If April showers bring May flowers, Arizona’s horticulturists would be fortunate to do as well as Arizona’s Diamondbacks.

The Diamondbacks, who finished last in the National League West each of the last two years, were perilously near that unwelcome spot at the end of the first month of this season. Only the San Diego Padres stood between the Diamondbacks and their familiar position.

And then, suddenly, Kirk Gibson’s players blossomed. In horticulture they would have become red and yellow roses, purple and orange tulips, white gardenias. What they became was Gibson’s gang of winners.

From an 11-15 record in April, they built a 19-10 record in May (extended it to 20-10 on the first day of June) and leapfrogged three of the division’s other four teams into first place, landing there May 29 by half a game over San Francisco.

Along the way, the Diamondbacks had two notable achievements:

• They became the first team this season, according to Elias Sports Bureau, to win six successive one-run decisions after losing six straight one-run games (the one-run winning streak was still going at eight a day into June).
• Even more impressive, Arizona, Elias determined, became the first team in history to enter May with a deficit of six and a half games or more and during the month snatch sole possession of first place, league or division. These guys weren’t fooling.

Let’s be reaIistic, though. The baseball season is long, long enough to give teams a chance to overtake leaders and also squander leads,. You’ve heard more times than you care to that the baseball season is not a sprint but a marathon.

However trite it is, though, it’s true. Some marathons aren’t decided until the 26th mile, maybe even the final 385 yards. More baseball races, however, aren’t decided until the equivalent number of games remains.

I make that statement without having facts, just feelings to support it, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some statistically minded reader came up with statistics to refute my claim. But my point is teams sometimes play 162 games, then have to play a 163rd game to get into the post-season.

Gibson’s Diamondbacks don’t know if they’re good enough to retain their grasp on the N.L. West lead. Or get it back if they lose it before Sept. 28, the last day of the regular season.

The Colorado Rockies weren’t good enough to hold onto the lead in that division after they held it for all but several days of the first six weeks of the season. The defending champion San Francisco Giants caught the Rockies the second week of May, but as soon as they built a three-and-a-half game lead they lost it to the Diamondbacks.

The devastating season-ending injury to Buster Posey in a home plate collision May 25 was an ominous development, and in the ensuing week the Giants lost four of their first five games and first place.

But the Diamondbacks could experience a similar cataclysmic event because all teams face the threat of disabling injuries, though the Diamondbacks don’t have as critical a player in their everyday lineup as Posey was for the Giants.

No one is hitting .300, and Justin Upton (30 runs batted in, 11 home runs but .264) and Chris Young (9, 31, .239) are their leading hitters.

The team’s top pitcher has been Ian Kennedy, whose 6-2 record and 3.16 earned run average were what the New York Yankees were looking for when they gambled with two rookie starters, Kennedy and Phil Hughes, at the start if the 2008 season.

The Yankees gave up on Kennedy and sent him to Arizona in the package that was their part of the 2009 three-team trade that got them Curtis Granderson. Kennedy became a full-time member of the Diamondbacks’ rotation last year and was their leading winner with nine wins.

Kennedy, a 26-year-old right-hander, has outlasted the general manager who acquired him for the Diamondbacks. Josh Byrnes was fired last July 1 with the manager, A. J. Hinch, he hired in May 2009 even though Hinch, the organization’s farm director, had no managing or coaching experience.

The Diamondbacks had a lot of promising young players, and Byrnes presumably felt that they would respond to Hinch when they reached the majors. But Hinch was a disaster, and Byrnes was fired for aiding and abetting a disaster.

Byrnes himself was the recipient of an unusual deal. He was hired as the general manager in October 2005. Less than three years later Byrnes was given an eight-year extension, a length unheard of in the general manager business, but that wasn’t all.

The deal, which would run through 2015, included a small ownership share, which was practically unheard of in the general manager business. The only general manger known to have a piece of his club is Billy Beane of Oakland, who got it to stay with the Athletics when the Boston Red Sox were pursuing him with lots of money.

Needing a manager, the Diamondbacks gave the job to their bench coach, Kirk Gibson, on an interim basis. Gibson hadn’t managed, but he had coached, three years with his old team, the Detroit Tigers and three and a half years with Arizona, all as bench coach.

The Diamondbacks didn’t do significantly better in the won-lost column under Gibson (34-49 .410) than they had with Hinch (31-48 .392). But the day after the season ended, which was less than two weeks after Kevin Towers was named the new general manager, he made Gibson the full-fledged manager.

Towers, who had been the general manager in San Diego for 14 years, made a series of player moves, bringing in a group of veterans and trading third baseman Mark Reynolds, whose strikeout totals had become legendary – 204, 223 and 211 the last three seasons.

From the way the season has progressed, however, it seems that Towers’ best move has been named Gibson.

Now for a footnote on the developments with Byrnes and Hinch.

When the Diamondbacks decided to shed the disaster that had been created, they had Byrnes to blame for Hinch but no one to blame for Byrnes and his contract. That’s because Jeff Moorad, the team’s former chief executive officer, had moved on to San Diego as part owner of the Padres.

Moorad, a former sports agent, is now vice chairman and chief executive officer of the Padres. Moorad hired Jed Hoyer to replace Towers as general manager. But he made two other significant hires as well.

Last September Moorad hired Hinch as vice president for professional scouting and in December he named Byrnes senior vice president for baseball operations.

Both moves were financially advantageous for Moorad and the Padres. Because of baseball’s offset rule, an employee who had a contract with another club when he was fired has his salary with his new team deducted from whatever his former team owes him.

So the new team doesn’t have to pay as much as it would have to if it were hiring the person with no contract carried over from a previous employer. The Diamondbacks have to pay Hinch through 2012, Byrnes through 2015.

The Diamondbacks also had to buy out Byrnes’ ownership share when he went to work for the Padres. A person can’t work for one team and own part of another.