Okay, as many of you may be aware, we had a bit of a discussion late into the night about some of the excessively negative vibes certain players on the team are getting from users of the blog. I want to re-emphasize that one of Purple Row's guiding principles (and one of our rules, I might add) is that we don't want to get awash in cynicism and to stay forward looking and positive. I'm fine with people expressing their well articulated and thoughtful opinion that a player isn't up to snuff, but hammering it home in every plate appearance thereafter of said player isn't constructive and doesn't add anything but bad mojo for other users.  Let me give a couple of deliberately silly examples of good and behavior:

Rox Girl (when lineups are posted): Oh man, Holliday's starting today. Frickin' Hurdle, we'll be lucky to score two runs.

Rox Girl (plate appearance #2): Oh, freak, I'm going to the fridge. Matt's up this inning, so it's not like I'll be missing anything.

Rox Girl (after returning, and seeing thirty new comments): Matt hit a HR?!!! That's a sign of the apocalypse if I've ever seen it.

Okay, so this would have been a better way of me handling it:

Rox Girl (lineups): I really think Holliday's home/road splits show that maybe he's better suited for a reserve role. I hope Hurdle's right in playing him here.

Rox Girl (PA #2): Wow, it's eight o'clock already? My undying devotion to the Rockies made me miss dinner again! I better go get something to eat.

Rox Girl (after returning): Yay! Matt hit a homerun! Woot! BTW, anybody see how Seth Smith is doing? We are so set at this position if we ever needed to make the switch.

I definitely don't want to single anybody out on this, because I've fallen into the poorly worded negative camp too frequently myself. All these players want to succeed and the Rockies to win just as much or more than we do, their jobs, livelihoods and dreams are at stake, after all, most of us don't put quite so much on the line with the outcomes of these games. This is something that we probably should take from Yankees and Red Sox fans, that it's a symbol of achievement and pride just to be able to put on a Rockies uniform, and we as fans should in turn be proud and supportive of the few that have earned that privilege.

That doesn't mean we want blind allegiance to the players, but they should be granted some measure of respect from all of us. Russ and I will be using the new platform's warning feature a bit more frequently in this regard this week. If you catch me being too harsh on somebody myself -Kip Wells, Mark Redman have been fairly frequent targets- feel free to flag my comment as inappropriate. I don't think cynicism is a category, but you could call it spam or something and I'll know what I've done.

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Kaz Matsui (rearing to go after his preseason health issues) isn't the only former teammate the Rockies will play against in Houston this week, Shawn Chacon is likely to start against us as well.

Tulo's batting practice went well yesterday, reports are that he turned green and ripped his shirt off before peppering the left field stands with souvenirs and Jeff Francis will get two bullpen sessions before he starts on Thursday are two of the several notes found in this morning's papers.

Troy Renck's mailbag goes into some looming personnel decisions. Reading between the lines, you can tell that Renck is a bigtime Garrett Atkins fan, and wishes the Rockies would have traded Ian Stewart already. I love Atkins' bat too, and I'm glad we have it for as long as we will, but I understand exactly why the Rockies aren't going to sign him if they can sign Holliday instead. Stewart by himself wouldn't have returned a comparable player in a trade, with Atkins we are far more likely to get equal value -or better even- in return. I also wish Renck was a little more clear in the last answer: the reason the Braves and Nationals had a one game series on the thirtieth was because the Nats requested the opportunity to show off their new stadium in a game that actually counted when the rest of the MLB wasn't playing. The league gave them that favor.

Barry Bonds HR No. 762, hit off Ubaldo Jimenez at Coors Field, went for
$376,612 at auction Saturday night. Rockies fan Jameson Sutton -who wound up with the ball- should be able to pay his step-dad's medical bills with that. Jameson, if you or your stepdad ever venture around the Row, know that we wish both of you good health and prosperity going forward and I'm very happy that it was somebody who actually needed the money that wound up with the ball.