Are the Rockies cursed by an ancient evil? A paranormal investigation

Welcome to Football Friday, a baseball column by 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.

Bullpens are fickle beasts, a subtle reminder that the game of baseball can't be 100 percent predicted. You can manipulate and strategize and play the numbers all you want but at the end of the day, there's a bullpen. Bullpens often live in the imaginary world of Small Sample Size, a place where Emilio Bonifacio is the greatest hitter to ever live and Tommy Kahnle is revered as a god among men.

Because of this, the bullpen is often a weird area where normal rules apply yet don't apply. You play the averages but that doesn't mean you have any chance of those averages working out. A bullpen can go two weeks without giving up a run and look other worldly only to turn around and blow ten straight games and make you wish death upon them.

The Rockies are currently in that second part, it seems. Having blown four out of the last six games in the late innings. An eight game swing that, had they even kept half of those leads, would've found them still right in the thick of a heated wild card race. But, they didn't. They blew three late leads in a row to the Rangers, a once promising run came screeching to a halt in the face of a bullpen that suddenly couldn't get out of an inning.

There's so many explanations for this sudden turn of poor play from the 'pen. Bad luck, crazy slump, sample size. But I think I've found the true culprit.

The bullpen is cursed by some kind of ancient paranormal force.

I've become a bit of an amateur expert in the field of the paranormal (shoutout to Jon Gray) and in my research I've noticed that curses are a big deal in the world. People are cursed all the time and most of the time they don't even know it. I've researched some of the most likely curses the Rockies could have brought on themselves and written short explainers on each one. We can all decide together which one is the most accurate. By the way, if you'd like to do some research at home on this here is my scientific method:

Curse #1: Traveller's Curse

Most popular in Europe and in Colonial tales, the Traveller's Curse is usually a curse from a gypsy or homeless person. Usually it comes from stealing or tricking the curse giver in such a way that offends their blood line. These curses are incredibly difficult to break and often require murdering the giver of the curse or destroying the object. You could apologize profusely but if someone's ticked off enough to curse you, you've probably bypassed the apology step and must resort to drastic measures to get out of this one.

Most likely what happened is a player on the Rockies tricked a gypsy on the teams recent road trip and has now destined the team to lose in the worst ways possible. Whoever that guy is needs to get their crap together and sort this thing out, we're suffering here.

Curse #2: Accidentally reading cursed passages of a book

Most popularly remembered as the curse from the classic Sam Raimi film Evil Dead (and Evil Dead 2), opening a very old book and reading a cursed passage is one of the most likely curses to happen to any of us. Frankly, if this is the curse that happened to the Rockies I wouldn't be surprised one bit.

What likely happened is Nick Hundley found a book in a New York pawn shop and, despite the store owners protests, read from a cursed page. Now, the whole team is cursed because stupid idiot Nick Hundley read from this book. It's bad enough that Hundley can't frame pitches very well and his bat has disappeared, but now he's got to go awaken an ancient demon curse and ruin the Rockies bullpen? Come on, man. Should've moved him at the deadline.

Curse #3: Purchased a cursed object

The most common way to acquire a curse is to acquire an object that contains a curse. Curses are easily stored and moved through objects so it makes the most sense that one of the Rockies (probably Nick Hundley) purchased an object that is cursed and now that cursed object that someone (probably Nick Hundley) bought is travelling with the team. Curses like this are not only the most common to get but also probably the easiest to remove. Just sell the object to someone else, simple as that. From movies and other research I've learned that trying to destroy the cursed object is silly and just leaving it somewhere will only lead to it somehow turning up back in your locker a few hours later.

If the Rockies can somehow trick another team into purchasing the cursed item or somehow trick a child into trading for it, they'll be able to escape pretty easily from this curse. But they need to get on this immediately.

Maybe Nick Hundley is the cursed object himself? I don't know, all I'm saying is he's likely the reason this week happened.

(Note: I reached out to paranormal experts across the Internet, did not receive a response.)

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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 Purple Row writer Cam Goeldner's grandma:

My grandma just called me a sissy this family dinner is lit

— Cam Goeldner (@Goeldfinger) August 9, 2016

Family burns are the best burns, especially when they come from grandmas. The thing about grandmas is we see them as nice old ladies who gave us candy and listened to us when we complained about our parents at seven years old. So, it's always jarring when you grow up and realize they know things like insults and curse words.

But, they're people they had a childhood and they were teens, they probably broke rules and drank too much, they kissed people they shouldn't have and used the F word. These are things most grandmas definitely did and more and Cam's grandma calling him a sissy is just another example of this.

On top of that, compared to old people a lot of us are sissies. Not in the problematic sense, but in the definition of the word. They were all out fighting in World War 2 and yelling at people that were different than them, we're just sitting online tweeting about TV shows that say problematic things and acting like that makes a difference.

I don't want to generation shame, I think millennials are great and will leave a good legacy on this Earth and I also think the Greatest Generation made a lot of stupid mistakes that hurt us. But I think a lot of us are sissies and I think Cam's grandma was just calling it like it is.

Anyway, grandmas be crazy!

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Has Connor Been Owned? (By someone other than Thomas Wilson)

And now, some somber news.

As you may have heard, Football Friday, INC. has made the corporate decision to retire the Has Connor Been Owned? section of the column. This decision is final and a new section will take it's place next week. Thank you for your understanding in this time and please respect the decision in the comment section.

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Who is better: Connor Farrell or Connor Harrell?

The Detroit Tigers have an outfield prospect named Connor Harrell, weirdly enough that is only one letter separated from my name, Connor Farrell. Each week we will compare the previous weeks in our lives and find out who is better, Connor Farrell (me) or Connor Harrell.

This week in Connor Harrell's career, the Erie Seawolf hit .263 with 2 RBI, 5 walks, and 13 strikeouts. Not that great! The 25-year-old outfielder has struggled to find consistency with his bat this year in Double-A and this past week was another indication of that.

This week in Connor Farrell's career was pretty good! I went on vacation and drank beer at a wedding. Overall, in life, I would say I hit .400 this week!

This week: Connor Farrell is better than Connor Harrell.

Regards,

Connor