Posted at 5:46 p.m., Sunday, October 14, 2007
Baseball: Rockies take 3-0 series lead with 4-1 win
By ARNIE STAPLETON
AP Sports Writer
With a cold rain falling, Josh Fogg shut down Arizona's bats in his first postseason start and Yorvit Torrealba hit a tiebreaking three-run homer to fuel the Rockies' 4-1 victory tonight in Game 3 of the NL championship series.
The Rollin' Rockies took a 3-0 lead with their 20th win in 21 games. They will try to sweep the Diamondbacks on Monday night when Franklin Morales faces Arizona's Micah Owings in a matchup of rookies who have never faced each other's teams.
The Diamondbacks are hoping to join the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who rallied past the New York Yankees, as the only teams to overcome a 3-0 hole to win a best-of-seven postseason series.
Torrealba connected in the sixth inning, three pitches after watching one of Livan Hernandez's trademark "eephus" offerings poke across the plate for a strike — so slow it didn't register on the stadium scoreboard radar.
After a 60 mph bender that he fought off for a foul, Torrealba hit a fastball 402 feet into the left-field seats, then raced around the bases pumping his fists and hooting and hollering.
Torrealba, who is 8-for-21 in the playoffs with seven RBIs, nearly had a home run in the third when he doubled off the center-field wall. The stadium's pyrotechnics operator thought it was gone and set off some fireworks as Torrealba pulled into second base.
The real fireworks came three innings later from Torrealba, who had just eight home runs in the regular season.
MVP hopeful Matt Holliday also homered off Hernandez, who fell to 7-3 lifetime in the playoffs. He allowed four earned runs on eight hits in 5 2-3 innings. Holliday's homer in the first inning was the first by either team in this series.
Fogg, who won Game 2 of the divisional series over Philadelphia in relief of Morales, scattered seven hits, including rookie Mark Reynolds' solo home run in the fourth, in six stellar innings. He didn't walk a batter and struck out three.
With the game time temperature hovering at 43 degrees — and quickly dipping into the 30s — and a light drizzle falling, the crowd showed up wearing fleece jackets, gloves, wool caps and scarves, looking like they were headed for the ski slopes west of Denver, where it was indeed snowing.
Even Diamondbacks catcher Miguel Montero wore a ski cap beneath his catcher's helmet.
It was only fitting that the Rockies sent a pitcher named Fogg to the mound to deal with the elements in the first NLCS game in Denver in franchise history.
