San Diego – Baseball is a game played without a clock? Not at this time of year. Living in every tense moment of a playoff race, the Rockies feel each crucial minute tick away like a loudly pounding heartbeat.
“Nothing we’ve drawn up has happened all year, so just forget that, let’s go do the national anthem, see what the game brings, and we’ll figure it out as we go along,” Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said Sunday, when short-handed Colorado beat San Diego 7-3 to pull within tantalizing distance of the Padres in the race for the National League’s final postseason berth.
With the hunt for October down to the final seven days and six games of the regular season, their dreams have become so real, the Rockies don’t dare want to say anything to jinx it. Everything about the way the feisty underdogs now play seems free and easy, except for extremely tight jaws set around determinedly clenched teeth.
“We know we’re playing well. And other teams know it too. Teams know down the stretch they’re going to have to bring their ‘A’ game to beat the Rockies,” Colorado shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said.
To feel the true tension of a playoff race, you must be close enough to touch it. Television cannot do justice to the intensity of every breath these Rockies now take and every move they make.
At two minutes past high noon in the ballpark of a Padres team that Colorado must still catch in the wild-card race, injured slugger Matt Holliday’s worst pain was the knowledge a nagging oblique strain had erased his name from Hurdle’s lineup card for a second consecutive game. Again? These battered Rockies are tougher than they are pretty.
“We’re spinning a lot of plates, and some people are going to wear them,” Hurdle said.
Barely an hour before the game began, Holliday walked away from taking cuts in batting practice and headed for the clubhouse, vowing to lobby his manager one more time to reconsider playing him.
“I’m going to try,” said Holliday, looking more intense than when he stands at the plate while sizing up a fastball with the bases loaded.
Hurdle, however, refused to hear the plea of his star.
The manager instead gambled the Rockies could find a way to punch enough hits in the Hall of Fame résumé of San Diego starting pitcher Greg Maddux without the .337 batting average of Holliday.
“You can rally around the idea of everybody picking up the slack. For a couple days, you can run on adrenaline. But after that, you’re missing your best player,” Hurdle admitted.
Sit Holliday when he wanted to pick up a bat and give it a go when the Rockies desperately needed him?
This was a gutsy call that not only could affect Hurdle’s reputation with fans keeping score at home, but at this time of year, a critical managerial decision can also build trust in the dugout or cause players to lose faith.
“Through the course of a game, you make moves, and then the team starts believing maybe you can manage,” said Hurdle, his choices burdened by postseason consequences for the first time in nearly six years leading the Rockies.
The Rockies have done more than win eight straight times at the best possible moment. In the process, they have wrecked the psyches of two division rivals, leaving the suddenly bickering Los Angeles Dodgers dysfunctional and pointing fingers of blame, then causing the Padres to go postal when it became painfully evident Colorado was going to leave town with a series sweep.
Or did you miss San Diego manager Bud Black tackling Milton “Meltdown” Bradley as the volatile outfielder jumped angrily in the face of umpire Mike Winters during the eighth inning?
“That man is crazy,” said Rockies relief pitcher Jorge Julio, telling nothing except the whole truth about Bradley.
Playoff-race pressure can drive even a strong man bonkers. One loss can weigh a ton.
For the Padres and Philadelphia, here is what must be so maddening. Colorado now is the imposing, fast-closing object that really is even larger than it appears in the rearview mirror.
When hearts begin beating loudly with every tick of the clock during as the regular season winds down, the game becomes about more than pitching, hitting and fielding.
In the heat of a playoff race that has reached the boiling point, even paid professionals start running around with their hair on fire.
“Sometimes you’re going to mess up. But I’m a firm believer if you stay confident, things will fall in your favor,” said
Tulowitzki, who, the same as fellow young Colorado teammates, was required to carry a stuffed animal throughout this road trip to California as part of a harmless rookie-hazing tradition.
Minutes before 5 o’clock on the penultimate Sunday of a pennant race, Tulowitzki grabbed a yellow Big Bird from his own locker, walked quietly across the room and gently placed the stuffed toy on an empty seat belonging to Todd Helton.
“His daughter wanted it,” Tulo explained.
Unbearable pressure? No way.
For Rockies with absolutely nothing to lose, this is child’s play.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
