Rockies, Blackmon get 9 innings to earn respect
After living the dream for 162 games, the Rockies get nine innings to prove they are for real. When Charlie Blackmon steps in the batter’s box against Arizona ace Zack Greinke on Wednesday night, the playoff party crashers from Colorado will either justify their existence as World Series contenders or be quickly tossed aside as postseason props.
Here’s what is really at stake: The Rockies are 25 years old. But across the country, they are regarded as a cute little team that plays at zero gravity rather than 5,280 feet above sea level. After 25 years, the Boys of LoDo still have not been offered a chair at the adult table.
Vinny Castilla, an original Blake Street Bomber, sat Tuesday in the corner of the visitors’ clubhouse and rolled his eyes at the aspersions cast at the Rockies for so long it makes him want to spit. Is it altitude, not aptitude, that makes a hitter a star in Colorado?
“You keep hearing that stuff. It’s nonstop. No matter what the Rockies do, people are going to talk. Even if you hit 50 home runs or bat .320 in Coors Field, you’re going to hear it,” Castilla said.
At 20th and Blake, Blackmon is treated like MVP royalty by a Denver crowd that lovingly serenades him every night to the strains of everyone’s favorite walk-up song. Almost everywhere else in America, Blackmon is dismissed as a Coors Field creation.
After six months of baseball, it seems unfair to judge a major-league team on nine short innings. But know the beauty of the win-or-go-home urgency of this wild-card game against Arizona? It also offers the opportunity to make a big, dramatic statement.
Fair or not, Blackmon is the personification of the stereotypes the Rockies can’t beat unless they start winning playoff games in bunches.
“I don’t think this is the time to be putting a lot of pressure on myself,” Blackmon said.
The votes for MVP have all been cast. But October is the time when Blackmon can prove he’s truly MVP-worthy.
Yes, he won the National League batting title with a .331 average. The achievement, however, is heavily discounted because 10 times before Blackmon, a hitter wearing purple pinstripes has won the batting crown. Give anybody a piece of lumber and a locker at Coors Field and the base hits are automatic. It’s easy, right?
“That’s not true,” said catcher Jonathan Lucroy, who joined the Rockies in July via trade. “You could put Charlie Blackmon any place, and he’s going to rake.”
At Coors Field, Blackmon is a bigger man than Stan Musial. Blackmon hit .391 with 24 home runs this season in Colorado. For fans of new-age stats, Blackmon’s home OPS of 1.239 was as huge and gaudy as anything seen in the majors since the ballcap of Barry Bonds was bursting at the seams.
On the road, however, Blackmon is just another guy. At Chase Field, a hitter’s paradise where the Diamondbacks have made their name as a fearsome offensive force, Blackmon has been awful this season. It encourages respected Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell to call Blackmon a fake batting champ. Chuck Nazty hasn’t rained a drop in the Arizona desert, with a .182 batting average and two extra base hits in 44 at-bats against Diamondbacks pitchers. Why?
“They probably pitch pretty good. … I wouldn’t think there is much more to it than that,” Blackmon said.
Blackmon led the major leagues in multihit games. It would count much more for his national reputation if Blackmon raked a single and double off Greinke, sparking Colorado to victory in a ballpark where Greinke’s record is 13-1 in 2017. Are the Rockies for real? There can be no Rocktober unless Colorado beats the Diamondbacks. It requires more than one game to be a playoff run worthy of fueling up the bandwagon.
But what does Colorado have to lose?
This is the Rockies’ chance to make crabby, ink-stained curmudgeons (sound like anybody you know, Mr. Boswell?) wish they had cast an MVP ballot for Blackmon.
Chuck Nazty and Blake Street Boys can force the game’s cognoscenti to take them seriously, rather than dismiss baseball at a mile high as a happy purple accident.