They Grows Up and They Grows Up and They Grows Up

Umm ... wow. I mean, there's no other way to explain it. How apropos that a team with a bruise for its colors would put such a monumental beat-down upon every base ball club in its path. Sports Illustrated cover jinx? Screw that, man, the Rockies are just talking about their fantasy football teams and taking it one game at a time.

This has been said ad nauseam, but I'm from Denver. And I'm not a Rockies fan. I've been a Padres fan all my life, and a few years ago I resigned myself to the fact that I'd die before I ever saw the Rockies in the World Series.

Oops.

[Checks pulse, pinches self]

But this? This is like the younger brother that you and your friends used to let hang around, and you'd make him go and get you Cokes and Totino's. He'd beg to get into games, and you'd tell him to buzz off - until you'd let him in for a play or a series or an inning and then completely ignore him.

And then, while you're off smoking and drinking your memory away at college, he grows up. Fast. You come home for Thanksgiving and your formerly pipsqueak little bro is suddenly 6'2", a chiseled 190 pounds, and he looks like a goddamn Calvin Klein model. And instead of wanting to hang out with you and your buddies, the three hottest girls in his high school show up to take him to a "movie."

But hey, I'm bitter as shit. My team had a good team this year, and the Rockies brushed them off like dandruff (although, NLCS MVP Matt Holliday still hasn't touched the plate. Just sayin'). People are going to talk a ton about the faith angle, and God's team, and all that (look for FOX to heavily play up the Mike Coolbaugh story, for better or worse). And yes, we know - they don't have any history. Sorry. Nobody cares that Denver itself has a pretty long baseball history, back with the old Denver Bears and then the Denver Zephyrs, and that as way back as the early 1960s Denver was considered for expansion.

And, no, nobody knows who the hell these guys are. Well, it's evidently apparent that they're pretty damn decent at playing baseball. So, if you're a baseball fan, you might want to push all that other shit aside and just ... watch.

Because we rarely remember the moments when the little ones grow up.