Dear Philadelphia Phillies,
I’m glad it was you.
Just like last year, charging in to dash our hopes with your veteran band of overpaid sluggers. Seasoned pros. National League dominators. Death in Red.
I’m not going to write the in memoriam just yet, and the “what the team needs to do for next year” piece can wait until late fall – but I will say this. The Rockies are on life support.
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.
Seth powered a 2-2 split-finger fastball over the right field scoreboard for a 3-run game-winner. Smith’s shot completed the biggest 9th Inning comeback in Rockies history and the largest come-from-behind 9th in Major League Baseball since 1918.
With a mere 87 games remaining, the Colorado Rockies need to act and they need to act now. The list of shortcomings on this suddenly flawed and underachieving team is long, but dramatic improvements could be made by doing the following…
It was a roller coaster of a game, to be sure. In the first couple innings, Ubaldo was his normal self – mowing down opposing batters, and looking like a dominant force that is careening toward Cy Young glory. Even after giving up a couple runs, he didn’t appear fazed. Then, suddenly, Ubaldo showed something we haven’t seen all season: his humanity.
The Rockies completed the sweep of the Blue Jays and salvage a 4-3 record on the home stand, saving June from being a complete disaster.
On his 1-year anniversary with the Colorado Rockies, manager Jim Tracy recorded his 100th win as head honcho. To little fanfare (perhaps because the win was sandwiched between two losses to the hated Dodgers), Jim touched on an important landmark in his career with Colorado.
So certain is this information that it’s in the Farmer’s Almanac. Migrating birds are called from 600 miles away by the faint ringing of late-inning crowd noise emanating from Coors Field on warm nights in late May. The Mayans even predicted the last five years of Rockies history in their little known Calendario de Béisbol, accurate to within 5 games on a 162 game season.
Rockies catcher Miguel Olivo took the first pitch of the 10th Inning deep into the left field bleachers for a huge walk-off 4-3 win on Wednesday afternoon. Olivo was 5 for 5 in the game, and turned a hanging curve ball into a no-doubter for the win.
