I don't want to write about this series. I'm not even sure if I really want to go. I have a ticket to the game tonight, but I'm considering eating it. I don't really know if I care to see Coors Field full of another team's fans. Maybe I felt sure that the excess 20,000 people or so who will be at the park the next three days were real, true-blue Yankee fans, it wouldn't be so bad, but mostly it's going to be the curiosity factor motivating the generation or so of locals who have completely opted out on Rockies baseball and are just turning up for this one series. I don't like you people. Leave me and my miserable baseball team alone.

Trouble is, the Rockies haven't been miserable at all lately. Had they managed to finish off their series with those perpetually on-the-rise Devil Rays with a sweep, you might even say that this series matched the hottest team in the American League with the hottest in the NL. That didn't happen though, as Colorado blinked in losing 7-4 to Tampa Bay on Sunday. It's an open question as to whether the young team will be galvanized or intimidated with people actually sitting in Coors' normally abandoned mezzanine and outfield upper deck seats. Seems to me as if a you-may-have-heard-of-them-before New York pitching trio of Mike Mussina, Andy Pettite, and Roger Clemens might spell a series defeat, but be sure to prepare many competing overreactions for what surely isn't any more or less significant than any other home three-game series this year. Josh Fogg, Jeff Francis, and Rodrigo Lopez will pitch for Colorado, in that order.

I still don't know if I'm going to the game tonight. It doesn't seem like I would enjoy myself very much, and that's why I traditionally go to baseball games. I do enjoy spite for its own sake more than most people, which I suppose explains in part why I'm a Rockies fan.