You can talk about guys who don't quit, guys who believe, guys who'd give their last million to the guy in the next locker, if he needed it to buy a new Porsche. Credit long fly balls or seeing-eye ground balls or balls that seem to go wherever the Reds need them to go. Tell me that D'Angelo Jimenez's game-winning hit Sunday didn't feature a baseball with a pair of eyes.

Credit Dave Miley or Sean Casey or Junior Griffey. Give it up for Barry Larkin, Ol' Man Ohio River. Chalk it up to "chemistry," that ethereal something or other that seems to appear at the same time as three-run homers.

Not me. I'm wondering who sold his soul to the devil.

PHOTO GALLERY

Photos of Sunday's game

The Reds won again Sunday, for the 17th time in 22 games, because a player who hadn't hit a major-league home run in two years and eight days hit one with two outs in the ninth and desperation on deck. Griffey dropped two more bombs - he has hit nine in the last 14 games, a 75-homer pace - and Larkin rousted his bones to contribute a rally-extending pinch-hit single.

But it was Jacob Cruz's two-run blast to tie the game at 5 that told you, again, that something supernatural is happening with this team. Nations have crumbled and rivers have reversed themselves since Cruz, then a Detroit Tiger, last homered: May 29, 2002. Since then, Cruz has played for two Class AAA teams and the Reds. In the previous two years, he had season-ending elbow surgery and season-ending knee surgery. Cruz played 83 games in those years, 11 in the majors.

He came to bat Sunday hitting .233 with no homers in 43 at-bats. Naturally, he took Montreal reliever Rocky Biddle's changeup over the right-field wall. I'm telling you, this ain't right. Somebody check the training room for Ouija boards and animal sacrifices.

"Today's my day to be a hero" Cruz told himself as he walked to the plate. The Reds were down 5-3, the Expos having pushed across two runs in the top of the inning. Lowly Montreal was poised to take two of three and, possibly, leave the Reds contemplating their mortality as they boarded the long flight to Oakland. Even with chemistry batting cleanup, low-money teams such as the Reds know their long-term glory is a fragile proposition.

One-strike pitch, two outs, two runs down: The 31,814 at the ballpark were as quiet as a sold-out poetry reading. And there it goes.

"You gotta like that," Griffey remarked. "One good swing, you tie it up."

You gotta really like it for Jacob Cruz, 31 years old, a journeyman wanderer - five teams in eight years - with a penchant for injuries and a flair for realism. "Pinch-hitting seems to be my role," Cruz said. "I've accepted that."

The Reds have accepted him as well. The every-man-for-every-other-man mood filling the clubhouse allowed Cruz to remark, with some disbelief, "When Junior hits a home run, (celebrating) is the same as when I hit a home run."

For the last month, Cruz has taken to posting a quote of the day on the clubhouse chalkboard. He pulls it from a paperback in his locker: The Book of Positive Quotations. It's just something he does for the team. That, and saving his home run stroke for two years.

"The breakfast of champions is not cereal, it's the opposition," was Sunday's quote, from Nick Seitz.

Uh-huh. Perhaps motivated by that thought (or perhaps not) Cruz kept Reds Mystique roaring another day. "When you pinch-hit in (a situation) like that, it's all or nothing," Cruz said.

Except with the Reds these days, it's pretty much all or all. Someone check the chapel for burnt offerings and voodoo dolls.

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E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com

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