It doesn’t happen without the fancy and not-so-fancy footwork of Brandon Phillips and Scott Rolen.
To set the stage: The Reds trailed 6-3 heading into the ninth. Phillips singled off the left-field wall and Joey Votto walked.
That brought up Rolen, who rolled a slow roller toward third baseman Casey McGehee. Instead of throwing to second to start a double play, McGehee strangely tried to tag Phillips, who was tip-toeing toward third. McGehee missed the tag as Phillips veered through the grass blades. Trying to recover to get one out, McGehee threw to first to try to get Rolen. Too late.
That filled the bases with no outs. After a sacrifice fly by Jonny Gomes and the three-run rip by Hernandez, everybody but the Brewers went home with fond memories.
“That move of mine was an Ochocinco Special,” said Phillips, who dodged inside the baseline toward the pitching mound to slink away from McGehee. “I saw where McGehee was, so I did my little slide move — the cha-cha slide. To the left.
“I know he didn’t touch me, but hearing him say (to the umpire) that he touched me was pretty funny, but I would have done the same thing. I heard him say, ‘I tagged him,’ but I don’t know who he touched. It wasn’t me.”
Of his move and Rolen beating the throw, Phillips said, “It’s the little things sometimes. We didn’t start the game off right (Edinson Volquez gave up home runs to the game’s first two hitters), but it is not how you start, it is how you finish. All we’ve done is pick up where we left off last year by winning games late and it is a beautiful thing.”
After Hernandez’s home run, his fourth hit, Phillips said, “The fans went crazy, we went crazy and we thought, ‘Oh, boy, here we go starting this stuff all over again.’ We’re thinking, ‘Please, we can’t win every game like this again this year.’ But if it comes down to that, I’ll take the ‘W.’ ”
Somebody asked Rolen to describe his speed in two words and he said, “Electric. Only one word, but that’s all I need.” After flashing a smile, he said, “My speed, as I’ve heard it best described is, ‘He runs pretty good for a big man.’ ”
Of the game that took three hours and nine minutes to decide, Rolen said, “It got real cold near the end. It wasn’t a clean game all the way through, but we had some big at-bats at the end of the game and Monie (Hernandez) came through. For something good to come out of all that, that’s the sign of a good offense.”
Asked what he was thinking when he topped the grass-scorching grounder to third base, Rolen said with a wry smile, “I was thinking double. Actually, I was thinking, ‘No double play here.’ That’s all I was thinking. I knew something happened over at third and I knew I had to beat the throw.”
Rolen didn’t see the penultimate play that set it all up, but he had a site-on view of Hernandez’s game-winning home run.
“We have good players, I know that,” said Rolen. “We have good offensive players and that’s a big help. We took good at-bats in the ninth and tried to stay away from being result oriented, tried to get guys on base and have good at-bats. If you make pitchers throw strikes and make good pitches, you put yourself in position to make something happen that did happen.”
Phillips knows it is only one game, but the message is out there — the Reds are the same kind of team they were last year and don’t mess with ’em in the ninth.
“We have a great team,” he said. “We had that one inning, the ninth, when the magic happened again, and it’s beautiful. That’s why they make Opening Day here a holiday, because magical things happen here.”
So it looks as if the Reds are poised to give the fans another magical carpet ride, using some Louisville Slugger rug-beaters along the way.
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