To call “Rockies vs. Cardinals” a good baseball game is like calling “Waiting for Godot” a swell play.
There are baseball games. Then, on Friday night, there was the baseball game.
It was a masterpiece, a magnum opus, a tour de force to the very end.
Drama oozed from every pore of Coors Field.
Matt Holliday came home (but never touched home, as he did — or didn’t do — in the 2007 play-in game, or drove anybody home). Aaron Cook, Jose Contreras and Huston Street are back, and they were real and spectacular. The Cy Young Award favorite Chris Carpenter was brilliant. The Cardinals had champagne waiting on ice. The creeping- closer Braves had already won in Washington, D.C. The Gladiator Extraordinaire, Jason Giambi, sliced another pinch-hit single in the ninth when the Rockies needed to crack the Cards. Yorvit Torrealba, in a season of professional and personal highs and lows, lofted the ball of bliss.
The Immaculate Sac Flies.
The Rockies manipulated themselves a run in the first inning. The Cardinals countered with a home run in the seventh inning.
That was the extent of the scoring for 8 1/2 innings. Neither team perpetrated an error. The Cards had two double plays, the Rockies one (on a Holliday grounder in the eighth with two runners on base). There was rock-solid defense by the Rox and saintly defense by the Cardinals.
If you wanted 11-10 in a rainstorm, this wasn’t your game.
If you wanted pure baseball as it should be played out on an autumn evening, step in. A crowd of 48,847 did.
It was the fifth sellout of the season, the third on a scheduled fireworks night.
The unscheduled fireworks occurred at 8:49, when Torrealba, in the September of his life, hit the walkoff sacrifice fly. Both Rockies runs were on sac flies, and the team leads the major leagues in that category, with 59.
The Cardinals, who could have clinched the Central Division, couldn’t drink the bubbly, but won’t drown themselves in sorrow.
The Rox remain 3 1/2 games ahead of Atlanta in the wild- card chase, probably to play those Wild Cards. “I’ve got a good team here,” Cards manager Tony La Russa said as he leaned on the batting cage before the game. “But they’ve got a good team over there.”
These teams may very well meet again in the postseason.
With a runner on second in the bottom of the first, Albert Pujols, the best player on nine planets, grounded out, as did Holliday. In the bottom of the first, Carlos Gonzalez, acquired in the Holliday trade, doubled to open the first, went to second on a somewhat surprising sacrifice bunt and then scored on Todd Helton’s sacrifice fly.
Carpenter was as sharp as Norm Abram from “This Old House.” Cook was as accomplished as Julia Child.
In the third, Ian Stewart made a firecracker stop to get Holliday at first and snuff the Cards.
In the middle of the fifth, the lines outside the ballpark stretched down Blake Street. Thousands of people couldn’t make it by the 6:10 first pitch; thousands of others were more interested in showing up before the postgame fireworks. All of them missed a remarkable half game; everybody got to see an even more remarkable last half of the game.
In the sixth, Contreras struck out three around a Holliday single. In the seventh, the Rockies went meekly in Carpenter’s final inning.
In the ninth, it seemed as if the Cardinals and the Rockies might necessitate a delay of the pyrotechnics. But there were no complaints.
Helton walked to open the bottom of the ninth. Now you’ve got your double switches and pinch-runners, and Troy Tulowitzki’s roller to short was bobbled, and the Cards could get only a force.
Giambi lined to left-center, and Tulowitzki moved to third.
How do you like your drama — scrambled or fried? How about over easy when Torrealba produced his own firework, and the Rockies began the victory merriment.
They have beaten the Cardinals in all five games this season. They began the incredible ride with the sweep in St. Louis. They could broom the Cards again in the final homestand. They have reduced the magic number to six, with six games left in town. They have gotten back on the fast track. They have everybody back who will be coming back.
The Cardinals played a superb game Friday night. The Rox were slightly superb-er.
Cue the Roman candles.
