Every now and then I hear from a friend or family member about how I haven't been writing for my Rockies blog as much. Well, what is there to say about this year's team? Is tracking Jonathan Herrera's starts really a worthwhile use of anybody's time? The other day I was listening to the Denver sports radio station in the car and two guys were arguing about whether Willy Taveras or Scott Podsednik should be the Colorado leadoff hitter. Apparently just leaving the spot open, or hitting the pitcher there, were not considered options.

That says all you need to know about the .375 '08 Rockies, who are just a hair ahead of San Diego to avoid the worst record in the majors. (Remember all that talk, much of it from me, about how good the NL West was going to be this season? So much for that. The Rockies and Padres are making San Francisco look decent by comparison.) The trouble about that saying all you need to know about the Rockies (that and their 4.80 team ERA) is that that leaves me with little to say.

Well... I bought the new Rays hat at a sports store at the mall in Broomfield. It's nicer than it looks on TV, with a little light blue drop shadow under the white letters. It's less of a ripoff of the new-ish Padres design than I thought. It's a nice color blue, too, although I was in the minority in really liking the solid green look Tampa Bay used sometimes before this year.

The NBA playoffs have not delivered on the promise eight 50-win teams in the West and a seemingly great Celtics team suggested going in. The unbelievable difference in the performance of every single team from their home games to their road games suggests either that none of these teams were as strong as we were led to believe or that the level of officiating in the league was even worse. I thought that San Antonio would look less vulnerable against New Orleans but it's still possible that the Spurs could win Games 6 and 7. Utah has less of a chance of pulling out their series against the Lakers -- Game 5 was their big chance to steal a game on the road, and they came up just short. The Celtics didn't even make it out of the first round before losing all of their confidence, and that has rendered the East playoffs close to unwatchable. The Cleveland-Boston series has featured nonstop brickery from both teams, and I was unable to watch more than a few minutes at a time of any of the East series involving Detroit and/or Orlando. The team that wins will probably be decided by how hurt Kobe Bryant's back is, and Kobe Bryant -- like the Rockies, presently -- is not that interesting to me.

After I returned home from the game last night, I was all worked up to write an angry post about the cheap owners, the terrible starters, and the possibility of a 100-loss season. I even wrote the first paragraph, which I won't repeat here. But then I thought better of it. I thought that (if you'll excuse me) if my bad attitude was starting to wear thin even on me, it might be old news to readers as well. So I figured I'd sleep on it and see where things stood in the morning. (Sadly, with the major league schedule now completed for the evening, the record incontrovertibly shows the Rockies tied for the worst record in major league baseball. But we're trying to be uplifting here!)

So instead of writing a vitriolic "Cardinals 6, Rockies 5" blog entry, I went to finish all of the chores I had put aside to go to the baseball game. I cleaned the cat bin. I emptied the dishwasher. I did the laundry (including the Curt Flood jersey I wore to the game in protest). Then I decided to have a glass of lemonade, listen to Wilco's exemplary Sky Blue Sky, and finish this weighty history of the Ottoman Empire I've been trudging through for the past few weeks.

While I was stirring the frozen lemonade concentrate into a pitcher of water, I noticed that the back of the new shelf I bought to house my ever-expanding record collection, which perches on the kitchen counter due to single-bedroom space requirements, looked kind of bare and unpleasant. I thought it might be nice to brighten it up with some magazine clippings, and the first thing my eye caught over across in the stack on the far side of the counter was the monthly Rockies magazine.

The magazine also doubles as the program they sell at games, so there's always full-page pictures of everybody notable on the roster. Jeff Francis and Troy Tulowitzki have been on my fridge for a while. (I must digress to note that the issue in question, May 2008, has Manny Corpas, the "Eye of the Storm," on the cover, and also introduces a "Tulo and Nix" feature that I suppose will not be appearing again for some time.) Who's the next guy that leaps to mind that I need represented on the back of one of my shelves? Why, Todd Helton of course.

And then I began to think about Todd, as I looked for scissors and tape. How much have I written about Todd Helton this season? Not a whole lot. I gave credit to Garrett Atkins and Matt Holliday for doing their thing in the midst of all the anarchy, but I took Helton for granted. That's unforgivable. Todd Helton is the whole reason I live in Colorado in the first place. That's overstating things slightly, but I never would have moved to a region without a baseball team I could feel comfortable rooting for. And although the Rockies were pretty crummy from 1996-2004, I had always admired Helton as a great hitting, fielding, and throwing first baseman. He was a complete player at a position that began to see a preponderance of Mo Vaughn types during this era. So I figured even if Colorado was bad for many years, I would always have Helton's play to admire. That was good enough for me. I bought a Rockies cap, a purple #17 jersey, and I packed my bags.

(I also have, as a relic of a similar process, a #54 Houston Astros Brad Lidge jersey. It didn't work out so well in Houston, for myself or Lidge. Maybe I'll tell the story of my #10 Shingo Takatsu White Sox jersey another time.)

Coming back to my kitchen, and my lemonade, and my action photo clipped of that perfectly level swing at its very completion, I've decided to give the Rockies a break this year. They're horrible, and venal mistakes were made on the part of the management team that caused this to be so. But they gave me and a lot of other people a ton of joy last year. Yeah, by the end of the year Coors Field is going to be as empty as it was at the end of the game last night, after Mark Redman got lit up for five runs and three innings and a nice blast of cold rain fell through the middle innings. But it was never about full stadiums or winning teams for me, and I don't see why a little taste of success one year should change that.

It's a shame and a missed opportunity for the Rockies that they weren't able to follow up on their 2007 breakthrough with another contending season. That makes me sad because I want my team to win and the sharp dropoff in season ticket sales for '09 (after this year's surge and, accordingly, price hike) will hurt their chances to do so; but the fact remains that I like it in Colorado, I like Coors Field, and I plan to be here for a while. I'm stuck with the Rockies and the Rockies are stuck with me.

All right, I still have some bullets from the game to get through:

• Hand it to the torturous Rockies offense to finally hit a groove in the ninth inning and ruin the one thing that was going to save my miserable night, the extremely rare experience of seeing a complete game thrown at Coors Field. Braden Looper wasn't dominant in the least, giving up ten hits and striking out only one, but he didn't walk anybody. His ball-strike ratio: 38-76. You hear that, Ubaldo? You hear that, Franklin? You hear that, Francis Channel?
• Speaking of #26, the reason I quite pointedly did not include Jeff Francis with Aaron Cook when I excepted Cook from the Rockies' "Festival of Crap" rotation I wrote about earlier is because Francis is not doing what he needs to do to go deeper into games. Even though he's put up some nice starts his last few times out, the Channel is still throwing too many pitches and walking too many. He's getting to the 100-pitch mark in the fifth or sixth and if he's going to be an ace (and the Rockies need him to be, with Cook's defense-dependency) he needs to throw first-pitch strikes and force opposing hitters to get aggressive early in the count. That's not really a note from last night's game but Francis does pitch tomorrow.
• Cardinals rookie outfielder Brian Barton looks a lot like Eddie Steeples, aka Darnell from "My Name Is Earl." His nickname should be "Crab Man," if it isn't already.
• Willy Taveras got an RBI groundout in the third, his fourth. The Rockies rank 29th in RBI from the leadoff spot this season. Anemic Minnesota is last. And Colorado plays half their games at Coors Field!
• Chris Iannetta's introduction music is "I Can't Dance," by one of my favorite bands (really, I'm not being sarcastic), Genesis. The music nerd slash baseball fan in me hopes that Iannetta is a fellow true believer and I'll run into him at a record store one day while I'm searching for a replacement for my slightly scratched copy of Trespass and we'll become fast friends due to our shared love of Tony Banks' synthesizer mastery and Phil Collins' inventive drumming. In the offseason we'll hang out in my apartment listening to Abacab and hopefully he'll be able to use his fame and influence to get "Turn It On Again" into a Guitar Hero game already. The realist in me, however, thinks that it is far more likely that Iannetta is just a really terrible dancer and his teammates thought it would be funny.
• I thought it was a great confidence boost for Manny Corpas when Clint Hurdle deliberately sent him in to pitch with Albert Pujols, who had a relatively quiet night (1 for 5 with a double), coming up. Corpas struck him out and completed a scoreless inning. Hurdle erred, though, by doubling down and leaving the dethroned closer in to pitch another inning. Rick Ankiel hit a titanic home run that ended up being the difference in the game. However, the loss shouldn't hang on Corpas's shoulders -- he has enough of those. This one belongs to Mark Redman.
• Finally: Ankiel's throw to catch Omar Quintanilla attempting to stretch a double into a triple (with two outs, even -- go say hello to the pine, meat) from the very deepest recesses of Coors Field's altitude-adjusted outfield was the single best I have ever seen. I still can't believe how perfect it was. It looked as if he was still pitching and just flipping the ball to third for a force-out -- not the motion of the throw, but the path of the ball. Generally when you whip the ball it goes on a line, but this had a lazy arc like Ankiel could have, if necessary, thrown it harder still. Crazy. It was like the YouTube thing with Kobe Bryant jumping over the car, only I actually saw it happen. The friendly Cardinals fan who was sitting next to me and I were trying to think of another current player who could have made the same peg and the only names we could think of were Vladimir Guerrero and Jeff Francouer. But I don't know if even those guys could have done what Ankiel did. Oh, and he also doubled off Willy Taveras -- who can run a bit -- when Taveras tried to advance to third in the first. That one was routine by comparison, but it would have taken Willy, Ankiel's Colorado counterpart in center, two cut-off men.

In sports standing still is equal to falling backwards, and that's what the Rockies elected to do this offseason. With a payroll around $45 million, what was stopping them from dealing some of their surplus of young offensive prospects for pitching? What was keeping them from finding a two-way second baseman somewhere, or failing that, re-signing the defensively expert Kaz Matsui? Cheap owners who are pocketing the money from your playoff tickets and 2008 season-ticket deposits while the revenue-sharing money flows in. If you're not in it to win, sell the team.

I realize this might be a ludicrous example, but what was keeping the Rockies from trading for Johan Santana this offseason? They certainly could have offered a better package of prospects than the Mets, and maybe even an established major league star in Garrett Atkins. Sure, Colorado would have had to sign Santana to a $20 million/year deal, but... so what? Their payroll would still be less than one-third of the Yankees'. And they'd have a real pitching rotation instead of the Festival of Crap (with apologies to Aaron Cook) they have now.

One of the few guys who has pitched well for Colorado this season, Kip Wells, is now lost for some time because of a blood clot in his pitching hand. That hurts because Wells would have been an at least somewhat acceptable choice as a fill-in starter -- certainly better than Jorge De La Rosa, who got lit up like a forest fire in his start Saturday. It may be a coincidence, but Aaron Cook lost a year and a half of his career to a more serious blood clot. I wonder if there's some sort of deleterious effect pitching at altitude has to one's circulation.

You can only read Rob Neyer's recent column on the Rockies if you have ESPN Insider, but the title really sums it all up: Rockies simply not good. I could have told you that, Rob. Colorado isn't crazy to want to keep as their core a group of homegrown players, but the mess of a roster they have now shows the harm of overvaluing your own talent. The Rockies have too many third basemen and too many outfielders and not enough starting pitching.

The day after Jeff Baker (a third baseman playing out of position) and Clint Barmes had so much difficulty fielding at second and short, Clint Hurdle started Jonathan Herrera and Omar Quintanilla at those spots. That duo can't even threaten Willy Taveras's skills offensively, but they sure can flash the leather. Herrera was given the honor of "Baseball Tonight"'s #1 Web Gem on Sunday night. With the Rockies in full-on bullpen meltdown mode, the batphone to Colorado Springs is going to be ringing off the hook all summer, so who knows what the roster will look like in two weeks, let alone two months. But it will be a telling challenge of Hurdle's managerial acuity if he can manage to juggle his hitting middle infielders with his glove guys and settle both the lineup and the defense down. Would that the Rockies had some more guys who could play defense and hit a little. Maybe they'll pick one up when the fire sale trades begin in earnest in July.

I don't want to write about baseball. I don't even want to look at my page, to tell you the truth. But I do have some good notes from the game yesterday (which I went to under protest, having already paid for a ticket) that I guess I will hold my breath and share:

• I knocked Willy Taveras's OBP the other day and then I felt bad when I saw that at the beginning of Saturday's game, it stood at a very respectable .355, bolstered by a bunch of walks, not usually Willy's forte. Then of course Taveras went 0-for-5. Willy, my hatred for you might be the only thing that sustains me through this miserable season.
• It's hard to believe that two years in a row the Dodgers have gone out and spent big free-agent money on a centerfielder who can't play. In the second inning Todd Helton hit a dribbler through the middle and by the time Andruw Jones got to it he was on second. Todd Helton should not be able to stretch a single into a double off of Andruw Jones, or at least not the one I remember. It's possible Jones just wasn't paying attention, but that's not any better. It's probably worse. Jones looked completely lost at the plate, too -- the one single he had he was clearly guessing on.
• This is how bad Rockies pitching is now: In the 6th inning Colorado made three phenomenal defensive plays, two diving catches by Taveras (whose defense I am finally coming around on, although I still wish he'd hit a cutoff man once in a while, just for variety's sake) and a stab and throw to home to catch a runner by Jeff Baker. Every batter in the inning who didn't walk hit the ball extremely hard. Even with the three great plays the Dodgers added on two more runs, totaling 12 for the game -- and this is not a very good offensive Dodgers team. They had more guys in the lineup hitting under .200 than the Rockies did, and that's saying something.
• The photo that the Los Angeles public relations department has provided to away teams for use on their Jumbotrons of James Loney makes him look uncannily like classic child's toy Woolly Willy.
• Twice during the game the Rockies saw high popups that ought to have been caught fall for singles in no man's land between second base, shortstop, and centerfield. The lack of experience playing together that Jeff Baker and Clint Barmes have is going to be a recurring nightmare for Rockies fans this season.

The Rockies did win today, but it was Aaron Cook's day in the rotation. Are you prepared for one win per week from here on out? Rockies baseball -- catch the misery!

That sound you hear is tens of thousands of Denver residents flipping off their TV's, putting their World Series collectibles on eBay, and speed-dialing their friends to see if they can rid of their tickets for this weekend's series against Los Angeles. A season that should have been a bold new beginning for the Colorado franchise has gone completely down the tubes in a mere month. How did I not see this coming?

First and foremost, Troy Tulowitzki, who has been stuck in an again predictable sophomore slump, has torn his quad. He could be back in six weeks, but he won't, because this is Rockies baseball, and except for last year, the baseball gods freaking hate the Rockies. The team's groundball staff is going to get pounded (even worse) with the rangeless, scatter-armed Clint Barmes playing short and the comeback the offense was scheduled to make probably is now delayed further still.

Tulo's injury is the exclamation point, but the Rockies have been playing consistently garbage baseball since Opening Day. A few individuals are having good seasons -- Barmes' return to the starting lineup is a nice story, Matt Holliday and Garrett Atkins continue to rake like the professional hitters they are, and Aaron Cook has been quietly excellent -- but as a team Colorado sucks. The bullpen can't hold leads, the hitters persistently manage to produce box scores where they have 10 or more hits and 3 or fewer runs, and the starting pitching past Cook is walk-happy and deeply susceptible to the big inning. How is this the same team that cruised to the NL pennant last year?

I wasn't planning on writing on the Rockies at all until something that wasn't horrible happened, but the Tulowitzki injury kind of demands it. I need more time to organize my thoughts on how Dan O'Dowd and ownership have failed their team and their fans. This team didn't have to be a playoff qualifier again this season to consolidate last year's gains, they just needed to not completely suck. And lo, they completely suck. The major problems? Not investing more money in real starting pitching talent, leaving Franklin Morales in the major league rotation despite his not demonstrating readiness in the spring, allowing the disorganized mass of infielders on the roster to futz up the continuity and the fluidity of the Rockies' wondrous defense from last year, and continuing to bat powerless OBP sink Willy Taveras leadoff because... uhh, he's fast.

What has happened to the Rockies this season reinforces everything MLB's critics are always saying about competitive imbalance. I refuse to refer to the Rockies as "small-market"; they're not small market, they just have poor, cheap owners. The Nuggets, Avalanche, and Broncos all have huge payrolls. But for teams in genuine small markets, the example is still instructive. Poor teams can get to the playoffs one year if everything breaks right for them, but the cost of maintaining that winning team will prove prohibitive -- and even if you do manage to bring everybody back, as the Rockies mostly did, there's no guarantee that everyone will perform as they did. And there's no question of adding another big free-agent star to your already-contending team. The Clevelands and Tampa Bays can only dream about getting a Johan Santana or Vladimir Guerrero.

And that's kind of lame. But not as lame as this Rockies team is going to be with Barmes playing shortstop in front of The Staff That Never Strikes Anybody Out, Ever (25th in the majors). Somehow I doubt a magical September run is going to save this disaster. By the time football season begins, the Rockies will be as forgotten as the Nuggets' playoff "run." Well, it was nice having a readership for just that little while. I should have known not to get used to it.