The Rockies play the ersatz game.
Preparing for their 23rd season, they still are an enigma.
Where’s Alan Turing when you need him?
The Rox are altitudely challenged, rare airheads in sea-level baseball.
But herein lies the paradoxical dilemma: “We don’t talk to the players about the altitude,” Rockies executives always say.
They should.
This is FiftyTwoEighty Ball, and the Rockies should explore it, extrapolate it, exploit it, expose it.
The Rockies can’t lose 36 to 46 games a year at a mile high and expect to compete. They must win at least 56 at Coors to be competitive.
I’m not explaining anything you, and the rest of the world (except those in the Rockies’ front office, and back), don’t already know. The club’s owner-president and the executives, including a new general manager (who was mentored by the old general manager), think if you ignore the advantages of, and issues confronting, baseball at attitude, they’ll just not matter. It matters.
Turing, a genius British mathematician, and the code breakers at Bletchley Park, as portrayed in the sensational recent movie, took on a supposedly impossible problem. In World War II, they broke the code for the German Enigma machine.
Baseball, by comparison, is just a game, figured out by Money Ball, Billy Boy, Harvey’s Wallbangers, the Go-Go Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, a midmarket team, as the Rockies are, who have won more World Series than anybody other than the New York Yankees.
So, why not the Rockies, who have plenty of money (don’t ever believe that “poor us” routine, an incredible fan base and an altitude advantage.
Because the Rockies don’t get it.
They receive a multitude of recommendations, but they listen to none.
Instead of bringing in the fences at the major leagues’ most expansive outfield — where singles turn into triples — and give the Rockies a “large ball” superiority, they build a tequila party deck. Rather than make the infield slick as an ice rink, they grow the grass as tall as Vanilla Ice’s hair. Instead of, as former major-league shortstop Nomar Garciaparra suggested lasted year, lining the park with giant misting machines to produce artificial humidity, the Brothers Monfort keep lining their pockets.
Instead of refusing to discuss the altitude, the Rockies should promote the uniqueness of Colorado baseball.
The address of Coors Field should be changed to “5280 Blake Street,” and there should be signs all over the park proclaiming “Altitude & Attitude.”
More important, though, the Rockies should, like the Aspen Institute, hold a symposium and gather scientists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, former major-league players and managers, biomechanics and consulting doctors at the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters in Colorado Springs. And figure out this altitude thing.
When Dan O’Dowd came to town in 1999 as the gleaming general manager of the Rockies, the first question I asked him was: “How will you deal with the altitude?”
“I understand baseball at this altitude. When I was (assistant GM) with Cleveland, I spent a lot of time in Colorado Springs (with the minor-league team). I have a lot of answers.”
The Rox had four winning seasons in O’Dowd’s 15. He didn’t have answers.
The new Rockies GM, Jeff Bridich, is a Harvard graduate.
Perhaps he will listen to smart guys who can crack the code of Coors Field and end the enigma.
Woody Paige: woody@woodypaige.com or twitter.com/woodypaige
