In Dayton We Trust: Wow.

Jack Dempsey/AP; Kathryn Scott Osler/Denver Post

13 STORIES OF A BASEBALL GAME

Listen to the musnt’s, child.
Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts.
Listen to the never haves… then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child.
ANYTHING can be.
--Shel Silverstein, as quoted by
Dan Lucero of MVN: Up in the Rockies

One.

A blog/message board serves witness

12:02 a.m. ET: I can't even describe
how I'm feeling right now. The ball over Holliday's head, the HR that got taken away from Atkins, and Jorge @&5227@#$&# Julio and Ramon Ortiz.
Draw the curtains. --Silverblood
12:03 a.m.: Ortiz?
I think Hurdle must be sending a message to Dan O'Dowd what he really wants him to start working on when the offseason begins tomorrow. --Rox Girl
12:08 a.m.: welcome back...
...I find myself wondering when the last time Trevor blew 2 in a row? --Gumbo
12:12 a.m.: Atkins...
This had better not come down to Atkins's line-up spot. --green

12:13 a.m.: The game was too tight
We needed Garrett's bat. I didn't agree then, and still don't, with yanking him. Carroll hasn't exactly been sterling at the hot corner thus far. --Silverblood
12:14 a.m.: YES!
One-run game! Now, Matt... PLEASE? --Rox Fan in TN
12:15 a.m.: YESSSS!!!!
I SCREAM!
I SCREAM!!! --Silverblood (the last from him on this post*)
12:15 a.m.: I can't breathe!! I can't breathe!!
Oh please --Rox Girl
12:16 a.m.: Okay Jamey
Don't strike out, don't GIDP. Hell, GIDP if Matt can score, I don't care. --Rox Fan in TN
...Carroll hits a line drive to right...
* Ed's note: We don't know who Silverblood is, but he has an epic recounting of his post-win reaction here that has won our admiration (scroll about a quarter of the way down and find the five-paragraph post titled "OMFG").

One more (though the one titled "I cried" from "Tulo will grow a beard soon" is worth reading as well):

1:03 a.m.: Anyone near the Lincoln Park bars in Chicago...
...I left my tab open at Halligan, and told the bartenders to only serve Rockies fans. I'm probably down a few hundred now, but please, be my guest.
Pass the Xanax... --honestyinmotion

Two.

Let's say, for the hell of it, this were all fiction. Or a dream. A dream of a dream. Then we would believe it, the stringency of reality would not apply, sequences would not be constricted by physics or the vise of logic.

Somewhere in the preexistence of time, it is written that this would happen, exactly such a season unspooled at this material time. And it is we who were chosen to be witnesses. We who were written too into this preformed plot. The hand that writes you into your next moment -- future conflated into past, imagined kiss turned to ecstasy or disappointment -- does it too write the past simultaneous? Do we travel in symmetry to unexplored and forfeited alternatives, winding ourselves inch by inch of diaphanous thread, gossamer of time, towards a beginning that is our death? And what stories do we tell then? What memories do we keep? Has free will reign then?

Or do we merely remember dreams, alternatives of alternatives? A dream that was not reality, a baseball game that never happened?

Three.

Let's say, instead, we do live in reality.
Joe: What happened?
Tom: Only the best baseball game I've ever fucking seen!
Joe: I had class. Missed it.
Tom: Who has class from 7 to midnight?
Joe: Okay, I watched Monday Night Football. Put $20 on the Bengals to cover.
Tom: You're twice dumb and a liar to boot.
Joe: Guilty. So what happened?
Tom: Let me start from the beginning...

Four.

...Josh Fogg did not have his best stuff. In the 1st inning I said to a buddy of mine that his pitches kept tailing into the middle of the plate and that I would be shocked if he lasted five innings. I note that the Padres, second time around, will stop swinging over or slightly under these 84-mph two-seamers. But anyway, at least his stuff isn't flaccid like Jake Peavy's. Possibly energized by their frenzied crowd, the Rockies jump on the NL Cy Young frontrunner and lead 2-0 after the 1st. It's 3-0 in the top of the 3rd when the Padres come around to bat for the second time against Fogg. The bases are loaded for Adrian Gonzalez, one of two good hitters in the Padres' lineup, and what happens but what we feared and dreaded and expected, a first-pitch grand slam to silence the crowd and put the Friars up 4-3. It's 5-3 when Todd Helton -- Mr. Helton, as I call him -- hits a solo shot to trim the lead in half. It remains that way until our boys break through in the 5th, again off Peavy. First, Rookie of the Year Troy Tulowitzki (he should definitely beat Ryan Braun, a.k.a. Worst Fielder EVER) doubles, hitting a ball to center that a diving Brady Clark would have caught if he was Mike Cameron... only he's not Mike Cameron, and Mike Cameron is not playing centerfield because Milton Bradley stepped on his thumb last week while chasing after a would-be inside-the-park home run hit by Garrett Atkins. (Oh Milton Bradley -- on one play last week, you live up to your reputation of being a hothead and injury prone by arguing with an ump and tearing a knee ligament on the same play... indeed, in the same instant... this after ending the season of the indispensable Mike Cameron -- you are star-crossed beyond words.) The next batter, MVP Matt Holiday -- he should be, anyway -- hits a single to center, which Clark fields and makes a terrible throw to the plate to allow the tying run to score. Then, in the 6th, Sean Smith. Who's Sean Smith? Just the hottest pinch-hitter in baseball. Brady Clark again misplays a ball hit over his head, which goes off the wall for a triple. He scores when Kaz Matsui hits a sacrifice fly -- to where else, dumbo? -- to shallow center, where Clark makes a catch and again makes a terrible throw to the plate. That gives us the lead, you know. It should be 7-5 a little later, in the 7th, when Atkins homers, but his shot to left-center -- which ricocheted off a hand rail beyond the wall -- is ruled a double. He's removed -- utterly unnecessarily -- for a pinch-runner, Jamey Carroll, who would replace him at third base. This would come back to hurt the Rockies, who give up the tying run in the next half inning when Holliday takes a step in on a ball off the bat of Brian Giles -- the Padres' only other decent hitter -- when he should have stepped back. As if in slow motion, the ball falls just over his head...

Joe: I can't take this anymore.
Tom: No, there's more... there's much more.
Joe: I can't take it. I'm sorry. I can't take it.
Tom: We're only in the 8th inning here... you've yet to hear about Matt Herges and Jorge Julio -- mercy on him -- and Holliday striking out three straight times after his misplay in left and the three-run comeback capped by a Holliday triple and a sacrifice fly and a head-first slide and a controversial call...
Tom: (head explodes)

Five.

By Troy E. Renck
They did it for the fans who were lined up at 7 a.m., filling every parking spot on Blake Street. They did it for the folks who hold up the purple Helton sign underneath the Rockpile on anonymous summer nights. They did it for Ed the parking attendant who didn't have to tell the arriving players what he wanted for his birthday. They did it for those who didn't leave after four hours, whose voices were gone from screaming and arms cramped from clapped.
But truthfully, the players, who grew up before an entire state's eyes, did it for themselves. From the National League basement in 2005, the Rockies' completed their improbable dash from afterthought to the playoffs, securing a berth with an angioplasty-required 9-8 victory in 13 innings at Coors Field on Jamey Carroll's sacrifice fly scoring Matt Holliday.
The Rockies, winners of 14 of their last 15 games, open the National League Division Series Wednesday at Philadelphia.

Six.

An e-mail from Alex L.:
Well that was the opener at Coors Field on my birthday on April 26 1005 when Bichette hit that walk off home run against the Mets, but I think tonights was as little better.

Cranston, maybe the Rockies will play the Red Sox in the World Series! They do have a winning record against the Phillies and the D-Backs this season.

Tao, see even perennially crappy teams like the Rockies can put something like this season together.

For once in my life, I actually care about something other than the Broncos in the fall

Seven.

Symmetry is poetic. Irony is poetic.
Brian Giles hit a ball that Matt Holliday misplayed, watched soar over his head, for the tying run in the 8th.
Matt Holliday hit a ball that Brian Giles couldn't catch, watched clank off the scoreboard above his head, for the tying run in the 13th.

Garrett Atkins had a home run ruled a double by an ump who missed the call.
Garrett Atkins, on second base, is replaced by Jamey Carroll.
Jamey Carroll, in his third at-bat, in the 13th inning, hits a line drive to Brian Giles for a walk-off sacrifice fly.
Matt Holliday (probably) never touches the plate but is called safe by Tim McClelland, who (probably) missed the call.

The silence and dejection and deflation after Scott Hairston's two-run home run in the top of the 13th was enough to make you hate baseball.
The ecstasy and jubilation and tumult in the bottom half of the inning was enough to wed you to it, till death do you part.

The Major League Baseball all-time saves leader blew his second save in three days. The Padres lost their third straight game, when winning any of them would have clinched them the Wild Card.

The Mets lost six of their last seven, when winning one more would have ensured a play-in game.
The Rockies won 14 of their last 15, when losing one more would have ended their season.

Eight.

A Mets fan threatens to kill himself, and the world does not care. The lonesome world does not care. The cruel world does not care. (Except...)

Rob: i hate my life right now
i hate everything
every fucking news source i come across

has a picture of a small child crying
i hate baseball

the small child is wearing a mets uniform
Sent at 4:24 PM on Monday

...except...

He is saved by, of all things, the San Diego Padres. The Colorado Rockies, too, mayhap, but that which he owes his life is not important. That he is saved is the miracle, for he is saved, he is saved.

The Rockies are God's Team.

Nine.

"Extra innings in an extra game, the team that can not say goodbye gets to say hello to America. And, America, you're going to love these guys." --Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News

The newspaper poets (and headline writers) and bards in Colorado, like the story of the Rockies itself, will just not stop.

The Rockies took the season to the 13th inning of the 163rd game, and it is not far enough. There is still further to go.

Ten.

Pictures. Lord, these pictures...

Eleven.

Anticipation. Written following their Sunday win, this lead from Mark Kiszla is, if not poetic, quite perfect:
He jumped so high for joy, 34-year-old first baseman Todd Helton did not touch the ground until he landed in October for the first time in his major-league career. And the baseball joint on Blake Street rocked Sunday, with more than 45,000 baseball lovers partying like it was 1995.

Twelve.

Repetition is poetic.
The Major League Baseball all-time saves leader blew his second save in three days. The Padres lost their third straight game, when winning any of them would have clinched them the Wild Card.

Thirteen.