It’s easy to feel cursed in Arizona. It’s natural to be cynical in a market that produced one major professional championship in nearly 150 seasons as a four-sport town.
But magic happened on Wednesday. We saw it with our jaded eyes.
The Diamondbacks conjured up their most important victory of the season, beating the Rangers with a ninth-inning blitz from nowhere. Down to their final out, James McCann muscled a home run. Blaze Alexander was hit by a pitch. Following a walk, Ketel Marte blasted his second game-winning home run in as many days.
In the end, the hyped battle between Zac Gallen and former teammate Merrill Kelly was overshadowed by the resilience and spirit of a Diamondbacks team that has been cut to the bone, decimated by injuries, diminished by a major sell-off at the trade deadline. And look at them now.
They are 8-4 since the trade deadline. They could easily be 11-1, having squandered two games in San Diego, along with the opener in Texas on Monday. If they sweep the Rockies in a four-game series in Colorado, they will be a winning team (63-62) once again with 37 games to play. If that sounds unreasonable, remember the Rockies are historically bad, a team that is just 16-42 at home in high altitude.
There are other promising signs. After a lengthy malaise, Marte is heating up. His home run on Tuesday was huge, as it came from the right side of the plate, where he has struggled mightily with pitch selection and plate discipline. His home run on Wednesday was even bigger, the stuff of legends, and you could almost hear the collective groan of Rangers fans in attendance.
That felt good. It felt like payback for Corey Seager and Game 1 of the 2023 World Series.
Against all odds, the Diamondbacks are re-establishing an offensive identity; their overmatched bullpen is holding up better than anyone could expect; and they have fresh energy and enthusiasm that seemed inconspicuously absent for much of the season.
Meanwhile, manager Torey Lovullo has spent most of the season on a hot seat, pushing the wrong buttons, gaslighting the audience with unrelenting praise for an underachieving team. But the Diamondbacks have not folded after flying the white flag. Quite the opposite. They’re fighting hard. The manager deserves a lot of credit for that.
At the very least, the Diamondbacks have given themselves a chance to make things interesting in September. Instead of succumbing to zombie baseball, they are still playing to win and keeping fans on the edge of their seats. And just imagine if they pulled off a sporting miracle – an Arizona team that actually met high expectations, but only after an avalanche of injuries, trades and heartbreaking losses.
That would feel dramatically different. Almost like a curse had been lifted.
Reach Bickley at dbickley@arizonasports.com. Listen to Bickley & Marotta weekdays from 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.
