'Never saw the stop sign': Diamondbacks rue momentum-killing gaffe in World Series Game 3

PHOENIX – It’s been a miserable couple weeks for Christian Walker, filled with strikeouts and the occasional hard-hit ball that finds a glove and a general feeling that, as the Arizona Diamondbacks sped to their first World Series appearance in 22 years, he was something of a bystander.

So when a grassroots movement in town to show Walker some love – not unlike Philadelphia fans embracing a struggling Trea Turner over the summer – gained social media traction, he was touched.

The Chase Field crowd of 48,517 rose and gave him a standing ovation leading off the bottom of the second inning in Game 3, and Walker responded by lashing a double.

“It was cool. I appreciate that,” says Walker. “It’s nice to know they have your back. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves sometimes, and it’s all for the right reasons.

“But at the end of the day, to know that you got support and love from the home crowd, it’s a good feeling.”

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Moments later, Walker put himself in the position of asking them for more forgiveness.

When Tommy Pham lashed a single off Max Scherzer and Walker rounded third, he was bent on keeping the momentum going – rather than slowing his own. A late break on the ball put doubt in his mind, but when he saw third base coach Tony Perezchica windmilling him home, Walker put his head down.

Just as Perezchica threw up a stop sign.

You could imagine what happened next: Adolis García, the American League leader in outfield assists, fielded the ball on one hop and fired an easy strike to catcher Jonah Heim, who almost casually tagged Walker out.

And in a scoreless game, the Diamondbacks went from two on, and nobody out to handing momentum − already fickle in this series – to the Rangers.

They scored all three runs in the next half-inning and registered a 3-1 Rangers victory that gave them a 2-1 Series lead, leaving the Diamondbacks pondering an endless array of what-ifs.

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They are 7-0 when scoring first in the postseason, and postseason teams are now 30-9 grabbing the early lead. For the year, Arizona is 59-28 scoring first.

“Yeah, I feel like that was a huge momentum swing,” says Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo. “You're looking at first and third, potentially, and no outs. And a lot of people liked to play out the next set of circumstances - a pop up and a ground ball off the pitcher's arm. But who knows? The timing, everything would have been different; we may have scored a bunch of runs.

“The outcome would have been totally different.”

The genesis of Walker’s mistake came when he misread Pham’s fly, which he believed might hang up and be caught by García. A split-second pause, but enough.

That forced Walker to make up for that hesitation, put his head down and grind toward home.

“I had my head down, trying to make a tight turn around third, really trying to get to the plate,” says Walker. “The last time I looked at him, he was waving.

“I never saw the stop sign.”

It continued a run of recent frustration for Walker, who came in 1 for 9 in this World Series, 3 for 31 with 12 strikeouts since the start of the NLCS.

“The beauty of it is we should have been better in that situation. Christian Walker owned it,” says Lovullo. “He accepted it. He was accountable for his actions, and I know I will still consider him one of our best instinctual base runners.

“Was it pivotal moment in the game? Absolutely. And we talk about making statements. I'm not going to lie. It hurt a little bit. And they turned around and scored three runs. That was a big moment. We got flat there for a couple innings.”

Walker acknowledged that the pressure to do too much can hover on this stage, and that the club’s recent motto – Embrace the Chaos – actually runs counter to their prosperity.

Sure, the stolen bases and aggressive baserunning and quick counterpunches seem like mayhem, but they’re the product of patience.

“I think less is more for me,” says Walker. “It’s the World Series and we want to win so bad. But still, making the game come to us. That’s what makes us dangerous.

“The chaos stuff, that implies playing with your hair on fire a little bit. I think that’s a little misleading.”

They now must win three of the next four games to capture this championship, and with the Rangers confronting injury concerns, are more than capable of pulling it off.

But some lessons are learned the hard way.

"I think we’re really good at taking opportunities when they present themselves,” says Walker. “And I think that’s how we’re going to win this.”