My sister and I have had very different lives. She’s a nurse practitioner, with two wonderful children in a very typical heterosexual relationship, living in a detached house in a very calm suburb 20-odd minutes from our childhood home. Annual winter vacations at all-inclusive Caribbean resorts, wine nights with women she went to high school with, plenty of praise from family members, all that. I have somewhat of a different lifestyle, 3,200 km away and … certainly not typically heterosexual. I’m
told that my parents love us both equally.
In my own way I understand that sentiment, because I love the New York Yankees. For all the gnashing of teeth we do around here about the on-field product, the organization is well-respected and considered well-run by most around the game. It sports MLB’s finest hitter, we saw the rise of a potential young ace just this year, and the club is constantly in position for deep October runs.
And then there’s my other child, the Colorado Rockies. The team is uh, celebrating the hiring of Paul DePodesta, the inspiration for Jonah Hill’s character in Moneyball, as their new President of Baseball Operations, almost a decade after leaving baseball to run the Cleveland Browns. I don’t follow football, but I have been led to believe the Browns are not seen as a gold, silver, or bronze standard in the NFL.
Dick Monfort, the longtime owner of the Rockies, should send thank you cards to Bob Nutting and Arte Moreno for taking so much heat as terrible owners that we don’t really talk about Monfort. The organization he runs signed arguably the best player in franchise history to a massive extension only to trade him to the Cardinals (while throwing money into the deal and then also signing a worse third baseman to a monster contract shortly thereafter), has had quant analysts serving as clubhouse attendees, and—for all the very real problems that stem from pitching on Mars—hasn’t had a four-win starter since 2018.
And yet, there’s just something about the purple jerseys, the sightlines at my favorite MLB park, and the general goofiness of the franchise that means I watch more Rockies games than any other team in the west.
So much of the particular joy the Rockies bring me is the direct contrast with the Yankees. Being a Yankee fan is easy; the team will always have standout stars and will always spend money, even if they don’t always do it in the way we want. Since 2010, the team’s averaged a .567 winning percentage, or 92 wins a year.
In that stretch, the Yankees have seen three MVP seasons and what should have been a fourth, 12 postseason berths, a Cy Young campaign, two Rookie of the Year winners — and what should have been a third — and attendance over three million every year but 2020. They have not won the World Series and there is plenty of criticism to be directed at the brain trust, but we live pretty good as fans.
Being a Rockies fan is torturous. In that same span of time Colorado has a .434 winning percentage, or 70 wins a year, and quite frankly that’s higher than I thought it would be before checking. Since COVID-19 hit, they’ve played to a .386 clip. They have made the playoffs twice, bounced in the Wild Card game in 2017 and swept out of the NLDS the following year. Coors Field has hosted one playoff game in that time.
There’s that old joke about how a Democrat in Brooklyn can’t fathom the challenges one faces in Lexington, and that’s kind of the difference between the fanbases as well. With the Yankees, we need to find the faults — with the Rockies, you’ve gotta look real hard to find the joys. There are still joys though, with Hunter Goodman inexplicably becoming one of the game’s finest catchers, trying to solve the eternal problem of inducing break on a pitch thrown a mile high, or forever wondering just how much weed Kris Bryant has bought with his $182 million free agent contract. The Yankees may do just about everything right, but those kids in purple aren’t half-bad themselves.
