Rockies Hold On, Deal Final Blow in Heavyweight Bout With Giants

SAN FRANCISCO -- Hours before the Giants and Rockies met on a baseball field for the final time this regular season, Rockies manager Jim Tracy was comparing the matchup to a bout with a couple fighters slugging away at each other.

Lots of blood, but no knockout.

The game on Wednesday night fit right in with the pattern, although the Giants are now perilously close to being down for the count. The Rockies' 4-3 victory, a game that ended only after the Giants had scored three times in the ninth and put the tying run on third, gave the Rockies a 3 1/2-game lead in the National League wild-card race.

"Three and a half definitely sounds a lot better than one and a half in your head," Todd Helton said. "This was definitely a big win."

While there were no concession or victory speeches in either clubouse, the math is getting more clear. If the Rockies simply go 8-7 (and they haven't done worse than that over any 15-game stretch since Tracy took over in late May), the Giants would need to win 12 of their last 16 to force a one-game playoff. The Giants haven't had a 12-4 stretch all year.

Combine that with the fact that the Rockies play nine of their final 15 at home, where they are 45-27, while the Giants have nine of their last 16 on the road, where they are 31-41, and, you get the idea.

It's looking more and more like the Rockies will be booking their second trip to the postseason in three years, while the Giants are going to be left out for the sixth year in a row.

Of course, anyone who lives by math and probabilities hasn't been watching the Rockies and Giants.

By all rights, the Giants should have been dead after they blew a 14th-inning lead to the Rockies last month, falling four games back. They won five of the next six.

The Giants should have had the momentum after they swept the Rockies last month in San Francisco, winning the last game on an Edgar Renteria grand slam to pull into a tie. Colorado won 10 of its next 11.

"We've taken turns throwing punches back and forth," Tracy said. "Every time you feel like you've got the other guy knocked down and he's not going to get back up before the 10 count, at about six or seven, he gets back up and here you go again.

"You'd have thought we'd have knocked them out with a 14th-inning grand slam. They stood back up. We came over here and thought we were in position to keep 'em quiet and the guy steps up and punches us in the nose with a grand slam. That's just the way it's been going."

And after the Giants "waffle-stomped" the Rockies -- it's an Aaron Rowand phrase -- by a combined score of 16-4 in the first two games of this series to pull within 2 1/2, you had to wonder which of these teams was ahead and which was behind.

The final round of this bout was one of the best, though. Jorge De La Rosa had dominated the Giants for eight innings, helping his team to a 4-0 lead.

"In the biggest start of his career, he pitched the best game of his career," Tracy said.

Trailing by four in the ninth, the Giants scored one on three consecutive hits and scored another when the Rockies blew a double play. The Rockies, one of the best defensive teams in baseball, had blown a second, critical double play ball in two games. The crowd of 38,696 was going bonkers, rattling the beams of AT&T Park.

Just when you thought the Giants might actually do it, might actually find a way to win this game and extend the only pennant race left, reliever Rafael Betancourt threw a perfect fastball by Nate Schierholtz, who struck out to strand the tying run at third.

And like that, it was all over for the Giants.

The game and, likely, the season.