There is one month of the year where baseball takes a whole new meaning. It is called the “Fall Classic” and “The Crown Jewel of Major League Baseball.”It is October.

Boys become men in the course of October. History begins. Think back to the beginning of the month where this narrative shows the mood of what baseball after the first 162 games means.

Oct. 1: Day 1 of the postseason.

A team of youngsters. A bunch of guys fighting for better jobs in baseball later in their careers are living the Cinderella Story.

Their name: the Colorado Rockies.

These guys have the home field during a one-game, do-or-die playoff against a division rival.

The other team has an All-Star starting pitcher and a future Hall of Famer for its closer.

They faltered in September and now want a chance at the prize. Win, or go home. This team is the San Diego Padres.

This is October.

It took nearly five hours to see who would play another day.

It showed the young rookie with the difficult-to-pronounce name collecting four hits and electrifying his team with grit and hustle.

It showed the crafty veteran watch the biggest game of his career go down in flames.

The Rookie: Troy Tulowitzki

The Legend: Trevor Hoffman

The Inning: Bottom of the 13th

The Score: 8-6, Padres favor

The all-time leader in saves took the hill. “It’s Trevor time.” He has 524 career saves and 42 were tacked on that total this season. Hoffman is good, better, best.

This is October.

The old guard versus the up and coming class; Varsity versus JV.

A leadoff double by Kazuo Matsui caused the stadium to erupt. There was hope after all and the rally caps seemed to be working (not just a superstition anymore).

The at bat of the night was up next. Tulowitzki stepped in with a runner in scoring position – the rookie against the 14-year veteran.

“Tulo,” as his teammates call him, was hitting .291 going into the night. His name has been circulating around Rookie of the Year circles since the Rockies began their climb in the NL West.

The rally and comeback was in the hands of the top half of the Rockies lineup whose average age was not even 30 years old.

Hoffman, 39, has twice as many years of big league experience as the total of the first three batters for the Rockies.

Hoffman has played professional baseball for 14 years; Matsui, Tulowitzki and Holliday combined have seven years of experience among them.

Then again, this is October.

Tulowitzki worked the count full. The Little League dream was falling into place – a 22-year-old facing a perennial Hall of Fame candidate. This is the situation fans, players and coaches dream of. The next pitch was a Hoffman special. A change up, but instead of breaking down and in to righties, it hung at the letters. Tulo made him pay and legged out a double.

After seeing second base umpire Tim Tschida give the palms down salute, the kid pumped his fist and awakened the standing-room-only crowd. The RBI double scored Matsui.

The game that was out of reach 10 minutes prior was now a one-run ballgame with a runner in scoring position and no outs. The next pitch put the Rockies in position for the win when Matt Holliday tripled to right field driving in Tulowitzki. The spark plug at the top of the lineup scored the tying run and when he returned to the dugout in a cloud of dust, the ballgame was his. Holliday scored on a sacrifice fly by Jamie Carroll for the 9-8 win, but credit goes to Tulo for the evening’s performance.

He went 4 for 7 with three extra-base hits. Tulowitzki went from Boy of Summer to Man of Autumn in the course of one night. Denver has a reason to believe this year for the first time since the Elway/Davis era.

This game set the tone and precedence for what is to come in the NLCS and World Series. After one round of the playoffs has been completed the Rockies are slowly chipping away at a chance for World Series stardom.

This is October and by the end of the month, one team will stand tall.

Associate editor Marcus Murphree is a senior news-editorial journalism major from Beaumont.