Ubaldo Again. Manny's Trick. The Team That Never Loses.

ROCKIES NATION - NLCS Game 2

Playoffs wins are critical. Playoff road wins are special. Playoff road wins when you are up 1-0 in the NLCS and your closer blows the save are amazing. Headed home with a 2-0 lead, needing 2 games to go to the World Series? Sure. All in a days work.

Hats off to the Rocks for hanging in and winning another cliffhanger. We here at RockiesNation-Brooklyn chapter are admittedly a bit bleary eyed as Game 2 ended after 2am ET this morning. Thank you TBS.

Ubaldo was good, but not as sharp as his prior outing. He held the D's to one run in a solid 5 innings and that's all you can ask for from a guy who had trouble getting first pitch strikes. He's gonna be a star.

The Rockies are up 2-0 in this series despite hitting a mere .222 in the 2 games with way too many strikeouts. But they are winning based on guts, timely hits and great defense. Wait till the bats awake in Denver and watch em pull away.

Manny Corpas pulled the rare blow-the-save-get-the-win maneuver. I loved that Clint left him in to pitch the 10th after he blew the 9th. Great confidence builder and he proved to be lights out.

It's also helpful that the D-Backs are making those small mistakes here and there to help us along. Fielding errors and baserunning gaffes make the job slightly easier. It's like playing the Raiders: hang around long enough and they'll usually hand the game to you. Thanks, fellas. And nice try on the uniform switch. Did you really think taking away our black unis for the first time in 20 games would make a difference? It almost did, but the move smacks of desperation regardless.

The New York Times printed an article today entitled "Rockies Are Winning Everything But Respect". Author Ben Shpigel must be a Yankees fan. It's a good article in which he gives the Rox the nickname The Team That Never Loses and compares them to the 1960 Yankees (Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Clint Hurdle's idol Whitey Ford). That's one way to make a splash. But he does give the impression of how-dare-they-play-good-baseball-out-West. Bring it.

Since Rockies Nation was inspired in part by the massive Red Sox Nation that dominates the East Coast with its Yankees rivalry, I figure I must report on their progress as well. The Sox smoked the Tribe last night, hitting around C.C. Sabathia and looking dominant. Get ready. This could be fun.