Brooms out. Ubaldo Fan Club. Clint's Cigars.

GREETINGS FROM ROCKIES NATION

The brooms were out across the Front Range last night, pulled from the same closets and garages that held the long sequestered Rockies gear exhibited by the fans at Coors Field. The new local heroes engaged in a battle of wills against the wind, the lights, the temperature and, oh yeah: the Phillies.

Pitchers duels happen at Coors Field about as often as Travis Henry is mistaken for a fine upstanding family man. But there it was. Jamie Moyer – the man who a few years ago was so bad on my fantasy baseball team that I had to check regularly to see if he was injured because his stats never seemed to register. How could a guy make 10 starts in a row and not have a single win or strike out? He did. And Ubaldo Jimenez! Wow. I love this guy. Give him a bit of control and build a team around him. His fastball zips to 97. His curve flips up, freezes the batter, and clicks right into the center of the strike zone. He also has some crazy junk pitch that makes every hitter roll a perfectly placed ball right to Kaz Matsui at second.

Ubaldo Jimenez works fast. Really fast. Zoom. Pop. Catcher tosses it back. Zoom. Pop. No walking around or brow massaging or cup grabbing. Zoom. Pop. Zoom. Pop. Moyer doesn’t screw around either. After twenty years he knows what works and when he’s on. The game, which started at 9:37pm on the East Coast, was threatening to be over by 10:20 if these guys kept on the pace they started the game. TBS, worried about not getting in all of the advertising they’d booked, ordered an immediate stadium blackout to slow these guys down. It worked.

With a strong wind blowing in and he night rapidly cooling, it seemed that not even Barry Bonds on steroids could even hit a ball out of this park (I know, I know). It was perfectly clear to everyone we were going to remained deadlocked until some obscure pinch hitter snuck one through the defense to put us ahead. Meet Jeff Baker. I guess when you are in the National League, you sometimes have to put random .222 hitters in and bet your franchise on them. That worked too.

TV viewers even got a view of the secret underground humidor with all of the sopping baseballs at Coors. I was happy to see the box of Cohibas on the bottom shelf with the note: to Clint from Fidel, Buena Suerte! They also got a full night of Don Orsillo. Since I married into the Red Sox Nation, I know Don as the regular play-by-play announcer for the Sox on NESN. I was hoping for the Rockies right fielder to hit a game winner so Don could scream out his regular go-to: “Can you believe it? Big Haw-pe does it again!”

A final note before we move on to the Diamondbacks. This is a big damn deal! Holy crap! The Rockies are playing for a shot at the World Series. In a league like baseball where the odds are stacked against low salary teams like the Rockies, this is an incredible feat (note the D-Backs salary is even lower than the Rocks’). So when you are prepping for the coming seven game series, think of all of the National League fans out there that started the season thinking , hoping and praying their squad had a chance. Cubs fans, Cardinals fans, Padres fans, Dodgers fans, Mets fans (ignore the Phillies fans on this one). These are very serious baseball people. Many don’t have football, hockey or basketball in their hearts. Only baseball. Think of them, tip your cap and promise to make them proud. Go Rockies!!!