Growing up in the Boston area, there has always been a rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox.  Depending on your proximity to Boston or New York more or less predicted where your loyalties lay.  Geography is only one factor.  More importantly, history between the two teams has a more profound impact on the strength of the rivalry.  1918, 1978, 2004.  Ring a bell?  

Rivalries are important to baseball (and sports in general).  They fuel our passion for the game, win or lose.  They give meaning to a season, even when your team is far from contention.  Beat your rival, and the season wasn't for naught.  Rivalries are mutual.  Each side passionately wants the other side to lose.  And depending on the strength and length of the rivalry, the desire for the other side to lose turns into a need for complete, unmitigated devastation.

Rivalries develop over time.  Given that the Rockies are a relatively young franchise without a strong tradition of winning, and with few teams in close proximity to us geographically, I submit that we have few strong rivalries.  

Naturally, the Rockies have a bit of a rivalry with the D-Backs, given their geographic proximity.  Eric Byrnes aside, our rivalry is very friendly, in part because of the how many Colorado transplants live in the Phoenix area, and vice-versa.  Additionally, with the exception of Rocktober, neither team has competed for (or in) the playoffs at the same time.  I think there's a bit of a rivalry with the Cubs, simply because of the number of Midwest transplants who now live in Denver.  However, it's more of a one-way rivalry.  We think Cubs fans are generally obnoxious, while I'm not sure Chicagoans really feel strongly one way or the other about the Rox.

Now with Rocktober, and Thongtember as touchpoints, we're beginning to see strong polarizing effects of our winning ways.  To wit: look at the number of vitriolic comments about the Rockies at McCovey Chronicles.  To me this sounds like the beginning of a beautiful rivalry.  Of course, history tells us that their closest rivals are the Dodgers.  That won't change.  However, additional rivalries can emerge.

The Rockies are beginning to position themselves to be perennial contenders.  We've all read the Pebble Reports.  We know that we have strong potential in the farm where it counts.  And now we're beginning to debate which team has the better prospects.  These things seem to indicate the start of a rivalry.  

The best part of this season, for me, has been watching how fans of both the Giants and Rockies rally around their respective teams and develop a sense of "our team is better".  Winning teams do that.  Here's to continuing that tradition, and here's to hope that the D-Backs will rebound (a little) to light a bigger competitive fire with us. It's the stuff that makes baseball great in September and October.