Hurdle helps the Rockies maintain their perspective

PHOENIX -- One of the reasons the Colorado Rockies were able to play so well down the stretch, winning 14 of their final 15 regular-season games, was because they kept what happened on the field in perspective. And that starts with Manager Clint Hurdle.

Moments after the Rockies lost a mid-September game that appeared to end their playoff hopes, a Denver radio reporter asked Hurdle if the defeat was “crushing” and “debilitating.”

The manager had trouble keeping his composure, said some who were there, because earlier in the day he had received a phone call from the mother of a young boy who was in the hospital fighting for his life.

“He wanted to talk to me before he passed,” Hurdle said. “That was debilitating. Crushing was when a doctor told me my little girl was born with a birth defect. (Hurdle’s 5-year-old daughter Madison has Prader-Willi syndrome, a complex genetic disorder.)

“Baseball is a game. And I’ve learned that,” Hurdle continued. “I’ve embraced that and I’ve tried to share that with my players. Let’s keep it a game. And let’s not take the end result and wear it like an anchor around our neck afterwards.”

Hurdle took his team off the field briefly in the seventh inning after fans, reacting to a controversial call by second base umpire Larry Vanover, pelted the field with water bottles and other debris.

With Chris Snyder at second and Justin Upton at first and nobody out, Augie Ojeda hit a slow roller toward third. Garrett Atkins flipped to second for one out but Upton upended Kaz Matsui before he could throw to first for the double play.

However Vanover ruled that Upton had intervened with Matsui, a call replays clearly supported, and Ojeda was called out too.

Play was suspended for about five minutes before the Rockies returned to the field.

Tonight’s second game of the National League Championship Series was tentatively scheduled to start at 1 p.m. local time until the Diamondbacks requested it be pushed back so fans could go to work and school and still make the game.

But with slow-working left-hander Doug Davis, a 13-game winner, starting for Arizona, those fans could be in for a long night.

“We could be playing into the next day,” said Ken Kendrick, the club’s managing general partner and one of the men who requested the time change.

“That’s kind of his style. But he’s pretty dang-gone effective.”

Davis, whose win over Chicago in the National League division series lasted 3 hours 44 minutes, was unapologetic.

“The slower I am the better my mechanics are, the most consistent I am,” he said.

kevin.baxter@latimes.com