Calling Asians “Orientals” isn’t okay, right?

I ask because Sawyer did it in Lost. Point is, here is an Asian player throwing a crazy pitch:

Fake?

What’s Powering the Purple Express?

Destiny or Deception? Illusion or Improvement? Magic or…maybe nothing?

Last time on DSZ…

The question on everyone’s mind now is, can the Rockies do it? That is, can they overachieve and drag themselves above .500 and, surprisingly enough, into contention?

The Rockies have done it. At 38-34 and just 3.5 games back after a sweep of the Yankees, our boys are in thick of things. Denver is talking about the Rockies, and the Purple Express is chugging to the top of the baseball world.

Still, fans and skeptics are uneasy. And why shouldn’t they be? Last year the Rockies contended going into the All-Star break before returning to their usual form. The team’s entire history can be essentially summed up as one false hope after another followed by spectacular letdowns. Why assume that this particular shuffle of the cards is any different?

Without getting too far into the stats, I can tell you that the team probably is overachieving right now. The starting pitching should not be this dominant, Willy T should not be leading off this well, and even Brad Hawpe shouldn’t be flirting with .300. Mark Donohue, who may be the only person I know who would rather be right in predicting failure than have his team win and admit error, has already written off this particular streak as just that, with a few acknowledgements of the success it’s ushered in:

As for the Rockies. They’re not awful, and clearly more progress has been made than it first appeared in those brutal early weeks of the season where everyone that remained who cared including myself was screaming for the immediate dismissal of Clint Hurdle and Dan O’Dowd. That’s good, but they aren’t going to win the division. They’re not going to make the playoffs, either. I like to dream as much as the next baseball fan, but there are playoff pitching staffs and then there’s what the Rockies have and I know what the difference is.

Clearly, Mark has a right to be pessimistic. But in my opinion, he also has a responsibility to be supportive. He’s probably right that this team is not playoff bound, but I don’t think it matters. Regardless of what’s actually behind the Purple Express, even if it is just smoke, mirrors and a few above-average performances, we should celebrate the sudden appearance of good baseball in Denver. If the Rockies can keep it up on the road, average attendance should rise into the 35K+ level for the next homestand (which doesn’t include the Yankees), and the buzz will only continue.

My hope is that if this modest success can generate enough excitement, the Monforts will realize that Denver can be a VERY good and profitable baseball town. If this product can put more bodies through turnstiles after half a decade of below-.500 baseball, imagine what a consistently good, or just consistently competitive, team can do for the bottom line. Maybe, just maybe, this streak will convince the Monforts that spending a little more money (and grabbing a decent GM) will pay off. Maybe next time the Yankees roll around the consecutive sellouts will start in the hundreds, not at one.

Isn’t that something worth being optomistic for?

Rugby. It’s violentâ„¢.

Why was I not informed about how awesome rugby is? This will cure the craving we all have have for violence due to football’s absence for sure…

Is it too early to say ‘I told you so?’

Maybe…and I definitely didn’t tell anyone ’so’ about Denny Bautista. But about a month ago, I talked about how the Rockies’ hitting was slowly starting to improve, and how improvements would carry the team to at least a slightly better record.. 16 wins and only 14 losses later, the Rockies are a team again. Granted, not a very good one yet - but they seem to have found a small amount of consistency that has put them within reach of .500, which is where most expectations had them at the beginning of the year.

The question on everyone’s mind now (besides Woody Paige, who hates being right and is watching last night’s “Touch ‘Em All” segment for the sixth time right now) is, can the Rockies do it? That is, can they overachieve and drag themselves above .500 and, surprisingly enough, into contention?

The promising signs are that the Rockies won 6 straight and their second home series without the expected production from Todd Helton and Matt Holliday, who both had decent games but saw averages drop considerably during the streak. The Rox also managed to win around Garret Atkins’ struggles and Clint Hurdle’s blind insistence on keeping him in the lineup until, coincidentally enough, the three losses proceeding the streak. Atkins is now heating up again, and Helton and Holliday will both pull themselves out of their small skids, which will make this lineup truly dangerous - as evidenced by yesterday’s 10-9 comeback victory.

This is what everyone hoped the Rockies would be able to do at the beginning of the season - score runs with ease. You don’t expect or ask any team to win a ballgame when their staff allows nine runs - but the good teams manage to do it a handfull of times anyways. Hopefully the Rockies can take the momentum from Sunday’s emotional, exhausting, and uplifting performance and re-make themselves into a team that competes that way every night. Perhaps that willingness to scratch away at any lead and make the other team beat you every night, rather than giving up when you’re down six runs, is the character, the something, the magic stuff, the identity, to use a word that gets thrown around a lot, that the Rockies have been missing.

We can trace all of this back to a chilly Denver night in May when Clint Hurdle walked to the mound to replace Jeff Francis, who had taken a shutout into the 8th on less than 80 pitches. After the game (and being booed off the field), Clint apologized and admitted he made a mistake - not for the first time, but maybe the only time the fans, the media, and the players were all listening with interest. Even if Hurdle isn’t really accountable for his actions, even if he and Dan O’Dowd are guaranteed two more mediocre years with this franchise, The Night He Blew it could be the night the team woke up, and started taking accountability for their own play, rather than blaiming failure on the small market, low attendance, miniscule payroll, bad luck, or random acts of the baseball G-ds. Look who’s smiling down on, or at least, not setting the baseball devil on them, now.