Christ I hate this friggin' park.
I'm too pissed off to check, but I'm pretty sure our record here is something like 3-54. Every other team comes here to get well, and we come here to die. The bats go ice-cold and we look like we're sleepwalking while whoever's wearing a Rockie uniform that night — good year, bad year, worst-team-in-the-NL year, it doesn't much matter — runs rings around us. This is where Dante Bichette pumped his fist and Doug Henry managed to lose both ends of a double-header and Jerry DiPoto was at his most DiPotoesque and Jay Payton's hamstring snapped like a frayed rubber band and Victor Zambrano admitted his elbow hurt and Joe McEwing broke his leg and terrible thing after terrible thing happened. I hate everything about this place, from the 9:05 starts to the near-total absence of oxygen to the mountain of stands to the purple accents on everything to the fake forest-and-stream crap beyond the fences to the weird, overly rich lighting that saturates everything. And, of course, the losing. Lord, do I hate the losing.
Three runs? In Colorado? Against a collection of Colorado Springs Sky Sox? With no Todd Helton? On a night when the Nationals, Phillies and Marlins all lost? I could cry.
I had things to attend to and had already suffered excessively from last night's delayed debacle, so I decreed that this was a radio game, with me only offering up one sense to be offended. But in the seventh I couldn't resist: I left my subterranean lair to trot over the TV when Cameron came to the plate with the bases loaded. He struck out. Looking. In Colorado.
Muttering, I returned to the lair. In the ninth…well, you can guess. Once more at the TV. Jose on second, Cameron at the plate again. I was trying to think if either of us had used “Sweet Redemption” as an article title yet. I could still hear the radio in the other room, a half-second ahead of the TV, so I wound up camped out on the stairs with one hand jamming my ear shut, trying to think good thoughts and keep myself from straining to catch the intonations in Howie and Gary's voices.
Strike three, looking? Again? You've got to be kidding me.
No mas. Uncle. Call off the dogs. Just get us the hell out of this house of horrors. Beautiful day tomorrow, let's play none.
Funny (not funny ha-ha, but funny, I want to kill myself at the thought) you mention DiPoto because there is another angle to him regarding that monstrosity and its role in our recurring demise. Jerry DiPoto was traded to Colorado for Armando Reynoso following 1996 and eventually emerged as the Rockies' closer. In the middle of the following August, with the Mets making their spunky run for the Wild Card, they went into Coors Field and got swept. It was the first of about seven or eight times between then and our actual elimination that I concluded we would not make the playoffs. The reason it sticks out like a sore thumb to the eye is Jerry DiPoto, who had an ERA of Infinity as a Met, closed out all three games against his former team. Two saves and one just for fun appearance.
When that series started, we were 2-1/2 out of the Wild Card and rolling. When it ended, we were 4-1/2 behind the Marlins and our momentum, like us, was left gasping for air.
For good measure, future Jerry DiPoto impersonator Mike DeJean pitched in all three Colorado wins, August 15-17, 1997. In case you didn't notice, he's pitched in these two Colorado wins.
I've been told that Dante Bichette actually walked around a hotel lobby in St. Louis wearing a Bichette Happens t-shirt.
The Rockies are just another reason why life as we all knew it was just better in 1992. I decided long ago that instead of watching any Colorado games, I would just unplug my TV, smear excrement on the screen at 9:05, and watch it harden for three hours. Sounds like I haven't missed anything…again.
You may not have wanted to know that, but you really don't wanna know what I do instead of watching the Braves.