So long, Rockies, and yo, Phillies!

Things can sure turn around in a hurry in a baseball game, particularly at Coors Field in Denver. As I drove home from work tonight, the Rockies were leading in the top of the 9th with closer Huston Street on the mound. I pulled into the driveway as Jimmy Rollins scratched out a single, then turned the engine and radio off.

By the time I got through with the my arrive-at-home ritual and plopped into the recliner, the Phillies had taken the lead. My jaw dropped as I checked the MLB.com app on my iPhone and saw that the game was still going. A quick flip of the channel and I watched as Brad Lidge recorded the final two outs.

It was amazing how quiet the ballpark got. The Phillies move on to the National League Championship Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, giving baseball a pair of dynamite bi-coastal matchups. The Yankees and Angels, of course, are in the ALCS. Both series should offer plenty of drama.

In honor of the Phillies, I’ve posted above a photo of myself in my Phillies cap, which I picked up while coaching one of my sons’ Little League teams a few years back. The shot is just old enough so that those 1990s mirrored sunglasses are definitely out of style.

For most of us, it’s ‘Wait Until Next Year’

Playoffs notwithstanding, for most baseball fans today is the first day of the long winter. The season is over, the concession stands are empty, the lockerrooms bare as the players have packed up to go fishing or hunting or whatever they do in the off-season.

For followers of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, another year has passed without post-season play. We small- and mid-market fans will watch glumly as the Cardinals, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers or Twins stretch their seasons.

For those teams, hope remains for October glory, a pennant, a World Series champagne spray. But for most of us — like this crushed Cubs fan — our refrain is “Wait until next year.”

Spring training can’t come soon enough.

Less than excited about baseball wild card races

We’re in a wild card race. Awesome!!!

Well, hardly. Wild-card races in Major League Baseball have been running for a couple of decades, and I still can’t fully accept them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take a wild card berth. As I write this post, I’m listening to the Giants and the Dodgers. I want the Giants to sweep LA this weekend as I simultaneously pray for the Colorado Rockies to drop each game in their series with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But the race for a wild card berth doesn’t nearly get me as excited as someone claiming a league or division title. Way back in the late 60s as baseball contemplated following the NFL into multi-division playoffs, I can remember my father telling me that the playoffs were supposed to be the antidote to the all-too-frequent runaway teams atop the old single-division American and National leagues.

In many years, that vision has come through. But — Yankees and Red Sox fans, don’t hate me — I grow weary of the same teams returning to the playoffs year after year after year. The seemingly endless run of playoff appearances by the Atlanta Braves is a good example. They hoarded playoff appearances, although I must admit my judgment carries the bitter tinge from their only Series victory in recent memory, in 1995 over the Cleveland Indians.

Then there was the ‘97 series, in which the NL wild card team – the Florida Marlins – defeated the Tribe in the series. Where’s the justice in that?

I know I’m fighting the last war by whining about the wild card concept, so let this be my last harangue on the subject. I will now turn my attention back to the Giants, and hope against hope that their stellar pitching and anemic hitting manage to sneak them into the playoffs, on the road to a World Series victory against an AL team that won 20 more games in the regular season.

In praise of minor league baseball

If there’s anything more American than baseball, it’s minor league baseball. I grew up knowing only the big-league variety, although one could argue that the Cleveland Indians of the 1960s and 70s were anything but major league.

Over the past decade I’ve become a fan of minor league ball, which has enjoyed a resurgence across the nation. That’s not hard to understand. Games in the minors are more accessible. Tickets are cheap, and concession food is reasonably priced. There’s not a bad seat in most stadiums, and many franchises go all out to entertain you before the game and between innngs.

I went to John Thurman Field in Modesto last night and unexpectedly found myself among the largest crowd ever to attend a minor league ballgame there. The Modesto Nuts, the cheekily named Class A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, hosted the Stockton Ports. The stadium was swarming with families as scores of kids took part in pre-game karate and cheerleading demonstrations. Even better, as the second half of the California League season nears a close, the Nuts put much of their merchandise on sale outside the team store.

I couldn’t resist buying a Nuts cap. I had intended to buy the black home cap featuring team mascot Al the Almond, but these were fitted caps (only $15!) and my size was puzzlingly missing. So instead I chose the snazzy Wally the Walnut road cap shown above on the roof of the Nuts’ dugout. The cap goes nicely with the black Nuts T-shirt I received as a birthday present last summer from my in-laws.

While the crowd was alternately watching the game and being distracted by the steady stream of nachos, churros and hot dogs being brought up into the stands, the Nuts managed to defeat the Ports 4-3. Fireworks followed the game.

It doesn’t get any more American than that.