By the Time We Got to Phoenix

     Fickle.

     Baseball fans.

    By the time they disposed of Tulo in mid-season 2015, the Rockies were already out of it.  Their traditional July slump had been preceded by a May-June slump.  They had a better chance of buying the winning lottery ticket than they did of making the playoffs.  My interest waned.

     The Tulo deal was greeted with tears, cheers, and jeers.  I indulged in the latter.  Did I want to go see a ballgame?  Not just no. . . .

     I had put up with enough from the Monforts.  After all, I had gone to school in Greeley for four years.  (If you are not familiar with Greeley, the Monforts had feedlots just beyond the city’s northern border in the 1960’s.  Any northerly breeze left the city smelling like a feedlot, cow poop scented with rotted corn, now and then with a strong ammoniac tinge, usually with a healthy dose of sulfur.  When confronted about their responsibility for Greeley’s trademark stench, Mrs. Monfort famously said it smelled like money to her.)

      That’s what the Tulo deal was all about, money.  Go to a ballgame?  I refused to contribute one red cent to something that might end up in a Monfort pocket.

     The whole deal smacked of the old Kansas City A’s owned by Charlie Finley, a team many called the Yankees’ quadruple-A club, since the top stars inevitably got traded to the Yankees for cash.  The Rockies are much more free and easy with their favors, helping Milwaukee, then Cleveland, now Toronto with their disposal of stars for cash program.

     Wouldn’t this nonsense stop when we finally got rid of Dealin’ Dan O’Dowd, I asked?  Apparently not.  When and where would Cargo go? I asked.

      The truth is, my interest began to wane in the 2014 season, the Rockies slumping yet again, but the Royals showing not just a spark of life, but a roaring blaze burning through anything that got in their way.  It’s always nice to have a dog in the fight at the end.

     Fight the Royals did.  The 2014 World Series came down to the final pitch of the ninth inning.  Royals on base would have scored with a base hit, for sure tying the final game, maybe even sending them ahead and into the bottom of the ninth with a chance to win it.

     A very good defensive play resulted in an out, ending the game, the series, and the season, but I don’t think there was a really sad heart in any Royals fan anywhere.  They had come from last place in 2013 to second place, not just in their division but in the world, only by a whisker in 2014.  From cellar to stellar, they came.

      In 2015, it was easy to abandon the Rockies to their horrid fate and keep an eye on the Royals, until the Tulo deal.  To me, the deal confirmed that management was not in to win, only to string the fans along, make them believe they are trying to win, and milk them for whatever they can.

    Many people saw Tulo as a distraction, an ego, a self-centered nova about to burn out.  I saw a guy who played when he shouldn’t, trying his best to get his team going in the right direction, injuring himself further and delaying his return, an error in  judgment but his heart in the right place.  I saw a guy with the experience to help bring along the young guys.

     Most of all, I liked watching Tulo and Arenado working together like a super machine on the left side of the infield.  No more of that.  Go to a Rockies game?  Perhaps, if the only alternative was a prostate exam.

       Twenty sixteen found us making plans to take a March trip to Phoenix.  We would go to a Rockies game.  Alexander Pope time, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast. / [The fan] never is, but always to be blest.”  Or Abe Lincoln time, “You can fool some of the people all the time.” Time for an attitude change for me, anyway.

      I listened to three or four games on the radio, hoping to be able to remember some new names to look for when we got down there.  I managed to hang on to two names.  Adames played shortstop against the Diamondbacks, the first game we watched.  Para, the new rich-guy outfielder, made two great catches in left field. 

     Chuck Nasty played center field, not too far from where we sat on the hillside lawn in right-center.  Pretty easy to pick out with his beard and all.  Outfield lawn tickets were $11 (which really cost $13 no matter whether you bought them directly from the ticket window or from one of the dairies such as Ticketmaster who are always milking you).  So that was fairly cheap.  Nine-dollar beer isn’t cheap.  Can you imagine paying $9 for a Bud Light?  The vendors charge $7, but you need to give them a tip.     

      It was a good game even after the big guys gathered their bat bags, jackets, and gloves and headed for the showers after the fifth inning.  The “scrubs” kept things interesting.  Arenado hit two long home runs to left field before he departed. Had he hit the longest one to right center instead of left-center, we would have had a good chance to capture the ball where we sat close to the concourse, it was that long.  The Rockies won.

     The second game we went to was the next-to-last “home” game.  It was against Milwaukee.  Only two of us went to it, so we bought into the cheap seats down the right field line.  We were just six rows back, so we saw the big guys up close and personal when they headed to the dressing room.  We didn’t get a chance at any foul balls, but one of us garnered a T-shirt that Dinger cast to the wind.  Those seats were $23, I think.

     The Rockies were behind 4 to 1 for most of the game.  Paulsen played first base for both games we watched.  Jorge did his usual erratic job for a couple of innings, being lights-out for several pitches, then having trouble finding the plate with Googlemaps or anything else.  A kid named Trevor Story played shortstop.  I said he was probably trying to make it on the roster as a utility infielder.   

      Story struck out his first two times up.  I said that wasn’t a very good showing for somebody trying for a spot on the team.  I didn’t know that he had already been named the starting shortstop.

       If you have followed baseball at all this year, you know that Trevor Story now breaks a major league record every time he steps on the field, with his homerun on his first plate appearance, his six homeruns in his first four games.  He has displaced Jose Reyes, the highly-paid Tulo replacement who is on probation for domestic violence.  Story has probably guaranteed that Tulowitzki will be a quickly fading, pleasant memory.  If he continues as hot as he has started, we will wonder why we ever needed Tulo in the first place.

      There’s still the pitching.  The Rockies gave up 30 runs in the first two games of their home-opening series.

     I have listened to four of their first six games.  It’s still early yet.  If our spring trip is an omen, it could be another long year for the Rockies.  (The swimming pool at the condo we rented closed for maintenance after we were there two days.  It didn’t matter.  The weather was too cold to go swimming anyway.) 

     Ah, baseball fans!  Here’s to the fickle among us.  Sure glad I’m not one of them!