King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Rockies top the Padres in a wild-card classic. TBS's playoff debut is a little bland. That's a good, un-Foxy thing.
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Oct. 2, 2007 | If every wild-card playoff spot, every year, were decided by a game like the Battle of Denver Monday night, even the last of us holdouts would have to admit that the wild card's pretty all right.
The Colorado Rockies made it 14 wins in 15 games and qualified for the playoffs proper by staging a rally in the bottom of the 13th inning against one of the greatest relief pitchers of all time to overcome a two-run deficit and beat the San Diego Padres 9-8. If that sounds good, it doesn't even hint at how good it was.
It was a classic October baseball game, with comebacks, a grand slam, clutch relief pitching, missed opportunities, surprising heroes -- except for those of you in the Seth Smith and Jamey Carroll Marching and Chowder societies -- and controversy. Matt Holliday, Denver's choice for National League MVP, scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly by Carroll.
Or did he? Replays were inconclusive about whether Holliday managed to touch the plate with his left hand as Padres catcher Michael Barrett blocked him with his left foot.
Replays were also inconclusive about a seventh-inning double off the top of the fence by Garrett Atkins of Colorado that the Rockies and the home fans thought should have been ruled a home run. The Rockies have now lost what they thought were four home runs this year on calls like that.
But none of it matters now. After that wildly entertaining game, after the near silence that greeted Scott Hairston's two-run homer in the top of the 13th and the pandemonium that erupted as the Rockies rallied to win against Trevor Hoffman in the bottom half on doubles by Kaz Matsui and Troy Tulowitzki, a triple by Holliday and Carroll's fly, all that matters is that this most improbable Rockies team, a complete afterthought two weeks ago, has survived to play the Philadelphia Phillies in the divisional round.
The Phillies had a pretty good comeback story themselves. They can just hush about it now. If the Phillies came from nowhere to overtake the New York Mets in the National League East, the Rockies came from a spider hole next to that little shack that's out behind nowhere. Not that one. The other one.
They roar into the playoffs, a pair of unbeatable momentum juggernauts on a collision course. While the Rockies were going 14-1 down the stretch, the Phillies went 13-4. Of course, momentum is that thing you have until you don't have it anymore. The 1951 New York Giants, those comeback kings who ended the season by going 49-9, including 14-2 at the wire, lost in the World Series.
Next page: One of these comeback wonders has to go down. Plus: TBS makes its playoff debut