ShareThisAs the San Francisco Giants dressed for their flight to Philadelphia, Kanye West was bellowing through the clubhouse speakers: "It's amazing, so amazing, so amazing."
With Sunday's 9-5 comeback victory and three-game sweep of Colorado, the Giants will move into September tied for the National League wild-card lead after making up four games in less than a week.
They already have done the grunt work needed to return to being competitive, as they end August with the same number of wins, 72, as they had in all last year. Now comes the fun part -- meaningful, exhausting and exhilarating stretch-drive baseball.
Can they reach the postseason for the first time since 2003?
"Oh yeah," said Sunday's hero, shortstop Edgar Renteria, who's second grand slam of the season turned a 5-2 deficit into a 6-5 lead. "We've got the right things. We can pitch. We have the guys who can play the game right. We've got to keep the same emotion we have now."
They also erased the sour memory of last Monday's awful loss in Denver and emphatically notified the rest of baseball they have a fighting chance.
"We did what we needed to do this homestand coming off a tough series in Colorado," manager Bruce Bochy said. "We needed to bounce back and we did it."
One solace for the Rockies as they licked their wounds is the remaining schedule, which favors them.
The Giants start September with a six-game trip to Philadelphia and Milwaukee. They have not won any of the 10 series they have played in those cities since 2004, with a collective record of 9-26.
Meanwhile, the Rockies start September with a 10-game homestand against the Mets, Diamondbacks and Reds. Overall, the Rockies play 19 of their final 31 games at home compared to 16 of 31 for the Giants. The final three head-to-head games are in San Francisco Sept. 14-16.
Both teams are off Monday, which the hurting Giants desperately need. Renteria has been battling bone chips in his right elbow and two sore shoulders. Bochy said at the beginning of the homestand he needed to get Renteria a day off. It did not happen.
With one swing, Renteria propelled the Giants toward a tie for the wild-card lead while saving Matt Cain, whose four runs allowed included back-to-back homers by Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki.
Cain failed for the seventh time to win his 13th game. No matter, though. He heads into September with a contender and said, "It's fun, isn't it?"
(E-mail Henry Schulman at hschulman(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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