What the sports world is saying about the Rox & Sox

Rocky Mountain News wire services

Published October 29, 2007 at midnight

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Dan Shaughnessy

Boston Globe

What have they done with the Senior Circuit?

The National League stinks. It's been this way for some time, but never more evident than in the first three games of the 2007 World Series.

"It's been obvious for a while," said former Cy Young winner Rick Sutcliffe, who pitched in the NL and the AL. "And it's never more obvious than it is here in the World Series. I'm not going to bury anybody, but you look at these two teams and go position by position, it's obvious who should win."

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Jim McCabe

Boston Globe

There was no quit. Of that, they were most proud. There weren't any excuses, either. Of that, they were definitive.

Their historic winning streak had vaulted them into public view. Four straight losses to the Red Sox vanquished them from sight. But the Colorado Rockies made it clear, they enjoyed the ride and had given it their all.

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Tom Singer

MLB.com

Baseball's dramatic muse has slacked off for another postseason. After another year of untold thrills and spills, we got another October of only spills.

In the TV ratings biz, November is known as a sweeps month. Baseball's sweeps again came a month early.

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C.J. Moore

MLB.com

Troy Tulowitzki stood in the batter's box with his bat in hand and watched helplessly as the Red Sox celebrated their 4-3 victory and World Series sweep of the Rockies at Coors Field.

Eventually, Tulowitzki walked away, dreams of tying the game left in the batter's box, and he started to reflect on the dream season that was for the 2007 Colorado Rockies.

"It's tough any time you're on the losing end — kind of a sour feeling," Tulowitzki said as he fought back tears. "I definitely have that, and the team does too, but we've come a long way since Spring Training. No one expected us to be here and we turned a lot of heads."

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Jim Caple

ESPN.com

Damn humidor.

The Rockies, outplayed the entire World Series, were down to their final inning. They trailed 3-0 in the series and 4-3 in the game, and dominating Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon was on the mound firing smoke to 5-foot-9 infielder Jamey Carroll, who has hit all of nine home runs in his five-year big league career. And Carroll connected with a drive to deep, deep left field. For an instant, all of Colorado (and no doubt much of New England) waited breathlessly, hoping (or fearing) that Carroll had just extended the season with one of the more unlikely home runs in World Series history.

Instead, the ball carried only to the warning track, where Jacoby Ellsbury — whom the Red Sox had just switched from center field to left to replace Manny Ramirez — snared it with a leaping catch at the fence. And what could have been a game-tying, life-extending home run fell feet short for out No. 2.

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Howard Bryant

ESPN.com

Sometime during the night, like when the Rockies put up a run with a Brad Hawpe homer to lead off the seventh inning and followed their first run of the game with a one-out single that chased Manny Delcarmen from the mound, the Last Stand of the Colorado Rockies, long anticipated, was realized.

Winning as many games as Colorado did during its amazing late-calendar run, the Rockies couldn't have allowed a magical season to end without one final charge.

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Tony DeMarco

MSNBC.com

With a voice hoarse from an emotion-filled World Series, Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort spoke from the heart in a clubhouse filled with equal parts consolation and congratulation.

Monfort had just watched his team be outscored 29-10 in a four-game sweep at the hands of the world-champion Boston Red Sox. But two one-run losses — including a 4-3 decision in the clinching Game 4 — and a one-run deficit in the seventh inning of another defeat told him something entirely different.

"I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and say, ‘wow’,’’ Monfort said. "These guys did some amazing things. I think this team is a better team than Boston. What a deal they did.’’

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Bob Hille

Sporting News

Step inside, my friends, and behold the immutable truths in a big league clubhouse: Rookies catch a Prince Fielder-sized ration of grief; the shaving-cream pie — a classic--never gets old; dominoes, cards, video games and "Old School" pass the time just fine; and winning is a learned behavior.

So take heart, Rockies fans. Amid the wreckage of the 2007 World Series — pardon me, did Jacoby Ellsbury just double again? — a very young baseball team will grow and mature together.

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Gregg Doyel

CBSSports.com

Honestly, the Colorado Rockies would have been better off losing to Arizona in the National League Championship Series. The 2007 World Series definitely would have been better off. It's not like this thing could've been much worse.

Boston finished off the Rockies with a 4-3 victory Sunday night, completing a four-game sweep that will leave history to determine if Boston was that good — or Colorado was that bad.

Both, says me.

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Tyler Kepner

The New York Times

They have gone from exorcism to coronation in record time. The Boston Red Sox, who fought ghosts for most of the last century, are the premier team of the new millennium.

The Red Sox won their second World Series in four seasons Sunday, edging the Colorado Rockies, 4-3, in Game 4 at Coors Field. They are the first team to win multiple championships since 2000, and with a deep payroll and a stable of talented young pitchers, they may be poised for more.

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Chris Jenkins

San Diego Union-Tribune

This time, there was nothing terribly historic about it. Nothing epic. No curses to be reversed, no gorillas to be unloaded, no references to 1918 or World War I or the Bambino or the inevitable Great Gagamundo.

The Boston Red Sox don't play that game anymore. That inferiority complex has turned to an air of superiority.

"You play for the Red Sox now," said Boston third baseman Mike Lowell, named Most Valuable Player of the World Series, "from the onset, you're expected to win."

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Bill Shaikin

Los Angeles Times

They paraded rather brazenly around Coors Field on Sunday afternoon, scores of fans dressed in Boston Red Sox jerseys, waving brooms atop their heads. Red Sox Nation came out in full force, and in broad daylight, and the weary fans of Colorado offered no resistance to the brooms.

Neither did the Colorado Rockies.

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Thomas Boswell

The Washington Post

The story of this night will be retold for many a year, not only because of Jon Lester's excellence but because of the distinguished work of the losing pitcher, Aaron Cook of the Rockies, another emergency starter, who himself returned to baseball after a life-threatening blood clot in his lung three years ago.

And if hyperbole's arm is twisted in the process, so be it. The cause is good. Hard as it is to fathom, in a month when even the sharpest of star pitchers fail, Lester hadn't started a game in more than a month and Cook, who turned in a quality start, allowing three runs in six innings, hadn't started in two months.

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Jorge L. Ortiz

USA Today

The upstart Rockies captured the attention of the baseball world with their scorching 21-1 spell, and they entered the World Series riding a 10-game winning streak that stood as the fourth-longest for a team going into the Fall Classic.

They reawakened a passion for baseball in Colorado that had been extinguished after years of losing seasons.

They gave the world the term Rocktober.

And with their young, mostly homegrown talent, they served notice they'll be a force for years.

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