A ‘Vintage’ Opening Day - Snakes 8, Rox 6
Boy was Russ dead on in his opening day prediction, as heard on the first Rockies Disaster Report Podcast. Sure enough, Cookie had a decent (but not great start) that gave the Rox a chance to win, but the bullpen, at least one member of the bullpen, completely blew it late.
There is some good news, though. Unlike last year, I’m fairly confident that this team can score, and they won’t always have to overcome their starter giving up five runs in six innings. Tulo, Ianetta, Hawpe, and take note of this, because I think he’s gonna give the team a boost over what a lot of analysts are saying - Kazuo all looked good. And any time Todd Helton starts a season hot, you’ve got to be excited. Even though they didn’t show up today, Atkins and Holliday will both come around, at least at the plate.
But parts of the game, especially the deciding part of the game, looked eerily like 2005 and the latter half of ‘06. LaTroy Hawkins simply cannot pitch. Even though I was sitting some 400 feet away, I feel very qualified to say that his fastball must be as flat as Kansas, because the Diamondbacks were pounding him. And though I don’t want to take any blame away from LaTroy, Hurdle certainly deserves a share of the loss given his terrible decisions both to remove Corpas for the eighth and leave Hawkins in after he failed to retire even one of the first four batters. Why Clint refuses to acknowledge that his young guys can pitch in pressure situations is beyond anyone at this point, but had Corpas stayed in for the eighth (and with Fuentes in the ninth) we might be writing about an entirely different ballgame.
Score aside, it was still a pretty entertaining game, and Sam and I had fun at the ballpark. On the subject, we were able to entertain ourselves to no end by asserting that Eric Byrnes probably plays baseball high (Sam to a friend of ours via text message: Just look at him!), and imagining him slipping on one of the plastic bags that had made its way to the field. Seriously, take a moment and picture Eric Byrnes tripping on the outfield grass. Hilarious!
I personally can’t wait for Coors to be empty again, when I won’t have to park eight blocks away to avoid paying $30, won’t have to stand in line to get in or buy a coke, and most of all won’t have to deal with obnoxious fans. We had one behind us today who could not stop screaming (at the top of his lungs) about how bad the Rockies were and how pitiful he felt to “be a fan,” a term used pretty loosely in my opinion. Even when we were winning, he would qualify it by saying, “mark it on the calendar, the Rockies are ahead!” Really disgusting. I’m taking solace in the fact that he, like the majority of the 50,000+ who crammed into Coors today, probably won’t be back for another year. And that’s the beauty of Rockies baseball.
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