Lincicome: Ripe excuses for Rockies are ready to be plucked

Monday, August 28, 2006

I see by the old calendar on the wall, it is time to play Pick an Alibi.

It has not escaped our attention that the local baseball season has turned pretty much into oatmeal, not counting the Rockies' regular pitch slapping of San Diego.

Such an obvious redundancy ordinarily would not cause anyone to look up from his celery patch this late in August. You can count the number of times on one toothpick it has been the other way around.

However, hopes grew high for the Rockies this year, about waist high for much of the summer, high enough that excuses must be not only handy but fresh.

As Christy Mathewson once said, "You must have an alibi to show why you lost. If you haven't one, you must fake one."

I, of course, like to do whatever I can.

The following are numbered conveniently so all you have to do is hold up the appropriate amount of fingers to anyone who asks, "So, what happened to those Rockies when our backs were turned?"

1. The Broncos.

Like the rest of the city, the baseball players looked up and noticed the Broncos training camp had started, preseason games were being played and Ashley Lelie, who wasn't even in town, was getting more attention than Matt Holliday, who was batting .328.

And then, with a practice game in town on the same day as the Padres, and no television, a third of the number are at Coors as at Invesco to witness the rare run support for Aaron Cook and yet another new face behind the catcher's mask.

2. The Media.

It is always the media's fault. We are always nagging and second- guessing and asking hard questions like, "What kind of pitch was it?" and "What's the soup of the day?" Worst thing we did was to pat the Rox on the back and make them feel better than they deserved to feel.

Less media the better. Most of the teams ahead of the Rockies are from one-newspaper towns, and don't forget that Chicago won the World Series last year without having any worth reading.

3. Don Zimmer.

No, of course, it isn't Zim's fault. It's just that we've laughed a lot less since he has left the bench and we miss him.

4. Slogans.

No marketing survey is needed to get the message. The 25,000 Rockies fans who no longer come to the ballpark each game do not want Cory Sullivan and Brad Hawpe. They want a contender. Instead of "Generation R" the new marketing slogan can be: "Boyz to Men."

Less catchy but more to the point, "No Runner Left Behind," or on second base, which is where most of them are left.

5. Dissension.

Not enough of it. Brian Fuentes griped a bit about his entrance music early on, and Jose Mesa tried to restart a feud left over from Cleveland, but Clint Hurdle not once chased a pitcher who did not want to come out of the game into the clubhouse runway, nor did he get a bloody nose. His nose always looks like that.

The biggest flap of the season was the Rockies denying that they were too decent. To use Todd Helton's words, "We're dirtbags like 99 percent of the world, maybe worse." Got to work on that other one percent.

6. Management.

The general manager builds a team, and then moans that it doesn't know what kind of team it is. The manager amiably treats wins and losses the same. He does not get into a public spitting match with a local columnist and need to go to sensitivity training like Ozzie Guillen. Nor does he chew out his owner for berating an umpire from his seat in the stands, as Marlins manager Joe Girardi did.

The owner, meanwhile, thinks everything is going just swell and that first place is inevitable. Which it is, and another ice age, eventually.

6. The Hole in the Ozone Layer, the Greenhouse Effect, fluorocarbons and Stuff Like That.

Can't think of any other reasons why Garrett Atkins is only able to handle every third ball hit to him at third base. Those fluorocarbons must be slippery little devils.

7. Choo Freeman. Ray King. Kazuo Matsui.

One of those guys.

8. The Humidor.

Visiting teams might gripe about softer, moister baseballs, but they are used to playing in those kinds of conditions all the time, while the old advantage of altitude and rock hard baseballs worked more for the Rockies. While all the Rockies pitching stats are better, so are those on the visiting team.

9. The Old Coors.

A place to stay until the last batter. Now gone with the Chinook winds.

10. Speaking of the Chinook.

This is an old standby but Denver's own. And it works for the Broncos. Which brings us back to where we started.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com