FanPost

Cabin fever, or why I miss the Rockies


NOTE: Though this is my first post on Purple Row, I've been a lurker for years. So I already feel like I'm kind of a part of the community. It's a great place.

As winter tightens its grip on the Midwest one thing is certain: I miss baseball. And yes, I miss the Rockies. Even in their current incarnation, which sometimes seems like a rambling circus of oft-injured superstars and grammatically-incorrect email replies and Charlie Culberson at bats, I miss them.*

*A circus analogy might be inappropriate, since circuses do well on the road. That's like their only purpose. Maybe the Rockies are nothing like a circus. But then again, imagine Dick Monfort scrambling around in a tuxedo and top hat as all the lions escape.

But when I try to pinpoint exactly why I miss baseball, I struggle to clarify my reasons. Yes, obviously watching the games is fun,* but I don't watch them all during the season. I listen to some, others I follow on Gameday, and for quite a few I just check the score and recap the following day. Yes, rooting for the Rockies and following the performance of individual players*, the contours of the season as it unfolds, can be captivating. But we all know that post-June for the last 4 seasons has been...not as captivating. Or maybe captivating in a different way.

*listening to George and Huey, not so much.

*thanks, Corey and Nolan.

So why do I miss a subpar team that can't hold a late lead or score runs in other ballparks, a team that has entire months of cringe-worthy boxscores? Why do I miss a season that feels like an ultra-marathon in which all the footsteps can begin to look the same?

Perhaps because in no other sport is the season so perpetual, so constant, so relentless. In March it arrives and by the second week in April if feels timeless. The months slide into one other, more games always on the calendar. A game tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after. It is impossible to imagine a world without baseball. Like air it is just there, even when we don't acknowledge its presence. Baseball season is a companion.

And that's what makes the offseason so harsh, so abrupt. What seems timeless ends after the final pitch of the World Series.* The companion doesn't walk away; it vanishes. What was full for months and everything they carry with them is suddenly empty. Just like that. Unlike football or hockey or basketball, where the off days are more frequent and games are fewer, baseball operates at a steady hum with hardly any breaks. Then it escalates to a fever pitch in the fall, with all the glory and sorrow and blind luck of the playoffs. Then it stops altogether when a ball lands in the leather of someone's glove or metal spikes touch home plate.

*someone please stop the Giants.

Then snow falls and darkness sets in at 5 pm and we analyze the scraps of hot stove rumors in an attempt to somehow touch the world that we miss, the constant that isn't there anymore. It is a season, after all, even though somehow it feels more familiar when we are in its embrace.

And we wait for spring.

Eat. Drink. Be Merry. But the above FanPost does not necessarily reflect the attitudes, opinions, or views of Purple Row's staff (unless, of course, it's written by the staff [and even then, it still might not]).

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