Wow..,
Okay, I'm going to have to ask others who have also been fans since 1993 to correct me if I'm wrong in this thought, but this has to be the Rockies best week ever in terms of sheer drama and crucial wins. We've beaten two of the division's best pitchers, including one who has a pretty good claim for being the best pitcher in baseball right now, we won three of the six games thanks to heroic homeruns from our top players, including two come from behind blasts and last night's fourteenth inning Hawpe pop. Our starting pitchers have come through with some of their best work on the year, two promising rookies taking leadership roles in that regard. It's just been insane.
My old trusty computer can't even handle it, overheating in the bottom of the eighth last night and forcing me to use my cell phone to update the score and situation inning after inning as the night dragged on to the early morning hours here on the East Coast. I couldn't go to bed, either. I tried once in the twelfth, but I was just too nervous and excited so I had to keep checking the score anyway. And then finally the happy blue dot of in-play run(s) appeared on Thatcher's first pitch to Brad Hawpe in the fourteenth and all the stress turned to euphoria.
A little tension reappeared in the bottom of the inning, because I remembered how it was in April when we visited Petco. How it seemed that no matter how strong our pitching was, no matter what sort of clutch hitting our boys would do early, the Padres would find a way to scratch a tie and then win with the walk-off run. And when Adrian Gonzalez hit his solo homerun in the bottom of the ninth, all I could think of was not again. But apparently the Rox thought it to. Not last night. This time we finished what Franklin Morales so beautifully started.
Of course, it's easy to forget that in April we won the first game of the series also, before losing the next two in that walk-off fashion. So the Rockies still have to prove that things are different now, have to prove that they can win Petco baseball just as smoothly as they win at Coors. In this greatest week of Rockies baseball, we've thus far only increased our odds of making the playoffs from about 2% to about 4%. We need to win again tonight to really start making a dent in things. We need to win again tomorrow. There is no rest for the warriors.