record in the Major Leagues, the best in the AL, Yankees, lead the Red Sox by 1.5 games in the AL East. Oh, the Rockies wore their home pinstripes last night. Maybe they should remove player names from the backs of their jerseys and settle on the pinstripes at home, you know, like the most successful team in all of sports history. Just sayin'.
And for the record, 273 yard drive to left side of the fairway on #8, 65 yards from the center of the green. White pin, no wind, 64 degree wedge 6 feet from the flag, slightly downhill, right-hand breaker, nothing but the bottom of the cup.
Like I said, a perfect day.
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