We're a Denver-focused board, so we'll do a Rockies thread, independent of the MLB thread.

I am starting year two where I am attempting to put the Rockies out of my mind. Last year, I may have watched one full Rockies game - for the entire season. There is a cold, dark spot in my heart that used to be bathed in purple light, regardless of how good or bad the Rockies might have been. I grew up in Denver in the 1980s, when we felt we were deserving (and on a few occasions, right on the cusp) of getting an MLB team. Denver was always the city that was thrown out by team owners, wanting to get improvements to their stadiums. Twice, it was reported we'd be getting the Oakland A's - Marvin Davis would buy the team, and immediately move it to Denver. Each time, it fell through. As a result, I attended Bears and Zephyrs games, dreaming of something better.

In April of 1991, I returned from a Latter-day Saint mission to western New York. On July 5th of that year, Major League Baseball announced the cities of Denver and Miami as winners of the MLB expansion derby. I remember sitting at my part-time job at the time, listening to the press conference in which it was announced, and crying. A short time later, when the team's name, colors, and logos were released, I, a poor college student, used any spare money I had to buy every piece of Rockies garb I could find - within a few months, you'd rarely see me wearing something that wasn't orange or purple. In the two, long years before their opening series against the Mets, I followed every prospect they obtained - from their expansion draft's first pick of pitcher David Nied, to their first pick in the amateur draft, John Burke.

I just can't explain how much I loved the Rockies. There were many seasons where, if I was being honest, the Rockies owned more property in my heart than even the Broncos. I, like so many other Denverites, just had an unquenchable thirst for major league baseball at altitude.

I stayed passionate about the Rockies until the day Nolan Arenado was traded. It wasn't just the fact that, once again, the Rockies lost a great player in the middle of his prime, it was the incompetence with which that whole trade happened. It's not like the Rockies hadn't had incompetent moments before. For whatever reason, the Arenado experience just resonated with me. Since then, every stupid decision they make seems to be bathed in sunlight in my mind, and I've just become angrier. The most recent one is a perfect metaphor for all things Colorado Rockies. After years of fans clamoring that the club get with the times and actually start paying attention to analytics, the Rockies announced last fall that they had hired Scott Van Lenten to put together a data analytics department. There was hope - not only that the organization might actually start trying to level the playing field with teams that had been making sound, data-based decisions for years; but also that perhaps Dick Monfort was showing a willingness to look outside the Rockies organization for front office talent. This week - less than six months later - the Rockies announced that they had parted ways with Van Lenten due to "major disagreements" between him and the organization. This is a guy that, by all available reports, was well-regarded in every job he's had, and well-respected in the industry. It was a guy who basically interviewed the Rockies when they offered him the job, because he was respected enough to have no shortage of opportunities in baseball. In an interview after his hiring, he said that in talking especially with Dick Monfort, he felt comfortable that the Rockies were truly going all in on using data to improve the team's performance. What could have happened to make his time with the Rockies go so quickly off the rails? It's not too hard to imagine. It was all lip service. When the rubber actually hit the road, the Rockies are just too set in their comfortable, ignorant ways to make meaningful changes. As embarrassing as it is for the team to fire a guy they'd just hired, suffering that embarrassment was apparently more palatable than following through with changing a stale system that has come to fit Dick Monfort like a comfortable, broken-in pair of cowboy boots. Pay no attention to the fact that the boots are out of style, worn out, and covered with all the collective shit Dick's stepped in over the past three decades.

To replace Van Lenten, the team promoted Zack Rosenthal on an interim basis. Rosenthal's career with the Rockies goes back almost two decades.

Screw you, Dick Monfort.

Enjoy the money printing machine the city built for you in LoDo. It sucks, but Rockies "fans" are mostly content to drink a beer and socialize at Coors Field, no matter how bad the product on the field is. And on those frequent nights when the stands are overwhelmingly filled with blue or red-clad fans cheering against the home team, take comfort in the fact that even Dodgers, Cubs, Cardinals, or (insert opposing team here) fans buy your tickets, beer, and food. Who cares if the folks in the stands are wearing purple, red, blue, or orange when the cash in your pocket is all the same, comforting shade of green? Thanks for the memories of all the 70-80-win seasons. We'll always have 2007, right?

So, back to this thread. Let's celebrate this 2022 Rockies team. Let's enjoy every moment of the inevitable 75 games we're about to win.