Troy Tulowitzki strikes out with vigor in his first return to the plate since suffering a broken wrist in June
In order to understand the Colorado Rockies you need to have been there in 2007 when Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki willed their team to the playoffs.
To really get the depth of suffering in Colorado baseballand you will have waded through an abysmal 2008. You would remember watching, helpless, as every dependable player from that magical ’07 run declined, even the ones that went to other teams (Fogg, Taveras & Matsui.)
You will have stared blankly at a post-All Star Break club that has sucked in every conceivable way that a baseball team can suck, rolled snake-eyes in every conceivable situation that requires luck, and lost eight straight games, alternately in gut-wrenching blowout fashion and then with fist-pounding inadequacy in close contests.
And the only reason you believe that there is a ghost of a chance that the Rockies can make up 9 games in their remaining 55 is that you saw them charge back in two of the last three seasons after everybody, including you, had written them off as well done… cooked.
But you will have also watched this Colorado team repeatedly threatened with its postseason life in the last week respond by committing a litany of mistakes; from formerly dependable starters to typically shutdown fielders to otherwise intelligent management.
And you will believe again, as I do, that the Rockies’ season is finished before its time.
Oddly, though, it would seem that this team thrives on its own dysfunctional countenance.
The Rockies are deeply, characteristically humanistic in their approach to baseball. Even by comparison to similarly streaky teams.
What I mean here is that the Rockies feel like they’re on an epic losing streak right now, and it shows in every movement, every anxious swing. Each driving hit straight into a defender’s glove seems scripted by the very demeanor of the club, and the only way out is an equal, opposite and, yea, inevitable resurgence in the opposite direction.
The Colorado Rockies are a team of players whose most defining attribute is their inherently natural approach to the game. Brad Hawpe, Carlos Gonzalez, Ubaldo Jimenez and Troy Tulowitzki, the Rockies’ youth core, are very simply a band of gifted naturals.
Hawpe has one of the most beautiful swings ever created by the baseball gods, but struggles mightily to control its intricacies.
Gonzalez is so intensely gifted at finding ways to drive a baseball thrown anywhere near the strike zone that he dooms himself to low-percentage, awkward swings in high-pressure situations.
Jimenez didn’t start playing baseball until his teens, and his otherworldly physical talents still seem underdeveloped at times. His incapability to cope with a mechanical glitch, in fact his tendency to exaggerate the motion that is blowing his pitches off-course, is sophomoric by comparison to his level of experience in the major leagues.
And poor Troy Tulowitzki had gotten it all figured out after two years of struggle when a brush-back pitch broke his wrist in mid-June.
Before that injury, Tulo had finally found a way to harness his obvious natural skills, to take advantage of his de-facto confidence, and to do so while still allowing the game to come to him. In his two games back, Troy has been wound so tight trying to make plays that he has committed a fielding error and a major base-running gaffe, and frustratingly driven the ball hard straight at opposing fielders. (He has also struck out dramatically– see picture above.)
But where they Rockies have a tendency to perpetuate their own bad fortunes, they are also capable of waking into a flurry of ferocious winning at any time.
Those ’07 & ’09 teams needed catalysts in the form of an emotional game-winning home run by Helton for the former and an intensely personal managerial change for the latter.
The Rockies’ front office has very publicly pursued not just good, natural baseball players, but also good, natural human beings. We’re talking good people here, with strong morals and well-developed character. The result has been a team that moves as one through the season, sometimes slipping into a self-perpetuated depression, and sometimes rising to unbelievable heights of excellence.
The Colorado Rockies are a family unit with well-defined roles, desire and passion throughout. Their collectivism is their greatest strength and most damning weakness.
So even if I have to believe, statistically… rationally, that the Rockies are done in 2010, there is still a chance for resurrection. And even if the ’10 Rocks don’t make it rain, the ’11 Rocks look mighty potent given a healthy pitching staff.
Even as we give up on the boys in purple pinstripes, they are yet a dynamic ball club full of potential for greatness. Even if the season fades to an untimely black, it is still good to be a baseball fan in Colorado.
