Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

The bullpen gate opened and swagger strode out. Aroldis Chapman has this way about him. It's as natural as his fastball. He emerges in long strides from the cave in centerfield where the relief pitchers live, and suddenly the circus is in town. For the first time this year, Chappy loped in from the 'pen, and a season stuck on the hamster wheel instantly had some life.

He is a rock star. This isn't a team of rock stars. It wasn't until this year that Reds fans realized that Joey Votto had a pulse. The man has been here and been very good for seven seasons. "Our club can be very stoic," said Bryan Price.

Chappy isn't stoic. His 100 mph fastball moves with a cha-cha pulse. His 87 mph slider does the mambo. As Todd Frazier explained, "He has that Spanish flavor we love. He gets a strikeout, he gives 'em a little first pump, a little staredown."

A team can have a soul without having soul. But it's better to have both. The Reds have been riding the wheel of average for six weeks. They've been walking around the block. Now, Chapman is back, Billy Hamilton is back, Tony Cingrani and Devin Mesoraco are in the wings, maybe a week away.

Now, maybe we start seeing what this team can do.

Chapman came back Sunday as if he'd never left. He faced the prime rib portion of Colorado's lineup, one of the best, hottest groups in the game: Troy Tulowitzki, Carlos Gonzalez, Nolan Arenado and Justin Morneau. Chapman burned through them like a teenager with dad's credit card.

After walking Tulowitzki, Chapman struck out the side, of course he did, with demonic, three-digit fastballs and a slider his catcher, Tucker Barnhart, described as "dirty."

This is the key to Chappy's kingdom, always has been: His ability to locate the 87 mph slider. He did it against Arenado, and it was like a cobra biting your leg. After awhile, paralysis sets in. Arenado flailed at strike three. "I very much enjoyed that" pitch, Price decided.

"With Chappy, what you see is what you get," said Barnhart. "You get to a point, you can time" a fastball. "The slider is deadly."

There are the practical, baseball reasons that having Chapman back is a plus. It further calms a bullpen that when the season opened, was a five-alarm fire. It allows Price to anchor the 8th and 9th innings with some certainty, and to know that if Chappy and Jonathan Broxton aren't available, he has viable, effective options. The Reds that broke camp six weeks ago were basically running open-mic night the first few weeks of the season, to see who'd be the closer of the day. "It created some uncertainty," said Price. "I (couldn't) define a closer." That cost them.

"This settles us," said Price. "We're putting the pieces back together. Jonathan Broxton could do a great job closing."

But there's only one Chapman.

"That's right," Price said.

Blazin' Billy returned to the lineup just in time to reach third base in the first inning, on a 30-foot bunt to the right side. Morneau, the Colorado first baseman, fielded it in time to throw wildly to second baseman D.J. LeMahieu, partly because LeMahieu didn't cover the base in time. Hamilton jetted into third standing up.

Hamilton also tripled and walked. Can a track star also be a rock star?

Frazier smashed a 421-foot home run, his seventh, and second in three games. Skip Schumaker did good work early, getting Hamilton home with a grounder to second base in the first, then providing a two-out RBI single in the third. (Plus, Schumaker's walk-up music is Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, which now rivals Frazier's Fly Me To The Moon for the club lead in coolness.)

But it was Chapman's day. Rock stars know how to make an entrance and steal a scene. "Movie-like," was how Barnhart described it.

When Mick took the stage, everyone stopped looking at Keith.

How the Reds fare from now on is anybody's guess. But they've regained some swagger, to a salsa beat. That has to count for something. As Price put it, "A little bit of fear never hurt anybody."