Diamondbacks shine again on brink of elimination

Behold the beauty of October baseball in Arizona. It’s when you show up for a playoff game and a party breaks out.

The Diamondbacks did it again. But never like this.

They made you celebrate. They made you sweat. They threatened to break your heart. They made 48,803 fans head home without their fingernails.

They put the “wild” in wild card, outlasting the Rockies 11-8 in a game you’ll never forget. And when it was over, they had sent a powerful message to baseball fans in Los Angeles.

See you Friday.

“Everything resets, everything is back to square one, and Game 1 is Friday night,” relief pitcher Archie Bradley said. “This series will determine who the better team is. We just match up (well). It’s going to be one hell of a series, and I can’t wait to get it going.”

Before that happens, Valley fans will need a moment to catch their breath.

GAME STORY: Diamondbacks win emotionally charged wild-card game

The Diamondbacks produced four triples against the Rockies, played for nearly four hours and watched Bradley add to his growing legend with his bat. And then the team’s best relief pitcher nearly blew a three-run lead, partly because he was out of gas from racing around the bases.

The home team pounced on Colorado. They led 3-0 after facing eight pitches. Paul Goldschmidt set the tone, a player coming off the worst month of his career, a player who had been badly overmatched in previous at-bats against Rockies starter Jon Gray.

And with his first pitch of the postseason, Goldschmidt blasted a moonshot home run, circling the bases to chants of “MVP!”

“Right away, all hell broke loose,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “From then on, it was a heavyweight fight.”

There were other great performances in a game that featured 30 hits and 14 pitchers.  Diamondbacks rookie manager Torey Lovullo made a controversial decision with his lineup card, starting the experienced Daniel Descalso over the potent bat of Brandon Drury.

Naturally, Descalso responded with a home run. 

“Torey managed his butt off,” Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen said. “The game presented challenges, and the Rockies are a great team. They kept coming at us, wave after wave, and Torey did a great job of maneuvering through the middling innings. Offensively, we never shut down. These guys deserve it.”

And how about Ketel Marte? He was a secondary piece in the Taijuan Walker-Jean Segura trade, a shortstop who was injured in the final game of the regular season. He responded with three hits and two triples, motoring around the bases like a roadrunner.

The last player with two triples in a postseason game was the Phillies’ Mariano Duncan on Oct. 9, 1993. That was three days before Marte was born.

There’s something powerful happening here. The Diamondbacks improved to 6-0 in elimination playoff games at home. Four times, they’ve plated 10 or more runs.  They have outscored their opponent 49-20 in that stretch of high-stakes baseball.

The best explanation is not found between the white lines. It’s in the stunning transformation at Chase Field whenever the team hosts a really big event.

CLOSE

Azcentral’s Scott Bordow and Greg Moore break down the Arizona Diamondback’s 11-8 win over the Colorado Rockies in the NL wild card game.
Michael Chow/azcentral.com

Let’s face it. Aside from Cardinals fans, Valley spectators are not stirred by regular-season sporting events. Normal crowds at Chase Field tend to be hand-sitters, sedate and sleepy, easily distracted by the team’s notorious concession stands. They are so unhelpful that Bradley requested pandemonium for the postseason, demanding that fans put down their cellphones.

He didn’t have to ask.

Playoff crowds in Arizona speak to our identity as a big-event town. There were nearly 49,000 people in Chase Field on Wednesday, and none of them needed cue cards or reminders to make noise. They acted like Red Sox fans or Cubs fans. They sounded like a city in love with Major League Baseball.

And every time this happens, the Diamondbacks respond. They don’t get these kinds of crowds over the grind of 81 home games. They don’t get this kind of passion during the dog days of summer, when smart Arizonans are out of town and the rest of us are withered zombies.

As a result, the team rarely gets to feed off high-decibel energy from their fans. And when they do, the results are breathtaking.

“Tonight was a dream come true,” Bradley said. “Why would you not want to be involved in a city and a state like this? Why not make Chase Field a place where teams come in and they’re scared of it?”

Just imagine if this is how Chase Field sounded every night. If this magical season runs through Los Angeles and beyond, it could happen sooner rather than later.

After all, the Diamondbacks did more than win the wild card. They are the wild card.  They are the team nobody expected to be here and the team nobody wants to face.

See you soon, Los Angeles.

MOORE: Bradley gets through emotional roller coaster to help win

MORE D-BACKS: Crazy victory sets a club record no one expected

Reach Bickley at [email protected] or 602-444-8253. Follow him on twitter.com/dan.bickley. Listen to “Bickley and Marotta” weekdays from 12-2 p.m. on 98.7 Arizona’s Sports Station.