The Colorado Rockies became too difficult to love

Editor's note: Leading up to Purple Row's 10th birthday, several of the site's former writers have agreed to make a brief comeback. We hope you'll enjoy these articles as much as we will.

★★★

Salaam and good day, worthy friends.

So ... it's been a long time. Long enough that I was very surprised when Bryan asked if I would be interested in doing this, as it's been at least four years since I posted on the site in any kind of active capacity and I figured that only the few, the brave, or the elderly would remember me, if at all.

If you know who I am, gold star. If you don't, well, I used to attempt to be entertaining and/or informative when writing a weekly Rockies Review column on Sundays, summing up the week of game action, who was doing well and who wasn't, topics of interest, storylines to look forward to, and how many times Troy Tulowitzki had strained his quad and/or was going to miss the rest of the season.

Probably my most well-received piece was the one I wrote in the summer of 2010, after I had graduated from college and was working for the Rockies' Single-A affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina. I believe it was called "Life Backstage," and covered both the well-attested quirks of minor league baseball (who can forget the front office dressing up as hot sauce packets for the big between-innings race...?) and its beauty, the way the game tells the stories that keep us coming back.

That was five years ago and I have to say, I don't miss it very much -- it was tough in all kinds of ways for a flat-broke college graduate working two jobs with no car (who can also forget doing grocery shopping on a bike in below-zero weather during the winter?). But that time with the Tourists remains one of my fonder memories, as well as excellent fodder to use against my future grandchildren, and I'm glad to have a chance to briefly revisit it.

Half a decade later, quite a few things have changed (apart from the being flat broke part, alas) and if all goes well, I will be leaving Denver this fall to pursue doctoral studies in the United Kingdom. I'm still friends with many of you on Facebook, so I have kept up with your lives tangentially, your new jobs and new babies and major accomplishments. But to be honest, I haven't felt any desire to keep up with the Rockies. Especially after the Dick Monfort fiascos last year, basically confirming everything I had long suspected about the culture of the organization and the way it's run as a lucrative business venture, but not as a competitive major league baseball team.

It's hard to put any kind of emotional stock or energy into a team that you know is going to make the same mistakes and cling to the same strategies over and over, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic notwithstanding. I applaud those who are willing to still make that kind of commitment, but as my life has moved on and the Rockies have not, I just can't sustain any interest at any kind of a high level. I may take in one or two games this summer before I go, just for old times' sake, but I doubt I'll be able to love it in the same way again, and that saddens me.

Ultimately, Purple Row was and remained a great experience for me, giving me a foothold and a platform and a way to develop a writing voice and an audience during some very formative periods of my life. Row folks (do you newfangled kids still call yourselves Rowbots? Awesome, now get off my lawn!) were a large majority of my friends during college, and even for a while after. I blog on other sites and about other things these days, and life has admittedly not been easy, but I'm otherwise still mostly who I used to be. I hope time has likewise been mostly good to you.

Screw the damn Giants.

-Hilary