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Second Comeback Seals Surprise Win for Nats
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Translation: He could sit on a fastball. "He could've thrown curveball," Church said, "and I could've been swinging way out in front of it. I just wanted the fastball, and I got it."
He didn't miss it. He crushed it to right field for the two-run homer that tied the score at five.
That, though, was just the first comeback. Reliever Jon Rauch allowed leadoff singles in the eighth to Justin Upton and Mark Reynolds, and Stephen Drew gave the Diamondbacks the lead with a sacrifice fly. That gave Arizona the chance to bring in all-star closer Jose Valverde, the main reason why the Diamondbacks had led 61 times after eight innings and won 59 of them.
Flores was the first man to hit against the right-hander, and he fell behind 0-2. He is only 22, and by all rights should be in the minor leagues. Yet he was 2 for 3 already when he stepped to the plate. Being in that 0-2 hole bothered him not at all.
"He's not intimidated," Acta said. "That's a fact. He has played for us with a confidence that he belongs up here, regardless of where he has come from."
With that, he got in front of a cut fastball from Valverde and flipped it over the left field fence. When it landed, his third homer of the year, he pumped both his fists rounding first, and the Nationals in the dugout raised their hands above their heads.
"Good for me," Flores said, "and good for the team."
The team then tapped one more unlikely source. Reserve Robert Fick -- inserted in a double-switch in the eighth and hitting just .194 with five extra-base hits all year -- launched his first triple in two years to right-center. Felipe Lopez followed with a sacrifice fly, and when Chad Cordero overcame a two-out walk in the ninth for his 26th save, a road trip that might have seem squandered was suddenly palatable.
"It would have been a long flight," Rauch said, "if we would have lost that game."
But somehow -- with Church, with Flores, with Fick -- they won it, a last-place team beating a first-place one, and the flight home must have seemed shorter by hours.
