Time For The Backups To Rack Up The Points

Heroes have been hard to find for the Rockies, but Friday night, there were plenty of them in LoDo. Shortstop Ezequiel Tovar ripped an RBI single down the left-field line off Phillies left-hander Gregory Soto to score Brenton Doyle from third to lift Colorado to a thrilling 3-2 victory over the mighty Phillies. In the ninth, trailing 2-1 and down to their final out, pinch-hitter Jacob Stallings ripped a 427-foot homer off Phillies closer Jose Alvarado to tie the game, 2-2.

Philadelphia star Bryce Harper was ejected after striking out in the first inning of the Phillies’ game at the Colorado Rockies on Friday night. Harper struck out on a 0-2 curveball from Ty Blach, dropped his bat and threw his helmet. The two-time NL MVP said something to plate umpire Brian Walsh and immediately was ejected. Bryce Harper got ejected in this exchange pic.twitter.com/MVwsgmwdAP — Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) May 25, 2024 Harper and Phillies manager Rob Thomson argued to no avail following Harper’s 21st big league ejection.

The Rockies’ wobbly bullpen received some much-needed support Friday. In the wake of their relievers’ workload and reoccurring meltdown, the club made a pair of roster moves ahead of its game against the Phillies. The Rockies called up right-hander John Curtiss and Matt Carasiti from Triple-A Albuquerque. To make room on the 26-man roster, they optioned right-hander Peter Lambert to Triple-A and designated right-hander Matt Koch for assignment.

The way this ended will stick with the Nuggets for much longer than one offseason. It’ll be remembered as one of the more painful what-if moments in Denver sports history. Whether the Nuggets would have repeated as champions will never be answered. It’s easy to conflate one climactic failure with the full body of work.

All it took was one misstep from Prairie View for Grandview to open the floodgates. With the score knotted up at four, Grandview designated hitter Easton Flores hit a screaming fly ball to left field. Prairie View outfielder Favi Gaeta tried to make the catch, but he stumbled on his feet, while the ball went over his head, landing in the warning track as the go-ahead runner slid into home plate. Flores’ go-ahead single jump-started a nine-run inning as Grandview pulled away for a 13-5 win over Prairie View in the first round of the Class 5A state baseball tournament at All-Star Park in Lakewood on Friday afternoon. “We just kept doing the right things (at the plate) so everything went well for us in that inning,” junior pitcher Jax Pfister. Grandview’s emphasis on the little things paid off in a big way.

Peyton Manning sometimes wonders how this setup came to exist at all, to say nothing of its popularity. The Hall of Fame quarterback, retired since early 2016, has the best of both worlds when it comes to the ManningCast broadcasts of Monday Night Football games on ESPN2. “The game’s important to me,” Manning said this week at the Mizel Institute’s annual event, where he was honored as the organization’s community enrichment award winner.