Tag Archives: Arizona Diamondbacks

Not now, Snakes

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Arizona Diamondbacks

The Diamondbacks fell in this World Series, and losing the final three at their own Chase Field really stings. But . . .

Stop right there. I mean you, everyone who thought “Bill Buckner” the moment Diamondbacks center fielder Alek Thomas over-ran Jonah Heim’s top of the ninth RBI single into an extra Rangers run, two outs before Marcus Semien slammed an exclamation point down upon the season and the Diamondbacks’ fate.

For one thing, the Diamondbacks still had three outs to play with coming at the plate. For another thing, these Snakes were that resilient bunch who usually found ways to overcome when absolutely necessary, no?

Not this time. Just as they couldn’t quite close a Game Four blowout into a possible tie and overthrow, they couldn’t turn a near-eleventh hour Game Five deficit into another tie or overthrow. It hurt even more losing the World Series with a three-sweep at home after splitting the first pair in Arlington.

At last, as Semien’s two-run homer off Diamondbacks finisher Paul Sewald disappeared over the left center field fence in the top of the ninth, that Diamondbacks resiliency failed them even as the Rangers’ equal resiliency hurtled them to the Promised Land in five arduous World Series games.

“I definitely could have done a better job of getting in front of the [Heim] and calming down and just fielding it,” Thomas said postgame, refusing to shrink away, “but I think I rushed it and just didn’t get the glove down. I think I made an error on that two times last year and this year, and I think by now I should learn my lesson on how to go about that ball. But definitely gonna work on that in the offseason, make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Long before Thomas had his moment of ill fate, the Diamondbacks failed to rise to several occasions. Their gallant starting pitcher Zac Gallen took a no-hitter through six innings while his Rangers counterpart Nathan Eovaldi pitched into and out of heavy traffic yet refused to surrender so much as a single run.

They loaded the bases on Eovaldi in the first and the fifth and left them that way. They had to know Eovaldi didn’t have his best stuff to throw and couldn’t do more than four hits despite also drawing five walks on the veteran righthander.

Then the most they could do against the Ranger bullpen was a seventh-inning walk, an eighth-inning base hit, and nothing else to show for it while that pen struck them out five times, including Ketel Marte looking at strike three from Josh Sborz to end Game Five and the Series whole.

“To get a taste of postseason baseball and the World Series,” said veteran Snakes designated hitter Tommy Pham, “if this doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will. This is a young team. There’s a core you can build around. And now everybody knows what it takes to get here.”

Pham surely didn’t mean backing into the postseason in the first place, as the Diamondbacks did claiming a wild card slot after finishing well back of the National League West-owning Dodgers on the regular season. Once they got there, though, they swept two division winners (the Brewers, the Dodgers) out of the wild card and division series rounds, then fought the Phillies to a seven-game National League Championship Series conquest.

Then they ran into the Rangers. Except for their 9-1 Game Two win, for the Diamondbacks this was like running into a pack of snake hunters unwilling to show much in the way of mercy. Even when they fought back from a 10-1 blowout in the making to make it 11-7 in Game Three, the Rangers were too much for the Diamondbacks to handle.

These Snakes didn’t have the star power of their 2001 World Series-winning predecessors. They kind of liked it that way, too. “I felt like we’re definitely a bunch of misfits,” said relief pitcher Ryan Thompson after Game Five ended.

That’s what makes us special. We got a bunch of young guys who are hungry, doing it for the first time. We got a bunch of veterans who have been there, done that, but not quite won the whole thing. It’s awesome being able to put our names on the map.

Gangs of misfits have won World Series in the past, with or without star power. The 1934 Cardinals, that shameless brawling Gas House Gang, was one. The Bronx Zoo Yankees of 1977-78 were another. The 2004 Red Sox called themselves the Idiots as though it were a badge of high honour. The 2010 Giants—managed by now-triumphant Rangers manager Bruce Bochy—thought of themselves as a bunch of morons.

What these Diamondbacks had was future star power. Corbin Carroll, Gabriel Moreno, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and Thomas himself. You could say it wasn’t their fault the Rangers hunted, pecked, pounded, pricked, and pulverised them. But you’d also have to say these Diamondbacks made enough of their own mistakes to enable that Ranger romp, too.

You credit the Rangers for such seizures. But you hand it to the Diamondbacks for making a showing for themselves before the World Series arrived. In a sane world, ruled by a sane commissioner and group of owners, they wouldn’t have reached the postseason in the first place.

But under the way things are set now, the Diamondbacks made the most of their entry. They left the Brewers looking brewed to a fare-thee-well. They left the Dodgers to a winter of self-re-examination. Then they ran into a Texas chainsaw massacre, more or less. There was no shame in that.

Oh, sure, they looked foolish a few times. Especially when manager Torey Lovullo talked early in the postseason about all those “receipts” the Diamondbacks kept to stick right back up the rears of those who doubted, the cynics who figured they were due for an early and painful postseason exit, the snorters who figured the big bad Phillies would make rattlesnake stew out of them.

They outlasted the Phillies. It wasn’t really easy to do. But the Rangers were another proposition entirely. The Diamondbacks really didn’t stand much of a chance no matter how bravely they hung in for five games, no matter that this Series matched two of baseball’s best defensive teams on the season.

The Rangers were only too happy to stuff those Diamondbacks receipts right back where they came from. But the Diamondbacks have no reason for shame otherwise.

“I’m so proud of what they’ve done,” Lovullo said. “And we have to step back for a minute and tell ourselves that we’ve done a lot of really amazing things this year. And then we got on this really fun ride through the course of the postseason. You just never want it to stop.”

But that’s the problem. They can never rescind the rule that somebody has to lose games.  The good news further is that the Diamondbacks are a comparatively young franchise and lack the kind of snake-bitten history that once plagued such antiquities as the Cubs, the Red Sox, and even the 63-year-old Rangers. And still plagues the Guardians, who haven’t won a World Series since the Berlin Airlift.

Barring unforeseen calamity or brain damage, the Diamondbacks will be back soon enough. For now, let them mourn lost opportunity while celebrating how they got to have the chance in the first place.

WS Game Two: Kelly’s blue book

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Merrill Kelly

Kelly kept the Rangers from another series of bombing raids and tank attacks Saturday night.

“I decided to take a look back just to double-check that it said ‘World Series’ behind me,” said the Diamondbacks’s Game Two starting pitcher, Merrill Kelly, the day before. Then, he went to work Saturday night and made easier work of the Rangers than many might have expected him to make.

He looks more than a little like comedian Chris Elliott, and he took an unusual route to get to the Show in the first place. But nobody’s laughing at Kelly after what he and his Diamondbacks did, one night after they got hammered out of a lead and into an eleven-inning Game One loss.

Not after Kelly pitched seven innings of three-hit, one-run baseball while his fellow Snakes pecked, poked, and pried nine runs out of the Rangers to even this World Series at a game apiece.

Not after the Diamondbacks atoned for losing a two-run lead in the Game One ninth with a seven-run spread of two in the seventh, three in the eighth, and two more for good measure in the ninth Sunday night.

Not after the only hit the Rangers could summon up after Kelly and the Diamondbacks handed off to their bullpen was a leadoff ninth-inning single by Marcus Semien that went for nothing with a line out, a called strikeout, a walk, but another lineout ended the 9-1 D’backs win.

Not after Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte showed the Rangers they weren’t the only ones with men who could reach and re-write a page or two in the postseason record books—even if it took him until the eighth inning to hit the two-run single that gave him a record eighteen-game postseason hitting streak.

Not after ancient Evan Longoria dropped a sacrifice bunt that went for naught in the third but stuck in the mind of Rangers third baseman Josh Jung when Longoria batted in the seventh. That’s when Diamondbacks center fielder Alek Thomas opened with a double, then Jung played on the edge of the inner infield grass and Longoria swatted a single off Jung’s glove and into left enough to send Thomas home with the third Arizona run.

That’s right. The game was tighter than a rush hour crowd on a subway platform for six innings. The Snakes posted a pair in the fourth when catcher Gabriel Moreno wrestled Rangers starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery into a full count before hitting one over the center field fence, and designated hitter Tommy Pham’s two-out double was rewarded with left fielder Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. singling him home.

The Rangers got one back when their own DH Mitch Garver hit a 1-1 service from Kelly into the left field seats. And that’s where things stayed until the seventh. Until Longoria’s RBI single was followed by Corbin Carroll’s RBI single in that inning. Until Marte’s record-setter and Carroll’s immediate RBI single in the eighth.

Until the insult-to-injury two-run single in the ninth that might have helped set up more but for late Snakes third base insertion Emmanuel Rivera (who hit it) getting thrown out trying to stretch for second base.

Marte wasn’t the only Diamondback to join or expand the postseason record book. Longoria became only the fourth man to get a World Series hit before age 23 and after age 38—joining Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Pee Wee Reese, and Eddie Murray.

But most eyes were upon Kelly. The 35-year-old righthander went from the minors to a four-year term in Korea, where he says he really learned how to pitch mostly by the proverbial seat of his pants. The Diamondbacks took a chance. They’re reaping rewards some might call unforeseen.

On the regular season, Kelly could be remarkable and about average. He struck out 9.1 per nine but walked 3.5 per nine. He led the National League with 33 starts in 2022 but has a lifetime 4.02 fielding-independent pitching rate.

He kept the Dodgers in check during his divsion series start (no runs, three hits, three walks, five punchouts), but he and his Snakes were bludgeoned by the Phillies in National League Championship Series Game Two, especially after he was taken over the fences twice by Kyle Schwarber and once by Trea Turner.

But Kelly recovered well enough to allow only one Phillie run on three hits and three walks in Game Six while striking out eight in five innings’ work, setting the stage for the Diamondbacks dispatching the Phillies in a comparative whimper. Now he stood as the guy who made a once-impossible dream come true for one World Series game at least.

Montgomery wasn’t exactly terrible, even if this was one time his ability to get away with sinkers that don’t sink all the way betrayed him when Moreno took him long. And he did give the Rangers all the room they’d need to win. But Kelly didn’t let the Rangers get into his head and, in fact, juggled his entire kit bag of pitches to strike the side out in the sixth.

“I’ve been kind of saying he’s the most underrated pitcher in baseball,” said Diamondbacks pitching ace Zac Gellen, a day after the Rangers yanked three runs out of him en route the Game One Rangers win. “How it’s gone that way this long, I think it’s the market we play in. But the guy posts. And when he does, you see what it is.”

“I think we realized the second time through the lineup,” said Garver, who did reach him for that homer, “that we weren’t getting too many pitches to hit. He executed his stuff and a lot of times, we ran out of barrel.”

This time, Kelly had the Rangers over a barrel. It also enabled Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo to leave his absolute best relief pitchers alone and save them for the Phoenix swing of the Series. Not to mention Rangers manager Bruce Bochy still having his better relievers available for that swing, with veteran starter Martín Pérez going out for the Game Two eighth and taking a four-run one for the team over the final inning and a third Saturday night.

“We’d be naive to think that we’re going to run away with four in a row against a team that really fights hard, the same way we did,” said Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe. “They had to go through the wild-card round and all the way through, and they’re here. It’s a resilient bunch over there, but we’re pretty confident in our group, too.”

Rangers beware: His first World Series start didn’t intimidate Kelly at all. “I think going over to Korea as a 26-year-old is way scarier than pitching in the big leagues or even the World Series, to be honest,” he said. “It felt literally and figuratively miles away when I was over there.”

Even in Globe Life Field as opposed to Chase Field, there was no place like home.

WS Game One: But of course

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Adolis García

The Cuban defector who rocked a pitcher named Castro for the World Series Game One-winning bomb he’s hitting here . . .

In a more just and far more sane world, this World Series would not feature baseball’s eight-best team (the Rangers) hosting baseball’s twelfth-best (the Diamondbacks). No matter how much fun it was to watch the games by which they got here. This, folks, is Commissioner Pepperwinkle World.

It’s a world where the fun in watching baseball’s Davids slay its Goliaths, as happens often enough, is perverted into a premeditated dilution of the championship race. Where teams who dissipate down the stretch can still sneak into a postseason and trash the joint.

Commissioner Pepperwinkle didn’t create today’s championship dilution, he simply finished and metastasised what his predecessor/former employer began. And while he now says he’s willing to “discuss” this format and that dilution after hearing “enough complaints and chatter” around it, don’t wait in line too long expecting him to heed and adjust.

Unless you count whether their owners voted yay or nay upon Pepperwinkle’s perversion, it’s hardly the Rangers’ or the Diamondbacks’ fault that they could and did ride to this Series while leaving the bigger teams to the winters of their malcontent. “If the die was cast—meaning, that if I win 100 in the regular season, I’m going to win the World Series—I don’t think that’s as interesting as what we have witnessed over the last month,” he added.

Well, just as it couldn’t hurt to watch the earlier wild card, division, and League Championship Series anyhow, it can’t hurt to watch this half-serious World Serious anyhow.

Say what you must about how they got here. These Rangers (who did tie for a division title) and these Diamondbacks (who finished a well-distant second in their division) are having fun while being deadly serious. The Diamondbacks didn’t let bother them that they weren’t supposed to survive the Brewers, the Dodgers, or the Phillies. The Rangers didn’t let bother them that they weren’t supposed to shove their fellow Texans from Houston to one side.

Come Friday night, until Rangers shortstop Corey Seager sent the game to extras with a mammoth two-run homer, it looked as though the Diamondbacks might open by doing to the Rangers what they’d done well enough entering the Series: pitching, pecking, picking, and occasionally pounding their way to a win.

Then a Cuban defector hit a Game One-winning home run off a pitcher named [Miguel] Castro in the bottom of the eleventh.

That won it for the Rangers, 6-5. It also gave Adolis García eight bombs for this postseason and left him one shy of Daniel Murphy’s record of homering in six consecutive postseason games. It should also have sent the Diamondbacks pitching staff a rudely-awakening message: Thou shalt not plunk Adolis García and expect to live.

First, after Seager tied the game off Paul Sewald with Leodys Taveras aboard and a parabola to the rear of the right field seats in the ninth, García was hit on the hand by a Sewald pitch. Late Rangers insertion Austin Hedges struck out for the side. But two innings later, with one out, García hit a 3-1 sinker the opposite way over the right field fence.

Twelve years to the day earlier, the Cardinals’ David Freese wrecked the Rangers when the Rangers were a strike away from winning the 2011 World Series in six games—first with a game-tying triple in the ninth; then, after the game was re-tied in the top of the eleventh, with a full-count leadoff shot over the center field fence.

Figure this if you can: García’s Game One winner Friday night sent him right past Freese himself for the most runs batted in (22) in a single postseason. It might not have happened had García not made a spectacular course correction on Diamondbacks rookie star Corbin Carroll’s two-out, ninth-inning drive to right, overcoming a bad first step to run the ball down and snatch it at the wall.

That might have given these relentless enough Diamondbacks a final lease on Game One life. But no. Then Seager unloaded in the bottom of that inning off Diamondbacks finisher Paul Sewald, the first genuine dent in a Diamondbacks bullpen that was postseason excellent entering the Series and worked three scoreless among three relievers Friday night. Setting the extra-inning stage for García to do what hasn’t been done since Kirk Gibson in the 1988 World Series—win Game One with a walkoff homer.

Maybe doing it on the twelfth anniversary of Freese’s jolts means these Rangers might find the mojo those Rangers lost so horrifically?

In a game where the Rangers took an early 2-0 lead (Evan Carter’s first inning RBI double and García singling him home immediately to follow) but the Diamondbacks bit Rangers starting pitcher Nathan Eovaldi hard for a three-run third and five runs in four and two-thirds innings; where the Rangers went 1-for-7 with men in scoring position to the Snakes going two-for-8; and, where the Ranger bullpen pitched six and a third innings’ two-hit, shutout relief, Seager and García’s late explosions will be what’s remembered the most.

Kind of a shame, too. In the top of the third, Diamondbacks shorstop Geraldo Perdomo finally dropped a bunt you couldn’t call a wasted out. Remember: In six known “bunt situations,” only one leaves you a better chance to score after than before the bunt: first and second, nobody out. That’s what Perdomo had when he dropped one back to the box and pushed Alek Thomas (leadoff infield single) and Evan Longoria (immediate followup single) to third and second, respectively.

Carroll followed and hit a two-strike, two-run triple to the absolute back of center field, then scored the third Snakes run while Ketel Marte grounded out to first base. The Rangers took one back to re-tie in the bottom of the third when Mitch Garver wrung a bases-loaded walk out of Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen, but Tommy Pham re-snatched the lead when he unloaded on Eovaldi to open the top of the fourth, sending one  over the left field fence. An inning later, Marte sent Perdomo (leadoff single) home with a double, and 5-3 it stayed until Seager in the ninth.

Seager may not mind playing second banana to García even if his handiwork set García’s up. He hollered out uncharacteristically in his joy after he launched his bomb. But after the game, he preferred not to think about that again. “You never think about your own success,” he said. “You think about how that team came together, how that team performed.”

In the American League Championship Series, remember, García unloaded a three-run homer in Game Five and got drilled by a pitch his next time up. All that did was jolt him into the Games Six and Seven bombings that helped yank the Rangers here in the first place. Two batters after Seager unloaded, García was hit by a pitch again, on his hand.

He shook it off. He stole second but was stranded. He bided his time. Then came the eleventh. He didn’t answer the bell, he rang it. Ask him now what the biggest bomb of his life is, and he’ll tell you. “We’re in the World Series,” he said. “I think, honestly, this is the first.”

Unless there’s a more absurdist Elysian Fields script to be delivered later in this Series (put nothing past that heavenly troupe of stinkers), and García finds himself hitting the Series winner, it may yet prove to be the loudest home run in Rangers history.

NLCS Game Seven: Don’t worry. Be happy.

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Arizona Diamondbacks

The Snakes start the pennant party after Phillies pinch-hitter Jake Cave flied out to end NLCS Game Seven.

So this is what the World Series will hoist. One team who got there with a bang—or several. One team who got there with whispers, almost, belying the pre-strike warning of the reptile that gives them their name.

It’s not that the Diamondbacks really intended to get to the World Series on the quiet side. But if the Rangers bludgeoned their way to the Series with back-to-back demolitions of the Astros in Houston, the Diamondbacks pried their way to the Series with four wins that could be called cool, calm, collected by comparison.

“We were silent, and we made damage,” said their shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, after the Snakes more or less nudged the Phillies home for the winter with a 4-2 National League Championship Series Game Seven win. “Be happy and enjoy what you do. That’s all. That was the message.”

Go ahead. Cue that ancient Bobby McFerrin hit. Don’t worry. Be happy. It wouldn’t be the worst theme song you could attach to a pennant winner.

The biggest lead by which the Diamondbacks beat the Phillies this set was a four-game margin in Game Six in Philadelphia. They won the National League pennant Tuesday night with a win in which it was harder to determine which was more profound, a small pack of squandered Phillies chances or a thick enough pack of quiet Diamondbacks opportunity seizings.

It was almost as though the smiling Snakes snuck their way to the World Series in the end. From their first Game Seven run scoring on a soft grounder the Phillies couldn’t turn into an inning-ending double play in the first to three of the least noisy fly outs finisher Paul Sewald got the Phillies to hit to end it.

Come to think of it, it was as though the underestimated Arizona gang wasn’t even fazed when Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm hit Diamondbacks starter Brandon Pfaadt’s first pitch of the second inning into the left center field seats. Pfaadt certainly wasn’t. He got second baseman Bryson Stott to fly out to the center field track, then struck catcher J.T. Realmuto and right fielder Nick Castellanos out swinging to prove it.

Pfaadt only looked shaky two innings later, when Bohm wrung him for a one-out walk, and Stott doubled him home to give the Phillies what proved a very short-lived 2-1 lead. Realmuto followed with a line single to left sending Stott to third which brought Castellanos to the plate.

The guy who began looking like Mr. October during the Phillies’s division series dispatch of the Braves and continued when he homered during his first plate appearance of this NLCS had gone 0-for-21 entering this plate appearance. Pfaadt struck him out swinging. Then the righthander shook off a four-pitch walk to left fielder Brandon Marsh to strike spaghetti-bat center field sweeper Johan Rojas out on three pitches.

And again the Diamondbacks didn’t resemble a team of no-names whose postseason days were going to be numbered by Philadelphia’s comparative star power.

Third baseman Emmanuel Rivera started unfurling that evidence with a leadoff line single up the pipe in the top of the fifth. Shortstop Geraldo Perdomo bunted him to second, perhaps ill-advised considering the wasted out and second baseman Ketel Marte’s swinging strikeout to follow.

Enter Corbin Carroll, the rookie about whom it’s very fair to say the Diamondbacks world revolves these days. After scoring that first run in the first, and in the middle of a 3-for-4 night, Carroll shot a base hit into center to send Rivera home to re-tie the game and push Phillies starter Ranger Suárez out of it.

Then catcher Gabriel Moreno greeted reliever Jeff Hoffman with a base hit after Carroll stole second, enabling the rook to be run number three before Moreno was caught trying to stretch to second. Meanwhile, Carroll also spent his evening tying a postseason rookie record for hits in a winner-take-all contest.

Most teams run out of an inning when they could do more damage might go into mourning at that point. Not these Diamondbacks. Their reliever Joe (Be Fruitful and) Mantiply shook off Kyle Schwarber’s bottom of the fifth-opening double to get Phillies shortstop Trea Turner to ground out to third and Bryce Harper, the dangerous convert to first base, to fly out to the track in left.

That was enough to prompt Snakes manager Torey Lovullo to get Mantiply the hell out of there and bring Ryan Thompson in to lure Bohm into a pop out Marte caught at the back of the infield for the side.

You could almost hear the still-underestimated Diamondbacks—who swept their way to this set in the first place by pushing the Brewers out of the wild card series and the oh-so-superior Dodgers out of a division series—thinking, if not whispering, “We do this kind of stuff to them all through the pictures.”

Don’t worry. Be happy.

Two innings later, the Snakes delivered what proved to have been one of the least dramatic knockout punches of the entire postseason. After José Alvarado relieved Hoffman for the Phillies with one out, Perdomo singled to left and Marte doubled him to third—making Marte owner of the longest postseason-career-opening hitting streak at sixteen.

Up stepped Carroll. Proving he could do things the quiet way as well as any other way, he lofted a sacrifice fly to left for the fourth Diamondbacks run and the final run of the game. Don’t worry. Be happy.

Then came Zack Wheeler, the Phillies’s Game Five starter who pitched like an ace when they needed it most to take a 3-2 NLCS lead, to pitch an inning and a third’s spotless relief. During which Harper lost the grandest opportunity to overthrow the Diamondbacks for good when he batted in the bottom of the seventh.

Cristian Pache pinch hit for Rojas with one out and walked off Diamondbacks reliever Andrew Saalfrank. Schwarber worked out a full count walk. Exit Saalfrank, enter Kevin Ginkel for the Snakes, and Turner flied out to bring Harper to the plate. The guy who sent the Phillies to the World Series last year with that eighth-inning homer in the mud hit one out to center field this time, but with not enough to avoid landing in center fielder Alek Thomas’s glove for the side.

“Just missed it,” Harper lamented postgame. “Not being able to come through in that moment, just devastation for me. I feel like I let my team down and let the city of Philadelphia down, as well. That’s a moment I feel like I need to come through.”

He was hardly alone. These Phillies who’d bombed the Diamondbacks in a 10-0 Game Two blowout scored a grand total of four runs in three of their NLCS losses and went 1-for-7 with men in scoring position in Game Seven alone.

“I would say frustrated is the correct word,” said Castellanos, maybe slightly less for himself than for his team. “Just because the potential of this team is so much greater than going home before the World Series. Last year, when we lost Game Six, there was a lot of, ‘All right, we got here. Now we can build off that.’ Knowing how we feel about this team and coming up short from the year previous, it’s a disgusting feeling, honestly.”

When pinch hitter Jake Cave flied out to right against Sewald to end Game Seven, the Phillies may have been more voluminous in their self-criticisms than the Diamondbacks were celebrating their first pennant since 2001. And the clubhouse celebration has been described politely as mayhem, from drenching general manager Mike Hazen to first baseman Christian Walker passing out the cigars.

Don’t worry. Be happy.

It doesn’t mean you have to stay silent in the end. It also doesn’t mean the Snakes will count themselves out no matter how monstrous the Rangers might look. Maybe they figure that, if they could finally dismantle the big bad Phillie phloggers there’s no reason to fear the Texas wrecking crew. Yet.

“We were coming here to play our best baseball,” Lovullo said postgame about his and his team’s pre-game thinking, “and that’s been the messaging, and it’s been very consistent throughout the course of the year. Today is going to be our finest hour, and I just wanted to make sure that they knew that’s how I felt.”

“The Brewers were supposed to beat us,” Thompson said. “The Dodgers were supposed to beat us. The Phillies were supposed to beat us. They’re gonna say that the Rangers are supposed to beat us, too. We’ll see how it goes.” He could afford to be sanguine, since the Rays released him earlier this season but the Diamondbacks took a flyer and he rewarded them by becoming one of their key bullpen bulls.

And Lovullo could afford to be just a little self-congratulatory. Knowing that famed sports talking head Chris (Mad Dog) Russo swore to retire from radio if the Diamondbacks got to the World Series, Lovullo couldn’t resist. “I would love to see him quit if we won today,” the manager said before Game Seven began. “There’s nothing better than a wise guy New Yorker saying something and then having to chomp on those words.”

Except maybe a manager who shepherds the guys the world doubted to baseball’s biggest dance. Or, a team that finally doesn’t let the insane asylum known as a Citizen’s Bank Park crowd intimidate them out. Just don’t ask the Snakes to explain how they pulled it off. “I don’t even know if there is an explanation,” Carroll said. “It’s just magic.”

But you might ask Harper. “Watching them prior to this series, I don’t think anything scared that team,” he said graciously. “I don’t think they had any doubts in their minds of coming back here and playing in Philadelphia. I don’t think that team is scared of any situation or any spot.”

Don’t worry. Be happy.

If that’s what got the Diamondbacks to the forthcoming World Series, don’t knock it. Baseball has enough too-serious-for-their-own-good teams as it is. Just try to picture most of this postseason’s vanquished (the Phillies aren’t exactly a gang of mopes, after all) approaching things that Diamondbacks way. Not to mention a lot of the teams who couldn’t make the postseason in the first place.

They’d sooner toast each other with castor oil martinis than be caught thinking, Don’t worry. Be happy. And where are those guys now?

NLCS Game Five: All things small and big

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Zack Wheeler

Zack Wheeler pitching almost spotlessly in NLCS Game Five did as much to save the Phillies season as their early running and mid-game bombing did.

Ask, and you shall receive. The Phillies asked Zack Wheeler to pitch like an ace in National League Championship Series Game Five—and he did. They asked their hitters to step up and swing when it mattered—and they did. They asked their bullpen to hold fort—and they did.

Their reward for doing those things was a handy 6-1 win in Chase Field and a trip back to Philadelphia with not one but two chances to punch their World Series tickets. The Phillies, of course, not to mention the throng liable to greet them in Citizens Bank Park come Monday, would prefer it not take that long.

All it took otherwise was for the Phillies to put Games Three and Four behind them, the ones in which their overtaxed bullpen let the Diamondbacks waste a grand start by Ranger Suárez in the former and their overtaxed bull Craig Kimbrel implode them toward a come-from-ahead loss in the latter.

Not to mention Kyle Schwarber starting the Game Five ball rolling in a way you don’t expect of the bombardier who showed up nuclear in the sixth inning, beating one into the ground to take a slow enough roll toward third, a region left open with the Diamondbacks in a slight shift toward second, that he beat out for a leadoff hit.

Not to mention Bryce Harper sending him to third with a one-out single shot right back up the pipe, Bryson Stott lining him home with a single. And, Harper coming home on a double steal while inadvertently colliding with a momentarily-stunned Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno as the throw from Snakes second baseman Ketel Marte to the plate went off it. It was the first time any Phillie stole home in any postseason.

Not to mention Wheeler and his Diamondbacks counterpart Zac Gallen engaging a pitcher’s duel that was noiseless, generally, until Schwarber opened the top of the sixth by turning Gallen’s 2-0 hanging breaking ball into a satellite flying over the Chase Field pool and several rows into the seats behind it. Giving Schwarber the all-time National League Championship Series home run lead with eleven.

Not to mention Harper, one out later, wrestling back from 1-2 into a full count before driving a fastball slightly over the middle of the zone and a little further into the same general real estate where Schwarber’s leadoff bomb landed.

Not to mention J.T. Realmuto abusing the Diamondbacks’ third reliever of the evening, Luis Frias, for a two-out two-run homer in the top of the eighth, which could have been considered repayment for Diamondbacks center fielder Alek Thomas—the hero of the Snakes’ Game Four win with his unlikely eighth-inning, game-tying two-run homer—hitting Wheeler’s first pitch of the seventh over the right center field fence for the only score of the evening for his team.

Not to mention the Phillies bullpen keeping the Diamondbacks off the board the final two innings despite a couple of dicey moments in the ninth, when Evan Longoria drew a two-out walk off Seranthony Domínguez and took second on defensive indifference before Perdomo landed on first after his bouncer hit Domínguez’s leg and deflected to shortstop.

Manager Rob Thomson reached for Matt Strahm. Strahm landed a swinging strikeout on Diamondbacks rookie Corbin Carroll to finish off. The Phillies reached for ways to express how it felt to shake off such a heartbreaker as the Game Four loss.

“I just want to win. That’s it,” said Harper, whose evening included a grand first inning play when he speared Diamondbacks DH Pavin Smith’s hard grounder lunging right and onto a knee before taking it to the pad himself. “Whatever that takes, whatever that’s going to be, whatever that’s going to look like. That was a big game for us. Coming in here and getting one is huge. That’s a good team over there. We took advantage of everything we could.”

Harper also tended Moreno at once after the double-steal collision, perhaps mindful that Perdomo has been under concussion watch before in his career and was caught in the head on a backswing during the D-Backs’s wild card set. “The way he went down,” Harper said postgame, “I was making sure he was good and stable.”

(Memo to: Social media idiots. It wasn’t a dirty play. Harper came straight down the base line without trying to collide with Moreno. Moreno moving from in front of the plate to reach for the throw crossed into Harper’s path, unintentionally but technically blocking the plate without the ball in his mitt, illegally, leaving Harper nowhere to go at that moment.)

The collision to one side, Realmuto seemed less impressed by his own home run than by the double steal that made Harper the second-oldest (at 31) ever to steal home in a postseason game. (Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson at 37 remains the oldest; he did it in the 1955 World Series.) “After what [the Snakes] did to us the last two games, they had all the momentum in the world,” the Phillies catcher said postgame. “So we had to try to do something early in the game to get it back. That was a great call by [Thomson] putting that on.”

The plot was simple. Stott would take off for second and draw Moreno’s throw while stopping just short of the pad. It looked like Stott getting himself caught in a rundown, but Marte winged his throw home almost immediately after Stott stopped with Harper, instructed to “be aggressive” by Phillies third base coach Dusty Wathan, gunning it home.

“It just shows you,” said Phillies shortstop Trea Turner, “how being aggressive and putting pressure on those guys — not just them but everybody in general, to put pressure on the other side is good and it makes things happen.” Make things happen? The Phillies opened by taking a page out of the Diamondbacks’ grinding book and shoving right back before even thinking about the long ball side of their own game.

For all the Phillies’s basepath daring and bomb launching, though, Wheeler had to have been the player of the game for them when all was said and done. “He gave us exactly what we needed with where our pen was at,” said Thomson. “It’s incredible what he does,” said Harper of Wheeler, who threw 21 first-pitch strikes facing 28 batters. “It’s so much fun to watch. I love playing behind him, and it’s incredible. He’s legit, man.”

Now it’ll be up to Aaron Nola to pick up in Game Six where Wheeler left off in Game Five. As for the rest of the Phillies? Who knows what surprises they might bring? Another double steal including a theft of the plate? Another evening of acrobat defense? Another bomb or three?

You almost hope the set goes the full distance, if only to give the Diamondbacks more chances to show the talent might overcome this edition’s general lack of postseason experience. They’re a young team with a lot of upside and a lot of dynamism in their own right. They showed they, too, can exploit mistakes or misfirings in pushing this NLCS to a two-all tie in the first place.

But if they want to hang around a little longer, they’ll have to find a way to beat the Phillies in the Phillies’ own playpen, where the audience never sleeps and the noise rarely lets up before the final out. The Phillies just won their first NLCS road game. Going home, however, means a lot more to them than just scoring a run.