The NLDS element of Rocktober is contained here--though, in actuality, most of the magic occurred in September. I would equate Rocktober with Oktoberfest--mostly in September, but encompassing both months.

By the time the Slide had occurred and we were going to the playoffs, we'd won 14 of 15 to end the season, an unthinkable feat. The effect of this magical run on Colorado was palpable.

Whereas before the run to the playoffs I saw little to no Rockies gear as I ran around campus, I couldn't seem to avoid it as Rocktober drew on. Bandwagon fans came out of the woodwork to support the Rockies, and I help them onto our bandwagon. After all, if the Rockies could garner the interest of lots of very casual baseball people, as it obviously was, then the increased revenue and exposure could only help the Rockies in the future. Of course, I'm afraid that this year they'd pissed away most of that goodwill with their slow start, but in my opinion, the fans will come back more quickly to a frisky Rockies club thanks to the memories created by Rocktober.

To show more quantitatively the increase in the Rockies fanbase at this time, the Colorado Rockies Fans Facebook group, which had grown throughout the year to about 1000--more a function of the explosion in new Facebook accounts than anything the Rockies did--tripled in size from mid-September to late Rocktober. The most impressive part of this is that today the group has not lost that momentum and indeed is over 400 members larger than at its peak last year. But I digress.

The real Rocktober miracle was the change it wrought upon Colorado. As Franchise26 has so beautifully articulated, those 21 days were a gift to all of us, bringing complete strangers together. Where just months earlier I'd been getting snide comments from people about my Rockies gear, now I was getting high fives and discussing our team's chances with people I didn't know in all of my classes. It seemed to me that Rocktober affected CSU in a way that couldn't be measured--the campus just seemed to be alive with positive energy throughout that whole month.

Oh, and the baseball was pretty good too! If I was a baseball nerd before Rocktober began, I became much worse (or better, as it were) during this time. I was living and breathing baseball in all mediums--from TV, newspaper articles, online, Purple Row (I first found Purple Row in late August of 2007), magazines, my IM softball team, and through talking with fellow fans. My baseball consumption was running at 6-8 hours per day during October--including the long waits between series. My schoolwork suffered a little, my job productivity was drastically reduced when baseball was on (I worked at Bennigan's Grill and Tavern), and I was sleeping less. I couldn't possibly have been happier.

After Rocktober began with a bang with the play-in game, I was truly struck with the fact that the Rockies were in the playoffs when I read an analysis of the Phillies-Rockies series on Baseball Prospectus and saw a series preview on SportsCenter. Of course, most analysts picked us to lose the division series matchup--though my favorite two teams were eerily similar in makeup (at least in the opinion of sportswriters who had seen the Rockies maybe twice all year), Philly had the homefield advantage, so that was what swung the matchup in their favor. Interestingly, many of those who picked the Rockies to win their opening round series picked us to go to or win the World Series. After all, there is momentum, and there is Rocktober momentum--the Beyonce of momentum, if you will.

I remember vividly being angry with national pundits and Philadelphia papers who dismissed the Rockies out of hand. Their ignorance was palpable as they misspelled our players' names, pronounced them incorrectly, or spouted banalities about the Coors Field effect or the humidor as their "analysis". It seemed as if fans around the nation had only heard of Todd Helton and none of the other Rockies--even Matt Holliday!

TBS playoff commercials touted young emerging stars like David Wright and Jose Reyes of the Mets, who didn't even make the tournament, at the expense of Holliday and Tulo. And don't get me started on the BS that was the NL awards. In my opinion, Braun deserved the ROY by a hair because his offensive stats were that good--and he's backed in up in his sophomore season. The other awards are another matter. Jimmy Rollins is a fine all-around player, don't get me wrong. But he is not a Gold-Glover--Tulo was obviously robbed there. He is not an MVP. If not Holliday (leader in BA and RBI), then maybe I could have seen Wright winning it. But Rollins? He wasn't even the most valuable player on his team! That would be Chase Utley.

So in any case, the Rockies entered their best of five series at Citizen's Bank Park as slight underdogs in the media's eyes. Philadelphia was a team that had lived almost solely off of its hitting extra base hits in bunches. Its starting pitching was Hamels and scrubs, while its bullpen was dangerously thin and Gordon, Romero, and Myers had been overworked trying to get the Phillies in the playoffs. Meanwhile, Hurdle had fashioned a playoff roster that didn't include Jorge Julio (and there was much rejoicing) yet did have Seth Smith (the badass), he of the 8 career ABs. With all of this information in mind and having done extensive research and analysis, I predicted the Rockies to steal game 2 in Philly and win the series in 4 games. 

Of course, we were the least attractive series in TBS' mind, so we were given the early afternoon game start slot, while I had class. I set my computer (which also serves as my TV) to record the game, and when I had a two hour break from class, I saw the majority of the game sans commercials, which was nice. I had explicitly told everyone in my dorm to not inform me of the score because I was recording the game, so of course I knew that it was 3-2 Rockies in the seventh inning when I began watching.

The best part of watching a recorded game, besides cutting out a lot of dead filler time, is the ability to better analyze the stuff of the pitchers and the hitter's swings. However, my sense of joy was tempered by the fact that I knew the score. I noticed right away (well, after he had struck out the "MVP", Victorino, and Utley in order anyways) that the Physicist had brought his A-Game. When Helton got a triple (!) in his first playoff at-bat, I was surprised--but not as much as when Torrealba got a clutch hit (I expected him to fail every at-bat in the playoffs, and was pleasantly surprised when he didn't). Atkins drove in Helton, Torrealba knocked in Garrett, and Tulo drew a bases-loaded walk to put a 3 spot on Cole Hamels. Holliday struck out with the bases loaded, but the damage had already been done--the Rockies had enough runs of support for Jeff Francis already.

It was a good thing they got to Hamels when they did, too, because his stuff was flat filthy after he finally found the strike zone that game. He didn't allow another hit to the Rox and was replaced by Flash Gordon in the seventh. I admit that I was dismayed by the Rockies' inability to hit Hamels, but secure in the knowledge that if the Rockies could beat Hamels in Philly then they were in pretty good shape to take the series.

After the back to back homers in the fifth by Rowand and Burrell, I was worried, but not in a fatalistic way. After all, the Rockies had had a win or die situation for almost a month now, and in the playoffs they could actually afford to drop a game--not that they would. I made it back to live action in the eighth right after Holliday homered to give us some breathing room, but I had a class to go to right as Manny Corpas came on to close out the game.

The professor was cool about the situation and wanted to know who won as much as anyone else. Someone had a cell phone with internet access and provided batter by batter updates, and there was a positive vibe the rest of class after it was revealed that we won our playoff opener. It was at that point that I thought sweep. After all, the Phillies had just Kyle Kendrick and Jamie Moyer to combat Morales and Jimenez.

In any case, I was excited for game 2, but I had the lunch shift at work so I set the game to record yet again. As I worked as a server, I stole glances at the TVs in the restaurant, which I had personally all set to TBS. I'll admit that I didn't serve my patrons as well as I should have, but they wanted to discuss the Rockies with me as much as I wanted to talk about them, so I did. As a result, I missed most of the early fireworks, including Kaz's grand salami. After that, the outcome of Game 2 wasn't in doubt in my eyes.

As I've stated before, it seemed like every controversial move Hurdle made during that month paid off, and the 4th inning of Game 2 was no different. Morales hadn't been setting the world on fire with his pitching, but he had only gone 3 innings, allowed 3 hits, and was only down by one. And yet, it was genius. Kendrick had IBBed Torrealba (who would have doubtless groundly weakly to the left side of the infield) with Atkins on 2nd and two out to get to the pitcher. So who does Hurdle bring in to this crucial situation? Seth Smith, that's who. The Badass gets a fluky infield hit to load the bases, then Kaz Matsui channels his inner Sadaharu Oh and cranked his grand slam into the right field stands.

From there, the Rockies added 4 in the sixth and held on, with the Dragon Slayer taking the win and Manny his second save (and ushering in the short-lived "Gatorade" scandal). The NLDS sweep was now foremost in my mind as the series moved to Denver, giving Coors Field its first playoff game since 1995, its inaugural season.

I remember Saturday, October 6th as a cold day...though maybe I'm just confusing it with the NLCS games. I went to the CSU football game, where there was a lot more purple and black than green and gold, which was just fine with me. The Rams lost in heartbreaking fashion to woeful San Diego State, as was the rule for us in 2007, but nearly everyone in the stands left the stadium in good spirits as we all headed collectively to watch the Rockies try to broom the Phillies.

Game 3 of the NLDS, to me, was a tight game but pretty dull at the same time. Being the first playoff game that I'd watched live, I was pretty excited to see some firepower out of the Rockies like in Game 2. However, the offensive output would be the largest the Rockies would muster in the playoffs. Good thing they didn't need it.

Despite giving up a homer to Shane Victorino in the seventh, Ubaldo Jimenez was brilliant against the Phillies, giving up only 3 hits and the one run despite such distractions as Coors Field going dark for about 15 minutes in the second inning. I remember my surprise at the sight of a blacked-out Coors Field, something I'd never seen in a regular season game. For a while, it appeared as if the offense had left with the lights, as the Rockies were repeatedly befuddled by octogenarian Jamie Moyer and his 82 MPH heat.

Thank God for Kaz, I guess. Matsui played the hero's role again in the sixth inning, driving in Torrealba (who, when I look back on those old boxscores, had an excellent postseason after a horrible regular season) with a triple. He might have been vastly overpaid by the Astros in the offseason, but a small part of me really wishes he were in our lineup this year. He provided such a nice spark to our offense in the magical run and I thank him for that.

However, the real hero of the day was the forgotten man on the roster, Jeff Baker, a man who hadn't played much of a role with the team of late and whose inclusion on the postseason roster was almost as debatable as that of Seth Smith. Having not had a meaningful at-bat for what seemed to me must have been at least two weeks, Baker calmly stepped into the box with two outs, runners on the corners, in the eighth against JC Romero and knocked in Atkins with a single through the hole in the right side of the infield. The Rockies were up 2-1, and were only 3 outs from advancing to the NLCS for the first time in their short, yet painfully futile history.

In a save situation for the third straight game, Manny Corpas delivered a drama-free 1-2-3 inning, with NLDS hero Kaz Matsui providing the final out 4-3, that rang the death knell on the Phillies' remarkable 2007 even as it extended the story of Rocktober by another chapter.

The Snakes awaited us in the NLCS.