Diamondbacks 7, Padres 5: Pollock Echos Quack

On Memorial Day, the Diamondbacks and the Padres sent out Brandon McCarthy and Tyson Ross, respectively, to be the starting pitchers. Both of them had a single fairly damaging inning, as they are wont to do I suppose, but we'll get to that in a second.

The Diamondbacks scored first in this game on a rather bizarre play in the 2nd. Former New York Jets and Miami Dolphins Quarterback Cliff Pennington hit a grounder towards short. Chase Headley, Padres Third Baseman, tried to cut in and field it, but it bounced off of his glove. This sequence allowed Martin Prado to score from third base. The ball went into the outfield, and for some reason Alexi Amarista overran the ball, which allowed Cody Ross to score from first base. This made it 2-0 to the good and righteous.

In the top of the 4th, Seth Smith, the NL West Blackgaurd (being a current Padre and former Rockie), thought he had a leadoff triple. He thought wrong, as a good relay from the outfield started by Cody Ross got into third in time and Smith was tagged out. Bud Black challenged this, but the call was confirmed.

The next time the Padres batted, two things occurred:

1. The roof opened at Chase.

2. All the scoring.

Are these things connected? I dunno, but Yonder Alonso was able to get a solo homer to start off the inning. With two outs, Amarista and the pitcher Ross got on base, and Everth Cabrera blasted a homer to make it 4-2 Padres.

The Diamondbacks answered back in the 6th. A.J. Pollock got a single, Gerardo Parra got a bunt single, Paul Goldschmidt and Miguel Montero got RBI singles to tie the game up. Martin Prado came about 6 feet too low  on the left field fence for his first dinger of the season, but he got a double that allowed the Diamondbacks to take a 5-4 lead. So with runners on second and third with no outs, Cody Ross, Chris Owings, and Cliff Pennington did absolutely nothing to add on. To be fair, Ross was pulled for Nick Vincent, who was more than a lot better that inning.

This would become slightly important. McCarthy got two quick outs to start off the 7th, but gave up a double to Tommy Medica. He was pulled after that for Joe Thatcher to face the switch-hitting Cabrera, who also hit a double to tie the game up. Before you crow on about What A Joke that was, he was able to get Smith out to end the inning tied.

Brad Ziegler matched zeroes with the Padres bullpen in the 8th and 9th, and the D'Backs came up in the 9th with a chance to walk-off. Their opponent? Kevin Quackenbush, who, unfortunately, is not a character in the Duck Tales canon. With one out, Pennington was hit by a pitch. Pinch hitting Eric Chavez hit into what might have been a double play, but the Padres were not able to complete the play at first and Chavez was safe.

This turned out to be very important, because Pollock took the first pitch he saw from Quackenbush and deposited it into Right-Center to give the Diamondbacks the walk-off 7-5 victory, and Pollock's first ever walk-off homer!

If such things interest you, these two teams play tomorrow at 6:40 PM Arizona time. Have a Happy, Solemn, Or However You Choose Memorial Day, everyone.