By BERNIE LINCICOME
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
What to do about the Colorado Rockies? That's the question, isn't it?
Fire the manager.
Fire the general manager.
Fire the owners. Sell the team. Boycott the team.
Fire the hitting coach, the pitching coach, the mascot. Trade Todd Helton. Trash the humidor. Move the fences in. Move the fences out. Do something.
About time.
It is not as if it has just now come to this, after all. The Rockies have been foot wipes forever, or for as long as the Rockies have been. The brief wild-card toe wetting, so long ago, is a joke as a measurement and a mirage as a goal.
Those simultaneous arrivals, the Florida Marlins, have won two World Series, been sold and bought and blown up twice, while the subsequent Arizona Diamondbacks became world champions in four seasons.
The Rockies have been this way certainly for this century, as young as it is. For any amount of time you want to use, this season, this week, this inning.
What has accompanied the blessed journey of the local baseballers is compassion, or maybe acceptance, or gratitude, or just plain politeness.
There is about the local fan the sense that bad baseball is better than no baseball.
And it is not just the Rockies. The Nuggets have a grand tradition as bottom dwellers, and recent shortcomings have been accepted with understanding and a vague consent that another chance is not one, or even two, too many.
The Broncos, the town pet, for all their grand successes and certifiable legends, have been the cruelest kind of tease lately, each season hyped with hope and excused with tolerance.
Nothing critical or disparaging may be said or thought about the Broncos, or of Mike Shanahan or, for now, about wonder child QB Jay Cutler, in whom reside all dreams.
The Avalanche came to town as a polished gift, and under the old NHL, repairs could be made with money and as needed. The string snapped with goalie Jose Theodore and a new business model that chased former wizard Pierre Lacroix into retreat.
The telling thing about the Avs is that they left for a season and were unmissed. And now the long road back for both the Avs and for hockey rests in youth and parity, one of the many formulas offered by the Rockies.
For all of owner Stan Kroenke's money, and the willingness to spend it, results have been meager, the Avs winning without his help and losing with it. The Nuggets might be a model for the Rockies, at least in terms of intrigue.
If the Rockies were to get a player as celebrated as Allen Iverson _ who might that be, Sammy Sosa? _ and a manager as pedigreed as George Karl _ again, who, Bobby Valentine? _ certainly the buzz would be louder but the results no less certain.
Yet, Kroenke and his money are inevitably offered as the saviors for all things sports in Denver that are not the Broncos.
If all it took was throwing money at a baseball team, the Yankees would win every year, which they more or less do, if not everything, every year. But say this about the Yankees, or the Red Sox, or even the recent and soon-to-be-sold Cubs: They act like they want to win.
They do not trade crumbs for crumbs. They might overpay for expectation, much as the Rockies once did for Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, now a run-on mortification. There was nothing wrong with the plan but merely with the choices.
What if the Rockies had paid the money they paid those two pitchers to Alex Rodriquez, who was for sale at the time? Any conjecture about what might have been is as good as any other.
In cities where sports teams wrench the passions of a community, something only the Broncos are capable of here, where losing is not tolerated in silence or sympathy, managers are fired long before this one. And general managers are not allowed shifting alibis.
It does not mean that things get better, but it does mean that someone cares, both on the field and in the stands.
That's the contract between them and us. For our loyalty and affection, we get the expectation of success.
This is how it works. Sports fans, a community, franchise ownership, all deserve what they will stand for.
And, around here, showing up is good enough.
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