/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48787209/usa-today-8128633.0.jpg)
Welcome to Football Friday, a baseball column by Connor. I am Connor. Each week I will dive into the previous seven days of baseball news, shout my opinion into the void, discuss some things about the Colorado Rockies, and answer your emails. Some of them.
Send them to connorsmailbag@gmail.com and we'll see what happens, OK?
Currently, the Rockies are among the lowest in the league in odds to win the World Series at 150 to 1 on most betting sites and as high as 250 to 1 on others. That is bad. Really bad. Arizona is currently 20 to 1 for a divisional comparison and the Cubs are as low as 4 to 1, probable favorites as we go into the season.
The Rockies are probably not going to be very good in 2016, as they likely will be chasing San Diego for fourth place in the division throughout August and September in a best case scenario. But I started to think of ways the Rockies COULD conceivably be considered favorites. Some of these ways include all the other teams quitting because they got mad at their owner, a la Comiskey's White Sox. Or say all the other stadiums didn't pay their electric bill and the Rockies played all 162 games at home and the other teams that weren't on their schedule had to forfeit, giving Colorado a decidedly huge advantage.
Those are probably fairly realistic, but here are a few ways the Rockies would become World Series favorites in 2016:
All other teams became tiny babies
It would be really easy to beat a team of tiny infants in baseball, I'm just going to say that outright. Children are generally terrible athletes, I would venture to say. Sure, some of them are really quick and can juke you out of your shoes if you give them enough space in the open field but generally speaking a 95 mph fastball would blow right by them before they even knew what was happening. Combine that with the fact that babies can't speak, walk, or generally not die without constant supervision and it's really just a matter of when, not if, the Rockies go 162-0 and walk into a championship.
Put nine babies on a field and you'd be more worried about hitting a ball into one of their tiny adorable faces than if one would actually get you out before you hit your 80th inside the park home run of the 2nd inning.
Frankly, this way would make baseball boring. Like if you gave Steph Curry a bigger hoop to shoot in and made the rest of the NBA five inches shorter, it's just going to be so much domination that nobody would even care anymore.
Society crumbles from existence and the Rockies players somehow rise to global power, becoming Supreme Leaders of Earth and mandating their own World Championship
This plan would take a lot of finagling and a collapse of the global economy that was so extreme no governments would be left standing. From the ashes of this new society a new leadership will rise: the Colorado Rockies.
Now, I can't say for sure if the Rockies would become benevolent dictators, as I've never met them and I don't know if their personalities would play into this. But for the sake of this hypothetical situation let's say the 25 men the Rockies add to their active roster this year would use this fallen democracy to rise up and take over the world.
In this brave new world where the Colorado Rockies are leaders, they would obviously establish themselves as world champions every single year, making them the odds on favorite to win. It's like if North Korea's government had a baseball team.
Weaponized Chipotle attack on all 29 other clubhouses in mid-September gives all other MLB players horrendous diarrhea, rendering the Rockies the only club able to compete
This would look very suspicious, I'll admit. But let's say in early to mid-September, 29 clubhouses win a contest of free Chipotle. Chipotle, which has been in the news lately for making people so sick that they literally (probably) puke their organs out of place, would give them this free party in the thick of a pennant chase. The ensuing puke-chaos would render 29 teams unable to play baseball and finish the season.
This would give the Rockies a quick path to the championship, baby!
Now, for the suspicions, I definitely think this could bring up some issues for the Rockies, as Commissioner Rob Manfred would ask "why didn't the Rockies win the contest?" and "why did everyone eat the Chipotle so soon after they nearly killed a bunch of people?" Folks, I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure if you just say the Rockies lost the contest fair and square in a court of law that they'll be in the clear. There's a scene in My Cousin Vinny where Vinny pretends to be famous New York lawyer Joey Gallow/Callow, the judge pokes around and gets right through Vinny's plan by calling some of his friends up in New York. But Vinny smooth talks the judge enough that he just kind of lets Vinny practice law in a high profile murder case anyway.
Basically, that's what the Rockies need to do if they get questioned here. Just smooth talk like peak Joe Pesci and have a smoking hot Marisa Tomei standing somewhere in the vicinity to distract them long enough that they forget what they were talking about. It would work on me, honestly.
Computer error accidentally awards the Rockies all of the best players in baseball
What do Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Josh Donaldson, Andrew McCutchen, and Max Scherzer have in common? They're all good players who don't play for the Rockies.
But what if they did?
In this scenario, the Rockies wake up one day with a memo from the commissioner stating that there's been a computer error that they are working to fix but they must abide by it for the 2016 season according to the rules, and the Rockies have been awarded all the best players in baseball.
Basically, for 2016 only, the Rockies would be the All-Star team, just crushing everyone with a lineup that is unrivaled throughout baseball. Would they win the whole thing? I don't know, sometimes All-Star teams fall flat on their face. But they would easily be the favorites for that season. Which would be awesome.
Also it would be really funny to see all the whiny fan bases of baseball try to comprehend what had just occurred.
Anyway, these are just four of the ways the Rockies could become World Series favorites. Those are the best ideas I could think of, anyways. The one about the babies is probably most likely to happen.
★ ★ ★
The Good Opinion of the Week
Each week, I will personally scour Rockies-related Twitter feeds for good opinions on food, music, movies, or even bottled water. I will feature anything that I look at and think "that is a good opinion." This week, the good opinion comes from former Rockies pitcher Jhoulys Chacin who tweets:
Super bowl champs....@Broncos pic.twitter.com/iL6hVQv5qw
— Jhoulys Chacín (@Jhoulys45) February 8, 2016
The Broncos won the dang Super Bowl!
Chacin is one of my favorite former Rockies, he just seems like a truly genuine and heartfelt guy. I cheered when he broke back into the big leagues with Arizona and I hope Atlanta is good to him, I really hope he somehow makes it back to the bigs and tears the world up for a season or two.
But also, the Broncos won the dang Super Bowl! I'm so happy. Sports are fun, they're a lot more fun when the team you've stupidly invested your emotions into wins a championship. The Broncos made the last three years of playoff heartbreak and choking at the finish line wash away. This team wasn't perfect, they grinded out wins and had an offensive line that sometimes was so bad I thought Peyton was going to retire in the third quarter. But here they are at the end, Super Bowl champs.
The defense was so good it became fun to watch them do their thing. I loved watching Tom Brady grimace and Cam Newton struggle, not because I hate them as individuals but because on the other side was my favorite team dancing and celebrating.
The Broncos won the dang Super Bowl. Let's pour champagne on our heads and throw couches into the ocean!
★ ★ ★
Reader Mailbag
Welcome to the mailbag! Every week I'll read what you degenerate jerks have to say to me. Better make it good. This week, I tweeted out a prompt to mailbag senders and asked that they send me what they would trade for a Rockies World Series title.
Now, I've heard some good points that trading something for the title wouldn't feel as good as if they just won it organically but I tossed these points aside and decided I would trade ONE HUNDRED losing seasons from the Broncos, Avalanche, and Nuggets for ONE world title from the Rockies.
I want this bad.
Here's what you had to say:
"I would give up Arvada, Northglenn, Thornton, Westminster, most of Aurora, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, and the citizens thereof for a Rockies title.
-Justin T"
This is huge.
Arvada and Westminster both have 106,000 people, Aurora contains 325,000 so most would be over 50% or around 162,500 people and the space they inhabit, Thornton contains 119,000 people, Littleton 41,000, Northglenn 36,000, and Highlands Ranch at 97,000.
Altogether, this is over 561,000 people that Justin is willing to cast into the ether for a Rockies world championship. He doesn't say what we should do with the citizens of these cities, but I assume he just wants to ship them to Canada or the Russian Gulags or that interstellar dimension that Matthew McConaughey was in during that movie where he basically spent a million years behind his old book case.
Justin would give up a lot.
"Julio Teheran for a Rockies World Series title this year so the Nats or Cubs don't win it. Go Braves.
-Chris T"
Chris, mad respect for you giving up one of your team's best players so that the Rockies can win a World Series. The fact that a fan of another team was willing to sacrifice for the Rockies' success proves to me that the Rockies are America's Team. Everyone loves the Rockies and wants them to succeed. This is a fascinating revelation for me.
"I would trade nothing for a Rockies title. In fact, as a Royals fan they would have to trade ME something for that right.
-Cole H"
Dammit. Forget what I wrote up there. APPARENTLY the Rockies are not a celebrated success story of the American people.
A LOT of people, and I mean A LOT, sent me tweets and emails that they would trade Dinger or Dinger's Life or Dinger's Soul or something along the lines of Dinger dying. I reported all the people who sent me these things to the authorities. You will all be put in prison.
★ ★ ★
Has Connor Been Owned?
Each week, our team of investigators and officials here at Connor, Inc. will look into whether or not Connor was the victim of an "own". For the uneducated, an own is often a comeback or put down that renders the person speechless and unable to turn the conversation around. It's also described as a "serve" or "savage." I'm a medical miracle in that at no point in my life have I been owned by anyone online or in real life.
Here is what is being brought forth to the Committee of Owns this week as alleged evidence of my owning:
@rockiesVSconnor your opinions are the puppymonkeybaby of twitter dot com
— Michael Tidd (@Tidd_Bitts) February 11, 2016
This week, Michael Tidd decides to enter the foray and attempt to own me over a very good opinion I had about the show House of Cards.
House of Cards is a show I do not like. It's boring and thinks it's way smarter than it actually is. The show relies on the crutch of Kevin Spacey's character saying spooky pseudo-political crap into the camera, breaking the fourth wall. It was an exciting first season that devolved into boring tropes and jump scares that do nothing to actually move the story forward. A political version of American Horror Story, if you will.
Puppy Monkey Baby was the terrifying commercial promoting a product during the Super Bowl that I will not name in this blog. That commercial almost ruined the Broncos' win for me. Almost.
My opinion is good, however. Which makes Michael's own attempt not good. The committee has ruled that I was not owned in this instance. Your cooperation in not spreading information to the contrary is expected and implied.
Regards,
Connor
[Editor's note: Have a question about baseball or anything else? Just like his mom, Connor is at your service. Email connorsmailbag@gmail.com with your questions and comments about the Rockies and everything else for next week's mailbag!]