SPORTS-(PIRATES)
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Denver Rock City
October 28, 2007-
It's been roughly two hours since the final out of the 2007 World Series was recorded at Coors Field in front
of 50,000 mindless screaming hayseeds. Johnthan Papelbon
struck out Seth Smith and the seemingly overwhlemed Rockies lost the Series, 0 games to 4. The mindless screaming hayseeds
will walk out disappointed and wonder why they ever bought into the championship chase of
the Colorado Rockies.
Yet the Rockies have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. As Clint Hurdle said: "we crossed alot of things off of the
To-Do List this year". Indeed. Their entire improbable run was the type of story that seemed reserved for
Rick Vaughn, Willie Mays-Hayes and Roger Dorn. To understand just how far-fetched the words "Rockies in the World Series"
seemed, all you have to do is set the WayBack Machine for roughly 4 years.
It was Martin Luther King Day, 2004. The Rockies were coming off their sixth straight non-winning season. It seemed like
a concession to some distant relative that MLB was keeping a team in Denver. The Rockies held their annual
"Winter Caravan", where a small group of players and coaches travel around the region doing promotional appearances.
For their Denver stop, the team set-up at a small store that sold sporting goods and offered indoor batting cages.
It was more famous for the indoor batting cages than it was for hosting the Rockies' Caravan. Roughly 150 fans
showed up and the biggest "stars" on-hand that day were either Chin-Hui Taso or Choo Freeman.
Clint Hurdle and most of his coaching staff were there as well (the walking waste of
carpet known as Dinger was another attendee). Hurdle, dressed in a shirt that seemed
borrowed from Al Borland's closet, fielded questions from the small group. Most were upset that the
Rockies had traded Juan Pierre to the Florida Marlins and that Pierre had been a big part of the
2003 World Series Champions.
I went to the little get-together simply because I had the day off and had read about it in
the morning paper. It was nice to have some baseball
in the middle of winter. I kidded Hurdle a little bit about his days managing the Williamsport Bills
and got my picture taken with him. When I left the store, I remember thinking that I had seen
more pomp and pageantry at a Boy Scout meeting. Here was a big league team holidng a promotional
appearance at a small store in Aurora, Colorado. Nobody seemed to care. Bright lights, big city it sure as hell
wasn't.
Set the WayBack Machine for April 2005. Finally rid of the human douche Larry Walker and
committed to rebuilding (more due to fiscal need than anyting else), the Rockies
opened their 2005 season by beating the Padres and rallying to win against Trevor Hoffman. It was a nice
Opening Day win, but the season was soon lost within three weeks. Nothing was expected of the Rockies.
If someone in your office had tickets they were trying to move, tough shit. Nobody wanted to
see the team that was simply occupying valuable parking space in LoDo. Coors Field was Denver's window
into baseball, but nothing of consequence ever seemed to happen there. Fans would sell the place out
when the Red Sox, Yankees or Cubs came through town and that was it.
You may not have to use the WayBack Machine because September 2007 isn't that far behind. That's when the Rockies,
who had been keeping their heads barely above water all season long, suddenly won 13 of 14 games to
tie the Padres on the final day of the regular season. They forced a one game tiebreaker or "play-in". Thanks
to a lucky coin flip from a few weeks earlier, it would be in Denver. Hoffman was there in the end, again.
Just like on Opening Day 2005, the Rockies rallied and won with their last at-bats.
It was unreal. Denver didn't just a window that allowed them to peak into baseball. They now had a door into
baseball and it was wide open. They were now a part of something that mattered.
The 1995 team had made the playoffs, but it was a fluke
and there was no way you could take the team serious. Their strategy was to go out and
out-slug the opposition 10-8. The 2007 team was a credible threat; manufacturing runs, playing
superb defense (setting an NL record) and getting outstanding pitching.
They rolled through the NL playoffs in 7 games. They hit a brick wall in the Red Sox, but these 25 players
did more in six weeks than the previous 489 had done in 14 years. People in Denver were finally
"talking baseball" (albeit still grossly mis-informed. You don't score "points" in baseball
and it's absolutely braindead to chant "let's go Rockies" when your team is in the field. Don't cheer
foul balls hit by the home team, either. Those are pretty strikes, but strikes nontheless).
So as I sat in the left field bleachers for Game 3 of the 2007 World Series, I couldn't help but
feel good. I've never considered myself a Rockies fan, and I still don't. I'm a baseball fan.
After all these years of nibbling around the back alleys and dark corners of Baseball Land,
the big stage had finally come to my home town. The game I had
followed all over the country, coast-to-coast, border-to-border, had finally
given me something back. It wasn't an exhibition. It wasn't
a hoax. It was the World Series. It was only about 9 miles from that sporting goods store in
Aurora, but it seemed a million miles removed from January 2004.
The goal at the beginning of the season was to reach. 500. When that became a realization,
the next accomplishment was to finish above the Dodgers for the first time in franchise history.
Those seemed like two huge accomplishments, but they took four more huge steps by stampeding
through to the World Series.
The Rockies didn't win the Series, but they woke up an entire town that had become oblivious to their existence
and the game they were playing. Now, people know that baseball can be something exciting, perplexing,
heartbreaking, frustrating and quizzical.
Just please don't call him "Coach" Hurdle.
