In the places where baseball is most magical -- the Cactus League, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and a handful of other lucky cities -- the approach to the cathedrals where the games are played is something of a pilgrimage. You start walking from far away and as you draw closer to the park, streams and currents of other fans begin marching with you, and the next thing you know you're swept up in a wave of shared experience that sweeps you in through the gates and into your seat.
After years of absence, baseball as a presence has returned to Denver, Colorado, and it's terrible indeed -- as crazy as this city has gone in the past for their Broncos and their Avs, there remains still even among those whose activity as baseball fans has long been dormant a vague awareness that baseball has a greater significance. Football and hockey and basketball are marvelous but ever-changing and hardly recognizable from the forms they were played in even 25 years ago; baseball is more the same than ever. I don't know to what degree most of the fans at Coors Field tonight could articulate these concerns. I do know at several points during the contest this evening the crowd seemed for all the world to will the team to an NLCS sweep; no one had any interest in returning for another game Wednesday night, as wonderful an experience as every home playoff game has been so far. Rockies fans might not get all the details yet -- the rather crude group of enthusiastic but recent converts behind me couldn't stop talking about how Matt Herges had "done it for us all year" when Herges only threw 10 innings for Colorado before August 1st. But they do understand that the team is in the middle of something utterly unique and ineffable, something delicate -- were the Rockies to fail to take care of business on this night, the magic could be over like that. And that would be a shame, because on the whole I think it would be quite pleasant to win the World Series.
Something that is interesting is the amount of unapologetic bandwagon fans. It is alright with me! They are welcome! GO ROCKIES!
Oh and someone tell that owner to stop giving interviews. Just. Stop. Talking.
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