On the night of Oct. 1, baseball's postseason was less than 48 hours from getting underway. The AL playoff picture was set in stone, the Cubs were headed to Phoenix, and the Padres were in Colorado, vying for the final spot in the NL playoffs and the right to play Game 1 in Philadelphia.
I remember that night as the first night I began to take the Colorado Rockies seriously.
I remember beginning my evening at the Daily office, reading a couple articles, captioning a couple photos ... a typical Monday night. Eventually, the conversation in the room shifted to the NL playoffs, and I remember the words of a certain colleague, who shall remain nameless.
"You know who's scared of the Rockies?" he asked, rhetorically, as he adjusted his Phillies cap and arched his two trademark thumbs toward his chest. "This guy."
I struggled to keep from laughing out loud. The Rockies, with baseball's fifth-lowest payroll and a rotation featuring nobodies like Taylor Buchholz and Ubaldo Jiminez, were what now passed for "fearsome" in the National League? What in the name of Manny Corpas was going on here?
I already admitted two weeks ago that I was wrong. The Rockies are the story of the year, and at this point, it's hard not to admit it. Their 14-of-15 run to close the regular season was historic in its own right, and the team's rise from fourth place last year to a 90-win season in '07 shocked us all.
But really, I didn't realize quite how wrong I was. At this point, the Rockies are more than just fearsome, more than just shocking, more than just historic. Twenty-one wins in 22 games, 20 of them against winning teams, seven of them in the playoffs against the Phillies and Diamondbacks? This is downright surreal. This can't be happening.
While theoretically, I'm supposed to resent this Colorado team, a team that steals the spotlight from my Red Sox on a nightly basis, I still can't help but love this. As a fan, I stay awake at night worrying about a potential Sox-Rox World Series; as a sportswriter, I'm drawn to the National League champions.
What I love about these Rockies is that they're taking all the conventional wisdom out there about baseball and proving it wrong.
"Experience means everything," you say? The 25 Rockies have just one World Series ring, and it belongs to Byung-Hyun Kim, whose claim to fame is an epic chokefest in the 2001 Series. His postseason ERA? Six thirty-five. Not exactly Christy Mathewson.
The stars of this team are Matt Holliday, 27, Brad Hawpe, 28, and Troy Tulowitzki, 23. Zero postseason appearances for the three of them combined, until this October. That didn't stop Holliday from slugging three homers in seven games, Hawpe from hitting .350, or Tulowitzki from making a beautiful play to clinch the NL pennant Monday night. These guys don't care about anyone's expectations - they just win.
"Good pitching beats good hitting." That one's a classic. But this is a Colorado team with a 4.32 team ERA in 2007, eighth-best in the National League. They beat out the Padres, the best-pitching team in baseball this year, for the wild card, and roughed up Cy Young winner Brandon Webb in Game 1 of the NLCS. I love Jeff Francis and Josh Fogg as much as the next guy, but the Rockies have slugged their way here.
And as much as I hate to admit it, it's hard to imagine that the slugging will end here. This Rockies team is as close to unbeatable as I've ever seen.
So who's petrified by the Rockies? Absolutely horrified? Too intimidated for words, at least words that are publishable in a respectable newspaper?
Yep. This guy.
Evans Clinchy is a junior majoring in English. He can be reached at evans.clinchy@tufts.edu
