CHICAGO – After traveling 2,500 miles, arriving at their hotel at 2:30 a.m to play their third game in a third different time zone within the span of three days, the Rockies should have collapsed from exhaustion in the National League playoffs. Instead, they shocked the Cubs and showed the world baseball in Colorado ain’t no joke.
In a win-or-go home situation, the Rockies beat Chicago 2-1, in a lucky 13 innings. “This will go down as a major-league baseball classic,” said victorious manager Bud Black, trying to put it all in historical perspective. But outfielder Carlos Gonzalez spoke more directly to the sports fan in all of us when he turned to a television camera in a joyous Colorado clubhouse and said: “Sorry for the heart attack.”
This wild-card playoff game began on Tuesday. It probably could’ve, and for the sake of everyone’s blood pressure definitely should’ve, ended four different times. But the champagne didn’t fly in the Colorado clubhouse until after the clock struck midnight on the Cubs, with a magical stroke of the bat from Tony Wolters, a hero that proves the game sometimes defies stat-geek explanation.
The winning single, bounced through the middle of the Cubs infield that scored , was delivered by a back-up catcher who batted .170 during the regular season. Wolters hadn’t produced a hit since Sept. 10, then delivered what I’m guessing was the biggest hit of his life.
“Are you kidding me?” said Wolters,, laughing. “Yeah, that was probably the biggest hit I’ve ever had, that’s for sure.”
This was the sweet agony of baseball in October, when love feels like a knot in the stomach. When prayers are uttered before every pitch, and memories that bond fathers and sons forever are forged by nervous sweat and bone-rattling cheers.
“People would be lying to you if they told you they weren’t nervous,” confessed Story. He added: “It felt like a war out there.”
As the Rockies and Cubs battled deep into the night, desperately trying to keep the World Series hopes of two cities alive, I tried to narrow the focus and see it through the eyes of Fernando Arenado, the father who knows the swing of Colorado’s slugging third baseman better than anybody on earth, and Don Freeland, a baseball dad who estimates he threw more than 400,000 pitches while the future Rockies ace learned the game as a Denver kid.
Remember where you were and who you fist bumped in Rocktober 2007? sure does. He was a skinny 14-year-old freshman at Thomas Jefferson High School. When Matt Holliday did a face plant onto home plate for the run that beat the in the lucky 13th inning, Freeland knows exactly where he was: Leaping off the sofa at home.
“I remember 2007 like it was yesterday. Being on my couch, watching Holliday slide into home plate,” said Freeland. He watched it on television, sitting alongside his dad.
Fast forward 11 years. Freeland stood on the mound in Wrigley Field, staring into the teeth of 40,151 rowdy denizens of the Friendly Confines and a Cubs batting order that included Kris Bryant and Javier Baez.
The rest of baseball laughs at Colorado, routinely mocking the game at 5,280 feet above sea level. Cubs manager Joe Maddon uttered a prayer of thanks this wild-card showdown wasn’t played at Coors Field, which he insists is on the moon.
“Did he say moon?” Black asked.
Yes, Maddon did.
“Nice,” Black said.
The ballots for the Cy Young award have been cast. But is it too late to demand a recount? With all due respect to ace Jacob deGrom, who richly deserves the honor, he doesn’t pitch half his games at zero gravity. Freeland pitched nearly 100 innings in LoDo, where he won 10 times with an earned-run average of 2.40, which would do Bob Gibson in his prime proud.
Against the Cubs, with millions watching Freeland on television, he made a new generation of kids dream of major-league glory. He shut down the Chicago offense on four hits and shut up the crowd, reduced from a roar to the nervous murmur of the age-old baseball angst never far from Wrigleyville.
I’m going to buy me a bulldog. I’m going to name it K-Free. Freeland is the ace Colorado has been waiting more than a quarter-century to find.
“I knew going in that he was not going to scare off and back down from this challenge,” Black said.
When Black finally marched to the mound and took the ball from a weary Freeland with two outs in the seventh inning and a Chicago runner standing on first base, however, the noise in the ballpark immediately increased by a factor of 10. Colorado relief pitcher threw his first pitch to the backstop, then immediately got himself in a bases-loaded jam. Ut-oh.
Ottavino escaped the mess in the seventh with a strikeout, but the Cubs got to him in the very next frame, tying the score when a double by Baez drove home teammate Terrance Gore.
The Rockies scored their first run so long ago I had to google it. Charlie Blackmon led off the game with a walk, got stuck at third when a double by DJ LeMahieu got stuck in the outfield ivy, then lumbered across the plate on a sacrifice fly by .
The drama, which began on Tuesday and didn’t end until 12:04 a.m. Wednesday in the Windy City, and went on so long that in extra innings, Baez hugged Arenado on the base paths, not to avoid a double play, but to avoid falling down from exhaustion.
Rocktober 2.0 might be one sequel that’s even better than the original. Nothing in 2007 was crazier than seeing one of the worst hitters in the majors deliver one of the biggest hits in Rockies franchise history.
“This game can kick your butt sometimes,” Wolters said. “There’s a lot of adversity, but … I’m not going to ever, I’m not ever going to let that take me down.”
The excruciating knot in the stomach? Get used to it. The Rockies are off to Milwaukee, to face the Brewers in the National League Division Series.
And the love of baseball forged during this unforgettable four hours and 55 minutes of baseball in October?
Thatap forever.
