I think if the Rockies can resolve that, get a starter that’s reliably an upgrade over the Dodgers and D-backs third starters that most of your other worries regarding our starting five will mysteriously melt away.

1st part: Yep, right on the nose
2nd part: I wouldn’t say “melt away”, but have a higher percentage chance of having a respectable solution.

now….give me a #4 that’s better than the Dodgers and the D-Backs, and, I’m even more secure about #5.

And I don’t know exactly where this rumor got started that Purple Row or other blogs were free markets. Just like political blogs or the Chinese Internet or all those Boutiques that quietly punt me out on Rodeo Drive, they should be carefully controlled and monitored markets catering to a specific clientele. You’ll see the same sort of discussions on what is and isn’t appropriate commentary on Red State, Daily Kos, Feministing or many other forums. If users get too antagonistic, administrators give them the boot.

I’m just saying, I like the idea of Purple Row being open, but in the end, it’s not, and like it or not, I’ll have the final say in this matter.

First things first…GoRoxGo, I would encourage you to check out some of the other SBN blogs on the other baseball teams. They run the gamut from blind optimism to awful pessimism. A good deal of these blogs are nothing but inane comments posted by “rah rah” fans (not to call anyone out, but have you seen Lookout Landing? The comments there are all one-liners, and make everyone here look like over-talkative windbags). That would drive me away very quickly.

On the other hand…I make maybe 3 posts on Purple Row per month, now, because it’s just too damned negative. I remember a post last year during the “stretch run”, when someone said something to the effect of, “Isn’t this great? It’s like watching a game when you already know the outcome is a Rockies win!”. I feel that Purple Row has swung the entirely opposite direction now. People join Game Threads for the sole purpose of making big long sighs and directing negative comments towards nearly everyone on the team. Take last night’s Game Thread for example. The first (and only) mention of a “Go Rockies” was Russ, in the initial post. It only took 2 posts for someone to question Hurdle in an angry manner (“Why the f*ck is he batting clean-up?”), and then 2 posts later the posters proclaimed the season dead and over with…in the first inning.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me here. No one on the team is immune to criticism. Hurdle makes mistakes. O’Dowd makes mistakes. The Monfort Bros. make mistakes. The entire coaching staff makes mistakes. Hell, even the Greatest Rockie Of All Time®, Mr. Todd Helton, had 2 errors last year, in his Greatest Season of All Time (before anyone jumps on me, those are hyperbolic simply for hyperbolic effect, nothing more). Yes, everyone on the team makes mistakes, and yes, it’s alright to call them on them.

But the “line” is when you go from questioning decisions to decrying the team as the”worst in baseball history ever”. That is the kind of attitude that drives people like me from the site. When I come here, I want good baseball talk with a Rockies bias, and some chat with a few of my friends. I want to be able to discuss both Tulowitzki’s shortcomings AND his prowess. Granted, it’s a lot easier to see one thing than the other right now, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not room for both here.

When Rox Girl says that she wants a balance here, it’s not that she wants to force naysayers such as yourself to put on the Purple Colored Glasses, nor does she want to disallow Russ from posting “Go Rockies” in his game threads. There just needs to be a place here on Purple Row for the casual fan to slip in and cheer on the Rockies, right next to everyone else.

In the end, Purple Row is a place for us to do just that; talk about, analyze, and ultimately cheer on the boys in purple pinstripes. And while criticisms are the healthiest form of patriotism, it can’t be all that occupies your mind.

Have been specifically mentioned in a couple of the e-mails, actually. I think you can find a clue in DeepPurple’s comment, that they see the commentators on the site as fans of misery more than they are fans of the Rockies.

I don’t agree with them in this, obviously Redhawk dished out to go to the game last night, if he wasn’t a fan that wouldn’t happen in a year like this, and I’m sure you and GoRoxGo would still gladly go to a Rockies game over many other activities. I really don’t mind the pessimistic views, it’s just that many of the points have gotten stale and repetitive. I may have to cull the herd a bit to let some of the thoughtful sunshine back in.

As I still come to PR everyday, just as I have since the site started (as one of the original Rockies bloggers, we all kinda had to stick together at that point). But I read the comments less often than I used to and I never venture into the game threads anymore (OK, there are rare exceptions, like when I’m overaggresively tooting my own horn about calling the Livan Hernandez nuclear meltdown). It’s not that I don’t necessarily agree with some of the sentiments posited here by what you would call the ‘pessimists’ – the underlying theme, which is that this season has been a disappointment, isn’t really arguable. It just gets to be too over the top. Seriously, before games are even played there are posts about how stupid the lineup is and how terrible our pitcher is and how much everybody is ‘full of FAIL LOL’ (seriously, guys, way to pound that dead horse even further into the ground). It just gets to be the same thing over and over again, every single day, and I’m sick of it.

I enjoy being a Rockies fan. Even when they’re bad, I enjoy rooting for the team. I enjoy being happy when Yorvit Torreabla hits a double down the line instead of thinking about how badly he’s going to ‘FAIL LOLZ!!!!’ I like watching Manny Corpas put together a 1-2-3 inning and put his season back together even in the 9th inning of a loss. Fandom doesn’t make me miserable. Disappointed, sure, but not miserable. And I’ve judged the game threads to be a one-stop shop for misery. That’s why I don’t go to them anymore.

I still enjoy the heck out of reading Rox Girl and Russ’s posts, and the Pebble Reports are the first thing I read every day (when they go up in the morning, that is – I kid, I kid). I just choose not to wallow in the negativity of the comments and game threads – and naturally, in a season like this, there’s going to be more of that kind of thing, but you folks sometimes really do go too far. (I’d like to challenge anyone to find an optimist among the regular game-threaders. I’m not sure it can be done.)