The Boston Red Sox. All is forgiven. I'm letting go of 2007.

The Boston Red Sox. I always kind of liked them. Not as much as my Colorado Rockies of course, or even the Chicago Cubs, but I cheered for them. They were the hard luck losers. Not bad enough to miss the playoffs continually, but not good enough to avoid the soul-crushing defeats every postseason. Being a Red Sox fan was a form of masochism, hard to do unless you enjoyed getting your heart stomped on every October.

Then, it happened. One of the most magical postseason runs I can remember in almost any sport. I had just been laid off from a job I had enjoyed for 4 years, and was feeling a bit like the Red Sox, crushed and defeated. But it gave me time to follow their run through the playoffs, and I even found myself identifying with them. When they fell down into a three games to zero hole to the Yankees in 2004, I was watching at a sports bar with a buddy trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

Then it happened. Down to their last gasp, somehow Boston rallied. A Dave Roberts steal opened the flood gates of the improbable, nay, impossible. Four of the most amazing baseball games I've ever experienced had me rooting as if I were raised in Cambridge instead of Colorado. I was so on board with Red Sox nation, I wanted them to win it, and I was emotionally invested. I was as close as you could be to being a Red Sox fan without actually being a Red Sox fan. When they won the World Series in a sweep against the Cardinals, I was jumping for joy. I set a Red Sox screensaver on my computer, and even contemplated buying something in Red Sox Blue and Red to commemorate the good feeling of a team rising from the dead, much as I hoped my career would rise from the dead.

Flash forward to three years later...an equally improbable if infinitely less romantic baseball team from my home town went on an insane run to make the playoffs, and sweep through the National League playoffs to make the World Series. It was glorious, and I was so happy that MY team was poised to win a championship. Enter the team that three years previously had won my heart...and I watched them stomp on it and hand it back back to me in a crumpled heap.

It started with a 15-1 massacre in Boston, and then a blur of Red Sox victories which ended my Rockies run in 4 games, as I held a ticket to a Game 5 at Coors Field that would never happen. I now hated the Red Sox. A team that had brought me baseball joy had denied my team a championship, and didn't even have the decency to lose once so that I could attend a World Series. I decided the Sox were dead to me. It hurt to much to see that Red B on a navy blue cap. I was bitter, I was mad, and I hated them.

Fast forward another 3 years now...My wife and I are about to celebrate 10 years of marriage. We are celebrating by a trip to Boston. I had always wanted to see Fenway, and we were able to get a couple of Grandstand tickets from a ticket website. Now, I was faced with a dilemma. Would I cheer for the Sox and enjoy the feeling of being with the crowd, cheer for the Oakland A's...a team for which I had no affinity, or just watch as a passive observer.

My original plan was to just watch as an observer, but looking at pictures of Fenway, seeing the passion of Sox fans, and knowing that I was going to be in Boston. I made a decision. I am forgiving the Red Sox. I didn't want to, but the thought of going to Boston and rooting against them just didn't make sense to me. I decided to let go of the pain. I'm still a Rockies fan, and I'll forever be sad that the Sox took down my boys, but I am not going to hold on to the hate. Next month, I will sit in the stands of Fenway Park, look out at the Green Monster, and cheer my lungs out for the Sox. I even bought a Sox hat on clearance at Lids. 3 years is enough. Plus, it's always more fun to root root root for the home team! Go Sox!

The Colorado Rockies: What might have been...

"This is Beyond Baseball." Whatever that means.

This video was from a simpler time. A time a couple of weeks ago when the Rockies were still in the playoffs, and they were tied 1-1 in their Divisional Series with the Phillies. Hope was in there air, and it was as palpable as the MLB playoff slogan "This is Beyond Baseball" is stupid. Mostly, I just wanted to reminisce about the hope my friends and I felt at this moment, well, that and post to the first ever You Tube video I've ever uploaded myself. I'm so cool.

The last 10 days were so epic, I just had to write about it.

Life has been nuts lately for me. Not "I'm getting sex reassignment surgery and changing my name to Gertrude" crazy, but some stuff has happened. More stuff than usual, even.

It started a week ago last Saturday with a TNL (my church, The Next Level Church) trip to Crooked Creek ranch in the mountains. I was part of an epic wiffleball team that reached the finals of a sixteen team tournament before falling tragically short by a single run 5-4. Such a collection of wiffleball talent has rarely been seen before or since, and how we managed to not win it all is still a source of bitter disappointment.

No one strikes out at wiffleball with more grace and power than yours truly.

Not only were we an amazing talented wiffleball team, we also excelled at creating letters with our bodies. Note how adroitly we create the letters TNL. You can't teach this stuff.

As if 2nd place in the wiffleball tournament wasn't enough drama in my life, later on that same day I got home to find that I had won the first round of the Fantasy Comedy tournament (a fantasy league I created where eight guys drafted funny people in an effort to create the funniest team possible) versus the soon to be World Famous The Ed. Ironically, I had drafted The Ed to be on my team, so The Ed helped defeat The Ed.

The drama came in that after I declared the vote to be closed with me as the winner, three people came along to vote for The Ed's team after it was over. Suddenly my victory by two votes turned into what looked like me trailing by 1 vote. I had already set up the second round, and now it looked to the Ed like I had cheated. This resulted in a lot of drama, and the Ed saying some rather unflattering things about me. I also ended up as #1 on the Bad Side over at www.theedssuperdeluxewebsite.com, which is pretty severe since Dave Dameshek had been #1 on the Bad Side pretty much since the inception of Ed's website. I never imagined that I would be the one to knock Dave out of the top Bad Side spot.


Things got better a few days later though with the release of the greatest Vertically Striped Animation Studios video EVER! The world renowned "Oh No" video. Here it is, just in case you missed it the first time, be careful though, as it'll change your life. (Slight Hyperbole)



When The Ed saw the new video, I was quickly declared to be off the bad side, and sure enough...I made it to #1 on the Good Side. Giving me a record for quickest to legitimately disappear at #1 on the Bad Side and reappear at #1 on the Good Side.



With The Ed drama behind me, it was time for my 33rd birthday. The day started off with a bang, as Steve from Alabama was able to get the my radio show Vertically Striped Radio unbanned in Alabama. For a short time, the show had been made illegal in the heart of Dixie.

I had to go to work on my big day, but only for a few hours, because as a birthday present to myself, I kicked off of work early and walked on over to Coors Field to take in the Colorado Rockies game. Not only is it cool to skip work to go see a ballgame, but if the Rox won, they would clinch a playoff spot. The weather was cool, but the crowd was out in full force, and the Rockies rewarded us by thumping the Brewers 9-2 and clinching a postseason berth. The 9th inning was fun, and the celebration really broke out after Alcides Escobar struck out looking to end the game.



Coming home that night, my wife made a delicious breakfast for dinner, always a fan favorite at my house, and she really topped herself by following THIS RECIPIE for Bacon Ice Cream. That's right, she knew I had been preaching the virtues of the potential for Bacon Ice Cream, and she honored that vision by making some for me. Let me tell you, this is gonna be huge. It is delicious!

Forget Red Vines + Mr. Pibb, Bacon Ice Cream = Crazy Delicious

Not all the crazy stuff has been great...Friday and Saturday I felt like death warmed over. My wife Jen says she heard via the local media that if you think you have the H1N1, you probably do. I'm about 90% sure I had the Swine Flu. At it's worst on Saturday morning, I lacked the energy to blink. I'm feeling much better now.

I can neither confirm nor deny that this is how I contracted the Swine Flu.

Then, to cap things off yesterday, I was able to attend the crazy exciting come from behind victory by my Broncos over the Cowboys to increase their record to a logic defying 4-0.

Yes, it's true. Somehow the Broncos are 4-0.

So that's my crazy (not overly crazy) life over the past 10 days. Plus, it keeps getting better as my buddy got us tickets for Saturday night's Rockies playoff game, and then on Sunday, I'll once again be at Invesco to see the Broncos take on the Patriots in the uniform which gave birth to the name of this blog! How sweet it is! The Vertically Striped Socks are coming!

'Tis it Better to have loved (the Rockies) and lost, or never to have loved at all?

My boy Tulo and the rest of the Rockies have Colorado believing again, is that a good thing?

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.
-From Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam

Yup, I just quoted Tennyson, so you know this post is going to be high quality! You may wonder why I am quoting Tennyson when I am purporting to write a sports blog post, and in the hands of a lesser blogger, you'd be right. However, I actually am going somewhere with the above poetry from 1850, so stay with me.

My question is this...When it comes to sports, is it better to have your heart broken by a team who goes very far, but not quite far enough, (Such as the Nuggets this past season falling in the Western Conference Finals or the Rockies getting swept in the World Series in 2007 after a glorious run.) or is it preferable to have your team struggle mightily and never really get off the ground so that your expectations are never raised and you never have your heart broken. (Such as the Avalanche this past season, or for Clippers fans...pretty much every season ever.)

On the one hand, it kinda stinks to have your hopes raised by the possibility of a championship only to have the Lakers or Red Sox stomp all over your dreams like a old bag of moldy tangerines. On the other hand, you could be a Clippers fan (shudder) and never really have to worry about the angst that comes with hope.

I bring the topic up, because I am dealing with both possibilities this season with the Rockies, and I've been thinking about it a bit. To start the season off, they were atrocious, and my baseball fandom was kind of like Vince Carter's basketball play. I was wearing the uniform, but I wasn't really putting a whole lot of effort or emotion into it. I was following the results, but not hanging on the results. In other words, I was acting like a guy whose team was 20-33 as the Rox were back on June 3rd. Since that time, however, the Rockies have gone 21-4, and I am now extremely interested in every game, and hoping that they can keep it up throughout the summer and find a way to sneak into the playoffs like they did two years ago and perhaps make another ridiculous run.

So that's my question, is it better to have a team that I only sort of pay attention to, but with no possibility to break my heart, or is it better to have a competitive team who may fall apart later on in the summer and dash my expectations against the rocky shores of an August swoon? I think I'm going to side with my pal Alfred Lord and love with the possibility of losing as being better than never having loved at all. How say you?

Although it may lead to pain, I'll say it proudly, "GO ROCKIES!!!"