LITTWIN: Rockies seem to have forgotten how to lose

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published October 15, 2007 at midnight

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If Rockies fans are numb, it has nothing to do with the weather.

The fans have been watching one of the hottest teams in the history of baseball produce a month's worth of visions previously unseen - and the fact that that team happens to be the Colorado Rockies just moves the story into dimensions clearly unvisited.

I was talking to Paul Wells, a longtime Rockies fan, before the game, and he was saying of the stunning Rockies' run: "Ninety-eight percent of the people here have no understanding of what's happening here."

Wells is a knowledgeable fan who has been watching baseball forever. But, in this case, he's guilty of wild understatement.

One hundred percent of the fans here - and, in fact, 100 percent of fans everywhere - have no understanding of what's happening here.

I mean, let's review what we've seen the Rockies do.

They've won 20 of 21 games, spanning 29 days. And, yes, they are the Colorado Rockies.

They're up 3-0 in this playoff series and need only one more win to go to the actual, undreamed-of World Series. And, yes, they are the Colorado Rockies.

Imagine putting any of those sentences together at any other time.

Imagine a World Series in Coors Field. If you can't, you'd better start working harder.

After the game Sunday - played in the cold and the rain and the fog and with fans waving their towels (handy for waving and also for drying your seat) - Rockies fans would have pinched themselves, if they could have gotten through all the layers of clothing, past the yellow slickers, down to the Hot Chillys base layer.

You can say that these fans have jumped on the bandwagon. Unlike Diamondbacks fans, at least they recognize a bandwagon when they see one.

In fact, one guy was holding a sign that read, "The Line For The Bandwagon Starts Here."

As we know, Denver fans are notoriously enthusiastic - or, if you prefer, easy - but the Coors crowds, which used to set attendance records, had turned into Coors Light crowds the past few seasons. Who could blame the fans? If they had lost faith in Rockies management, it was for perfectly good reason. All they had to do was watch the standings, if they had the stomach for it.

That was then. Faith is a different kind of issue now. Usually, this time of year, someone is breaking out the "You Gotta Believe" signs. For this team, for this season, it's a "Can You Believe?" sign that's required.

After the game, Rockies reliever Brian Fuentes said he was surprised so many fans - 50,137, by official count - had braved the cold. "I guess they're used to it," he said.

All I know is that it was 43 degrees at game time and that it kept getting colder. The rain, which had been coming down for most of the day, persisted through most of the evening.

And nobody seemed to notice. Or, if they did, they certainly didn't seem to mind. These are fans, of course, who know how to act in nasty autumn weather. But all their practice, to this point, had come at a stadium named Mile High.

On this night, nobody wanted to leave. Brandon Marshall would have been proud. Nobody wanted to let go of the sight of rain dripping off the cap of Yorvit Torrealba as he blasted a three-run homer in the sixth that settled things.

The Diamondbacks have tried to make this a series, although not necessarily on the field. Arizona left fielder Eric Byrnes had the nerve to say something quotable about the opposition - which is always dangerous in baseball. He said that the Diamondbacks had outplayed the Rockies in the first two games - but had just gotten unlucky.

Actually, he wasn't that far wrong. It isn't luck that the Rockies have had going for them. It's something more mystical than luck. It's something that the baseball poets love to write about, if you can write poetry in purple prose, which is what you can surely anticipate.

The fans did their part to try to make the series exciting. They booed Byrnes every time he came to the plate - including the first time, when he lined into a first-inning double play. The only time they didn't boo him was when he crashed into the outfield wall as a Matt Holliday homer flew 30 feet over his head. I guess Byrnes is still working on the concept of "warning" track.

The double play was maybe the biggest play of the game. The Diamondbacks' first two runners had reached base against Josh Fogg. Byrnes was at the plate and smashed the ball - directly at Fogg, who caught it and wheeled to second to get the runner.

You could see a trend here. The Rockies got three double plays in the first three innings.

Byrnes' liner was hit so hard that it almost could have been a triple play. And from that moment, you knew that nothing had changed in this series, that the Rockies still couldn't remember how to lose baseball games.

Fogg, who has made a habit of beating pitchers he's not supposed to beat, was matched up against Livan Hernandez, who is used to this postseason business. He's what baseball people call wily, meaning he can throw a curveball so slowly that the radar gun literally can't pick up the, uh, speed.

Hernandez had the Rockies mostly off balance - until Torrealba's three-run homer broke a 1-1 tie and put things right.

And that was it. The Rockies were on their way to a win that everyone could see coming - even through the fog.

Numb?

Hey, what's a little October weather compared to the dizzying, dazzling prospect of late-October baseball?

littwinm@RockyMountainNews.com.

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