So, we got swept.  And I owe Dan dinner.  I only have three things I want to say.

1. Obviously the eight days off hurt more than I ever thought they would.  I think once the intensity level dropped from the long streak of winning, it was very difficult to get spun back up, especially against a team as talented as the Red Sox.  It seemed like they were finally getting their bats moving again in Game 4, when it was obviously too late.  The pitching?  I’m not sure it was ever going to get back to the level it was prior to the break.
2. I’m not embarassed that they lost, and I wasn’t ever upset that they lost.   They did a pretty sweet and historical thing – it upsets me when “experts” continue to claim it was the most lopsided WS in history.  Haven’t three of the last four WS’s been sweeps?  Why is this one any more lopsided, other than a team that went on a historical run to get to the WS had a historical amount of time off between fall baseball games?
3. I hope the ownership group manages to keep the core of the team together.  They’ve made it clear they’ll do their best to retain those that they have control over, but I can’t help but think – specifically in Holliday’s case – that someone else will just be able to offer more money.  Significantly more.

Half of me hopes they keep the mojo alive next season, and half of me wants it to go back to the way it was – a middling baseball team with cheap tickets and nearly free parking.  I figure they’ll have an initial spike in attendance come April, they’ll suck in April like they normally do, and then it’ll be business as usual.

Oh, and I should fully disclose that I got to go to Game 4.  Another “feature” of the ticketing system that I think I mentioned is that once you got in, you could get in repeatedly.  This was true – but also – the URL that the ticket purchasing button kicked you to, the hold page, was never anything more than a hold page.  If you typed in the URL of the actual ticket selling server – you’d go straight to the opportunity to buy tickets, every time.  Great system huh?

Well great for us, because our bandwagon neighbors managed to buy twelve tickets to each of the games in Denver.  The same neighbors that chastized me for wasting my money by going to Rockies games scored World Series tickets.  I’m not all that upset about it since I got to go to a game too, but it shows you (again) how completely ridiculous the ticketing system was.

I didn’t comment the pictures.  I probably should’ve, but I just wanted to get them up on the site quickly.  The low light made for some fuzzy pictures, which was unfortunate.  There was obviously the tiniest Rockie fan in front of us.  At some point I clearly rallied the team by taking off my shirt.  Most of the Boston fans were gracious in victory – each was willing to shake my hand and congratulate us on a good series.  I’m sure there were assholes there – but I didn’t come across any.

It was a great time – I realize how special it is that Anna and I got to go to a World Series game.  You can expect this to be the last baseball post from me for quite some time!

I’ve had a lot to do, so my goofing off time is concentrated. I’m finding cool things more efficiently. This is one I forgot about, but was reintroduced to by lifehacker: Google Trends.

For instance, check this graph on “Colorado Rockies” for how often people have been searching for them. I added a bonus mystery reference for scale!

Sorry mom, cussing is warranted.

Official statement from the Rockies front office regarding opening up ticket sales to the world as opposed to showing favor towards the Rox fans.

“It’s the World Series, not the Colorado Series.”

And, as we expected, there was probably no attack on their web servers.

I’m not upset that I didn’t get tickets – any other system would’ve yielded just as good of a chance.  It’s just that I wish they had been more fair about it – it wasn’t a fair system.  First, the countdowns did nothing – there were no places in line.  Javascript can’t keep track of queues – so it was an outright lie to try and keep people from refreshing and overwhelming their servers.  Then, once you did get through, your computer would have a cookie on it that identified your computer to their servers – and those computers would get preference on making connections.  It was just a bad system by a small-time ticket office.

I would hope that the Rox learn from the experience – they will have pissed off fans, and would’ve had pissed off fans either way.  But there were about a hundred different ways they could’ve handled it to minimize the number of the disgruntled.

It’s good for the city, really.  Lots of money will be coming into the city by way of Red Sox fans.  When we win the series and they leave with tail tucked – Colorado and the city will have their money, and we’ll have our World Series.   

The Rockies office is contending that they were “maliciously attacked“. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it – and it looks like a lot of the rest of the fans and media doesn’t buy the excuse either. If you were attacked, perhaps you should’ve had some kind of backup plan other than “freeze the whole thing” and “suspend Rockies’ fans hopes for tickets indefinitely”.

They kept announcing press conferences, which they either did not attend or constantly rescheduled, further demonstrating they had no idea what the heck was going on. At one point I went to the ticket office near work just on the off chance they actually announced that they did have a backup plan, and that they’d be selling tickets at their offices. But really, they just came out and said “We have no announcement, we’ll have an announcement later”. They did this until about 9pm MST – leaving fans like Anna and I handcuffed to some kind of media source in the event we needed to hop on to a computer and try again.

It’s the first time they’ve ever been a part of something this big – but I guess I was totally surprised that they had no backup plan whatsoever. It was a bad initial plan, true enough. But no backup for a game of this magnitude is ridiculous. Four days until game time – if the system works. They say they have a backup plan, but they’re not announcing what it is. If they end up selling tickets at the box offices, there will probably be widespread riots, since fans have openly stated that’s what they wanted from the beginning.

So they’re going to try again today at 12 PM Mountain Time. I expect similar results – lots of timing out, lots of those stupid countdown screens, and probably three times as many pissed off Rockies fans as there were yesterday. The countdown screen isn’t a good thing – it’s effectively preventing you from refreshing for sixty seconds. If you get a countdown screen, close it, and click the button to buy tickets again – in sixty seconds in a world where their system works, thousands of tickets could be sold.

Red Sox vs. Rockies!

We beat the Sox two games to three in interleague play this year. Only Josh Beckett shut us down in a close 2-1 loss. It will be a good series, but I’d be surprised if the Rox could sweep this one.

Tickets go on sale in one and a half hours! Buy tickets for Anna and I at ColoradoRockies.com!

I don’t think you have to register for an account. If you don’t have an account you’ll still go through the checkout process like any other customer – I think it’s just a ploy by the Rox to grow their mailing lists for next season’s solicitation of season tickets.

So ticket sales, as Matt deftly pointed out in the comments, are now solely online.  I got about ten e-mails in a span of 10 minutes after the announcement.

Thing is, I think I’ll have to go home to try because I’ll have a faster connection there.  Everyone here is going to be trying the same thing.  I’ll still ask everybody I know with an interweb connection to give it a shot as well.  The more, the merrier!

So I think I’ve come up with a plan to get World Series tickets.  I’ve got to lean on some of you for help, though.

They’re doing a weird kind of lottery system.

There is a Rockies Dugout Store right down the street from the house, where I’m assuming just about everyone in Highlands Ranch who cares is going to be waiting in line.  The Post says get there at 7:30am to wait in line for 10am tickets.  Earlier might be better – but really you’re just waiting in line for a chance to get tickets.  Even if you’re first in line, you will not be guaranteed tickets – only an equal lottery-style chance to buy tickets first if your group is selected.  And the max number of tickets you can buy is four.

Alternatively, I can try and get tickets online.  I will say that, based on how the servers handled the gigantic flow of ticket requests for the play-in game, I do not have a lot of faith in that system.

On a side note, it seems like forever ago that I was standing in Queen Soopers waiting for tickets for the NLDS play-in tiebreaker.

Here’s what I think we can do.  Tickets go on sale Monday, October 22nd at 10:00am MST, or 12:00pm EST.

• Anna and I, possibly also Jen, will go wait in line all fricking morning for a chance at tickets.
• Anybody else I know will graciously go online to the Rockies website at the above time and try repeatedly to buy tickets for us.

Obviously we’d reimburse anybody who got through.  And in some instances, you might even make a little bit  of cash, in the event that we have to move the ticket to someone who doesn’t actually want it.

I think this is our best possible chance to get tickets.  However unlikely, we may end up with a bunch of extra tickets – and in that case, we’d either sell them to friends and neighbors out here, or sell them on the free market for extra money.  In that case, I’d prefer to have the Red Sox here, because they’d pay something ridiculous.  Jerks.

I guess they do some kind of blog roundup, and somehow I got on it.  Isn’t that special!

The Injuns are up 3-1 on the Sox.  There are three major reasons I’d rather face the Indians:

1. Red Sox fans, or at least the type that would drive up prices of our World Series tickets here in Denver, are generally assholes.
2. We match up better against them – position by position, except maybe at catcher, we have more talent.  The pitching is about even, with a slight advantage towards Cleveland.
3. I heart seeing large, money-laden teams with high free-agent bills crumbling when it matters.

I think that’s part of the draw of the Rockies, and also the Indians.  It’s a bunch of young kids, mostly, that have been born and bred through the farm system.  So with payrolls in the mid 23rd-25th highest range for the Indians and Rockies – it shows that evil empires like the Red Sox and Yankees (#2 highest and #1 highest) aren’t necessarily going to win out because they’ve got full-bellied talent.  Hungry kids will always have a chance!

All I can come up with right now is “I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL”

It’s a little ridiculous in Denver today.

For the first time ever, the Colorado Rockies are going to the World Series.  Pretty exciting stuff.  You can, if you were so inclined, click on the “Baseball” category on the bottom left to see all the posts I’ve done about the Rockies over the season, from when it was just for cheap entertainment, to when they had a chance, to when they were done, and then to when they made the playoffs.  For Anna and I, it’s special because we feel like we’ve been a part of it, having followed them all season.

We’re not the stupid angry fans – the ones that get mad at all the bandwagon folks that are hopping on the train.  I think it’s great to see the city alive and caring about the team.  It’s weird what impact sports have on this town.  This morning I went to a Sports Authority that had opened to sell the overpriced NLCS Champions t-shirts and met a lot of smiling faces in other Rockies fans.  Then while walking into my building, random strangers are even smiling and saying “Go Rockies!”  And all the bandwagon folks buying stuff right now help funnel money into the team to try and keep them together a few more years.  So I say, let’s celebrate away!

So in seven days, we play either the Red Sox or the Indians.  Sorry Lins’s – I think the Indians would be the more exciting game.  But at this point, I think the Rockies can beat either of them.  Will they?  Dunno.  But they’ve got just a good a shot as anyone else.