Is anyone watching the NLCS?

PHOENIX -- The National League Championship Series opened without one owner tirade, any talk of curses, and nothing other than a few B-list celebrities in the stands. No superstars threatened to leave, everyone stayed warm under a cloudless desert sky, and the only managerial debate was whether Bob Melvin or Clint Hurdle would win skipper of the year.

OK, so the Arizona fans showed their temper a bit after a questionable call in the seventh inning snuffed out a budding rally. Most of them were probably transplanted New Yorkers anyway, so for them throwing stuff on the field wasn’t such a big deal.

You could walk up and buy a ticket just before the first pitch for this one, a throwback to the days before corporations and ticket brokers controlled all the seats. Too bad they didn’t come with a program, because only the most loyal Diamondback fans knew much about the baby-faced players on their team and even less about the Colorado Rockies.

On this night it was mostly just about baseball, in about as pure a form as you can get in a stadium where the roof opens and closes at the touch of a button and fans can frolic in the pool just over the right center field fence.

The Rockies prevailed, 5-1, Thursday night in a game largely decided by a third-inning barrage of walks, bloop hits and one weak grounder that started out foul but later went fair. But the Diamondbacks managed to give their fans a rare combination of something to boo about and something to cheer about in a seventh inning interrupted by water bottles and trash and a comeback that almost was.

TBS surely didn’t want this matchup during its first season of televising the playoffs because there wasn’t a lot sexy about two small-market teams in the West with equally small payrolls battling for a spot in the World Series. If they couldn’t fill Chase Field for the opener -- and there were plenty of empty green seats in the ballpark -- the cable network was going to have a tough time winning the Thursday night ratings.

That there were doubters in the desert wasn’t surprising. Arizona was the first team to have the best record in the league while at the same time having the worst batting average since the “hitless wonders” otherwise known as the Chicago White Sox turned the trick 101 years ago.

They managed to win 90 games in the regular season, but only the most faithful knew how they got it done. Even a sweep of the lethargic Chicago Cubs in the playoffs wasn’t enough to convince anyone that a team with an active payroll somewhere around $30 million was good enough to win a world championship.

This was a game, though, that the Diamondbacks almost had to win. The fact that they didn’t may mean a short ride on the bandwagon for the fans who jumped on late.

They were at home with their ace, Brandon Webb, on the mound, and facing a team that needed to be cooled off quickly if the Diamondbacks were going to stand a chance.

The hope was that the pitching of Webb, combined with the four days the Rockies have had off since beating Philadelphia, might be enough to slow the bats that carried them in a magical run of 17 wins in their last 18 games.

They were partly right. The Rockies didn’t exactly tear the cover off the ball, managing just eight singles. But most of them came at opportune times, just like they always seem to do for teams who haven’t lost in so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like.

The moves from the dugout turned out just as well. Hurdle juggled the lineup to bring in speedy Willy Taveras, who was out with an injury during the team’s winning streak, and he started a three-run rally in the third inning by opening up with a single and stealing second base.

The Diamondbacks, meanwhile, couldn’t get the clutch hit when they needed it. They had their chances, the last one coming in the seventh inning when Justin Upton’s slide into second cost his team two outs on an interference call and prompted Hurdle to take his team off the field after fans started throwing things at them.