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KRIEGER: Rockies get chance to emerge nationally

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 23, 2007 at midnight

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Old vs. new.

Big payroll vs. small.

Red Sox Nation vs. the forgotten time zone.

Mitt Romney vs. Tom Tancredo.

If you'd tried to come up with the greatest possible contrast in the World Series, you probably couldn't have done any better than Sox vs. Rox on Fox. It's the Dr. Seuss Series.

Had it been the Indians, for example, all we would have heard for the next week was how bad the TV ratings were. With the Sawx involved, that shouldn't be an issue.

"Seeing it was all out of our hands going in, I think this is the way it was meant to be," Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said Monday, a few hours before his club flew east.

"This is a big-time franchise," he said of the Sawx. "This is a storied franchise . . . And to go to Fenway? I mean, that's dripping with drama, with history. So for us, it's good. I'm really looking forward to it."

Let's face it - the largely unknown kid Rocks needed a famous opponent to attract a little recognition. If there are Matt Holliday or Todd Helton or Troy Tulowitzki jerseys popping up around the country this winter, the Rocks will probably owe the Sox for the exposure.

For now, they are making a concerted effort not to seem in awe.

"It's not any more special than if we had been playing the Indians," Holliday insisted. "The Indians have a great team and a great history as well. So I don't think there's anything different about it."

"It's two teams playing baseball," said Josh Fogg, a native of Lynn, Mass., just north of Boston. "For the media, yeah, all that stuff's great, but we're concentrating on the nine innings of baseball we got to play on Wednesday. That's it."

Fogg smiled at the Game 1 starter at the next locker. "When Jeff Francis gets them out," he added.

Boston and Denver are about as different as American cities can be. Boston is steeped in history and tradition. There is fill in the Back Bay older than anything man-made in Colorado.

That goes for the baseball tradition, too. Many people who claimed to be Rockies fans grew apoplectic over the team's interminable struggle through baseball's desert. You know, since the franchise began play 15 years ago.

It was intolerable. Something had to be done. Petitions were printed, letters to the editor written. It was an outrage.

If Sawx Nation had any idea - and even in the age of information technology, little news of the forgotten time zone gets back to Beantown - it would have had a good laugh. Its drought lasted 86 years.

The discontented Rock-o-phile replies that the Sawx got close periodically, at least. This is true as far as it goes, but even the mini-droughts between unsuccessful postseason appearances were longer than all of Rocks history. From 1918 to 1946, for example. And '46 to '67. Rockies fans would have impeached somebody or something.

Sawx fans stewed. They never developed Wrigleyville's humor about futility. But neither did they abandon their team. I asked Hurdle if Rocks fans could learn anything from Sawx fans about the nature of baseball and patience.

"I don't think the fans around here want to hear about the 70 years or whatever," Hurdle said with a laugh. "Because our fans were hungry. Our fans are hungry. We went through a very challenging stretch of time that we weren't competitive. And it's not like we got close and didn't make it. We were where we were. It was at the bottom more often than not.

"The passion that they have in Boston is unique and it's developed over time. It's history. It's tradition. I think we're trying to establish our own."

The fact remains that with the Sawx having ended their 86-year famine with a World Series sweep of the Cardinals three years ago, the Rocks bring the longer sweep of longing into the '07 series, for whatever that's worth.

No doubt there will be the usual bashing of the two cities from the usual quarters. Pay no attention. These are both great towns.

Last summer, The Dude and I visited Fenway for a pair of games between the Sox and Orioles. On our ballpark tour throughout The Dude's childhood, we've seen all the most famous yards, from Wrigley to Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium to Camden Yards.

But as we stood after the final out of our second game at Fenway, The Dude announced, "Got to say, this is No. 1."

The bizarre Neil Diamond thing notwithstanding, it is one of baseball's holy places, even if they only update the National League scores once or twice a night. Yeah, they're a little parochial.

Most of them have never lived anywhere else. Not like Colorado. If they didn't update the out-of-town scores at Coors Field, someone would draft a petition.

Luckily, no scoreboard updating will be required come Wednesday night at Fenway. The National League champion will be right there, building a little tradition of its own.