Rocky slide into offseason for Colorado

DENVER – While Troy Tulowitzki(notes) stared balefully at his bat barrel, and the crowd here worked up its lungs for the umpires’ exit, and Jim Tracy dropped his head just slightly, Brad Lidge(notes) and Carlos Ruiz(notes) met in front of the mound for among the most awkward man hugs ever.

They’d pumped four sliders at Tulowitzki, just sliders, with two runners on base and two out and, wouldn’t you know, another one-run lead for the Phillies.

The National League Championship Series and the Dodgers and real baseball weather waited out beyond the next pitch. Ruiz, whom everyone calls “Chooch,” had stood and gone to the mound after those four sliders, when the count was 2-and-2.

The man at second base, Rockies’ imp Carlos Gonzalez(notes), had those four chances to decipher and relay Ruiz’s sign for a slider. So Ruiz went to Lidge, the Phillies’ wonky closer, to deliver more instructions.

Colorado Rockies closer Huston Street gave up three runs to the Phillies in the ninth inning of Game 4.

(AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

“Throw me the best slider you got, right now,” Chooch half-whispered.

Lidge, about to conclude his best 24 hours since going to his knees on the Citizens Bank Park infield last October, nodded.

Tulowitzki couldn’t hold his swing. Coors Field went silent, except for the light groans from the stands and the whoops from all around Lidge and Chooch as they mangled their celebratory embrace. Some things you can’t plan for. At least neither was injured.

The division series was done in four games, in the Phillies’ 5-4 win here Monday night, in a two-out, three-run rally against Rockies closer Huston Street(notes) that would mirror Jonathan Papelbon’s(notes) nightmare. The Phillies were an out away from returning to Philadelphia for Game 5, from rousting Cole Hamels(notes) from fatherhood for a few hours, from a return fight against Aaron Cook(notes), who’d beaten them in Game 2.

“Whatcha gonna do?” Todd Helton(notes) said later.

The Rockies had scored three in the eighth inning, semi-heroically, breaking through against Cliff Lee(notes) and Ryan Madson(notes), getting destiny-seeking, regular-season authenticating hits from Jason Giambi(notes) and Yorvit Torrealba(notes). They’d gotten the ball to their closer with a two-run lead and a big crowd behind him and what could possibly go wrong there? They’d won those games since the moment Jim Tracy took the top step. Pack the bat bags, boys, we’re goin’ to Philly.

Except, they wouldn’t. Except Jimmy Rollins(notes) reached first on an infield single. And, with two out and the count full, Chase Utley(notes) walked on a changeup that wasn’t close. And Ryan Howard(notes) hit the right-field fence on a bounce to tie the score, and Jayson Werth(notes) hit this little flare into right-center field that started to remind everyone how long winter can be in these parts.

“Obviously,” Street said, “we had something special. We still have something special. I think that’s what makes it hurt so much.”

He sighed and lifted his head.

“This is just massive disappointment,” he said.

An hour later, Werth inhaled on one end of a short, thick cigar while Joe Blanton(notes) held a lighter to the other end. The humidity high in a clubhouse where bubbly dripped from the ceiling and sloshed to their ankles, Werth kept pulling, studying the dying ember, pulling again.

He was asked about winning another, going back-to-back, surviving this and getting after that.

“That’s old stuff,” he said. “That’s from last year. I’m not trying to repeat. I’m trying to win. And, light my cigar. All at the same time.”

He burst into laughter and, sure enough, from somewhere near dead that cigar went orange and spit a great gray plume. Life, again.

Maybe he’s not lashing last season to this one, but it seems everyone else is trying to do it again, to do another almost for the sake of the first. Not to validate it, of course, but to give it just a touch more depth.

Standing in a puddle, Rollins was asked if he knew that the last NL team to repeat was in …

“Nineteen-seventy-six?” he interrupted. “Since the Big Red Machine?”

Right.

“I hope you call us the Little Red Machine,” he said.

They would be weeks from that. There is the return engagement with the Dodgers, beginning Thursday in Los Angeles, then whatever comes from that.

What they’ve already shown in a 93-win regular season and against a very game Rockies team – Ubaldo Jimenez(notes) threw 30 pitches in the first inning Monday, and finished the seventh with 126 – is that one title might not be enough for them. After running a parade down Broad Street, sating years of wailing in a city that doesn’t suffer for losers, the Phillies returned with perhaps an even greater spirit. They’d won in spite of funky years out of Rollins and Lidge and Hamels. They’d come here and swept two games in the din and cold. They read about the Yankees and the Red Sox and the resurgent Dodgers and what the Angels just did and all that pitching in St. Louis and the momentum of the Rockies, and yet they just reached the semifinals again.

“Well, that’s good,” Rollins said. “That’s fine. We don’t care about that. Going to the World Series last year, everybody counted on Tampa running through us.”

The rest still out there? The Dodgers ahead?

“We’re not afraid of them,” he said. “We’re not afraid of anybody. We’re looking forward to that challenge. It’s going to be another one of those epic series, I guarantee you.”

Meantime, they’ll be practicing their hugs.