The Fall Classic

Amazing. Probably the most important sporting event I'll ever be lucky enough to attend. The only thing better than the clinching game of the World Series is the Superbowl - and since tickets start at $3000 for Superbowl tix, the Fall Classic will be it for me. Growing up a Red Sox fan and going to games at Fenway for the past 25 years, it was numbing to watch the Sox clinch game 4 against the Rockies. I went wearing my Rockies cap but there's no way I can root against the Red Sox. I basically just saw the clinching game of the world series between my favorite two teams, and it was amazing. We made it over to the Pour House, a Red Sox bar (the owners are from Boston) a few blocks from Coors Field, after the game. The place was packed with Sox jersey's and Red Sox chants, and a couple of knuckleheads started a Rockies Suck chant only to be told to shut up by a few other Sox fans. It's just not the same when you're the favorite and you're chanting against the underdog - its hard for some of these Sox fans to be gracious in victory after finding it impossible to be gracious in defeat (Yankees Suck, anyone?). Still, the Sox are clearly the most dominant team in the MLB and will continue to be for many years. How about the Boston sports dynasty - Sox, Pats, Celtics, even Boston College is undefeated and ranked #2 in the BCS standings after a Flutie-esque win against Virginia Tech on Thursday night. We are living in the Golden Age of Boston Sports. Figures it happens two years after I move to Colorado. So here are a few pics from Game 4 of the World Series:

Dave, Ben, and I arrive at the game about an hour before the first pitch.

Blake Street, outside of Coors Field, before the game.

The scoreboard - with the Rocky Mountains in the background.

The largest American flag I have ever seen during the Star Spangled Banner.

Fireworks and balloons are released after the fly-over at the end of the Star Spangled Banner.

The Rockies take the field for the first time.

The first pitch.

Bottom of the ninth, down 4-3, two outs, 2 and 2 count, Seth Smith facing Jonathan Papelbon.

The Sox celebrate after Seth Smith strikes out for the final out of the 2007 season.

As Ben said, there are probably only a 100,000 people or so who can say they've seen the Sox clinch the World Series in person.

Congratulations 2007 Boston Red Sox.

Sox fans crowd around the Red Sox dugout after the game.

The World Series Trophy (Commissioner's Trophy) being held by an unidentified Red Sox player. (To the left of the glare, next to the green and white sign being held by a fan.)

Confessions of a Boston Expatriate

My friends are crazy. Two of them bought round trip plane tickets from Boston to Denver for this weekend, hoping to somehow get tickets to the World Series. I told them it was going to be hard, because the tickets were averaging close to $900 a piece on Stubhub.com. They booked the flights before they had any real hope of scoring tickets, and then for the next couple of days scoured internet sites looking for deals on World Series tickets. Then, yesterday morning, they struck gold - eBay had two tickets in the upper decks for a reasonable price, and my buddy was the top bidder. They were going to the Game 4 of the Fall Classic, which could turn out to be the clinching game for the Sox.

After they got the tix, I knew I had to act fast and I began searching out one solitary ticket for the same game on Craigslist. 45 minutes later I was pulling into a gas station off 470 to meet up with "Steve", who was lucky enough to get into the Rockies website a few times and buy a bunch of single tickets. I'm not going to tell you how much I paid, but I had the leverage of cash and the ability to buy immediately - which is something an arm-chair scalper likes very much. So long story short - the three of us are going to the World Series Game 4 on Sunday. I also lucked out and got a hard ticket (my buddies got "print-at-home" tickets that look like boarding passes), and I plan on mounting the stub with a picture from the game and keeping it on my wall.

After I moved out here I immediately took to the Rockies. Talk about your perennial underdogs - as of last year they were a team that had been to the playoffs exactly once in their 14-year history, a team that had finished the season above .500 only a handful of times, and a team that had never even been to a National League Championship. Also, if you had $4 in your pocket, you could go to a game any day of the week. Fenway used to be like that, before 2004. I remember shortly after I graduated from college, a couple of us were dropping off a buddy in the Back Bay on a summer evening, and one of my friends was like "Want to go to the Sox game tonight?" It was that easy. Well, it's still that easy at Coors Field. The Rockies are a team that any true fan of baseball can really get into.

So after I moved here, a lot of people began asking me who I

would root for if the Sox and Rox ever faced off in the World Series. This question was usually followed by laughter and a sarcastic "Yeah, Ok!", because there was no way that was ever going to happen. The Rox finished dead last in the division two years in a row, and the Sox were only making it to the Series every other decade - what were the odds that the two of them would both have excellent seasons at the same time? Well, now we're not laughing, it's late October and we're watching every pitch. I didn't know who I'd be rooting for during this Series. In my head, I reasoned that I should be rooting for my old home town team, the same team I had followed and screamed about for 25 years, the same team I had seen play at Fenway since I was 8 years old, when a bald sweaty fat dude in his mid-30's could buy a kid a soda without being investigated by Chris Hansen. (The guy bought me a soda because I had turned an unassisted triple-play in a little league game the night before.) But reason doesn't come into play when you're a fan, and when the Sox started teeing off on the Rockies - the team I had followed religiously for the past two years; the team that I watched from the stands at least 10 times over the past couple of summers; the team that helped Abby and I feel like we were true immersed citizens of Denver - that was when I cringed and realized that I didn't want the Rockies to lose. My mind told me I should want the Sox to win, but my heart is with the Rockies. I am a Rockies fan. Let the "Benedict Arnold" taunts begin.

So, what's it mean to go to the world series? There's a great article on mlb.com here, that explains it better than I ever could.

World Series Tickets (pt. 2)

World Series tickets for games 3, 4, and 5 at Coors Field were sold out as of 2:30 PM Mountain Time. Neither I nor any of my buddies were able to get tickets. Either that or one of my buddies had an impulse of capitalist opportunity and decided to hawk the tix for some hard cash and not tell anybody. Anti-ticket-scalping laws are rarely enforced, which allows fans of making-a-quick-buck to rip off fans of baseball through online fleece markets like Craigslist and Stubhub. Those dedicated Sox and Rockies fans can still see a game at Fenway or Coors Field, but only if they have this guy's money.

World Series Tickets

Round two of Rockies Tickets went on sale today at noon. Yesterday's fiasco during which the entire server that hosted the ticket sales crashed was blamed on hackers. Today I've been trying to get tix for over an hour, and still no luck. I gotta remain patient. The website works for five minutes, stalls, and then the "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". So I try again. The local news is reporting "many problems" with the ticket sales. Rockies team officials are asking fans to "be patient". I'm patient. I have no problems. I just assumed that in 2007 there are more efficient ways of fairly distributing 60,000 tickets to fans. At this point I don't think I have a prayer to score tickets, but we'll see. I gotta remain patient.

Unstoppable

Am I the only person who thinks the New England Patriots have a legitimate, if not likely opportunity to become the second NFL franchise to post a perfect season? For anyone born after 1972, have you ever seen a team that was so dominant? I've been telling people that they have a shot at 16-0 for a few weeks, but now I think it's more than a shot. The only two games that give me any concern at all are Indy in Nov. and Pittsburgh in Dec. We shall see. Bodoglife's NFL Team Props had a perfect season for NE at +750 before today's win. Now the sportsbook has the odds of the Pats going undefeated at 4/1.

As Jim Mora might say, You kiddin' me???

Winter in October

Woke up this morning to find 5 inches of snow on the ground. Yesterday's high was 78 degrees. Gotta love Colorado. I really like the auburns and golds of our mid-autumn foliage contrasted with the bland emptiness of the white stuff in our back yard. Ahh well. Time to put away the sunblock.