Saturday, July 7, 2007

Don't Need no Teef to Chew This Beef; or, What's Behind the Monforts' Meat Curtains?


For some reason, even though Charlie and Dick Monfort have squandered the most enthusiastic expansion fan base ever and gave their field-level management team contract extensions not only before the first game of the season but directly after stating that this year was the put-up-or-chatafuckup year for Mssrs. Hurdle and O'Dowd--who, we must take this moment to acknowledge, looks like the evil robot in Terminator 2's homunculus--they seem to have some sort of soporofic effect on certain normally reasonable people. Like, say, the Rocky's Dave Krieger.



Krieger is my favorite local columnist, because he eschews the manichean, fireball-throwing style of our town's own Skip Bayless, Mark Kiszla; because he doesn't ignore the point to try for(ced) cleverness ala the legendarily awful Bernie Lincicome and, not least, because he can write a complete, non-gibberish sentence, unlike Woody fucking Paige. But even so, he has his weak spots. His endless defenses of Bernie Bickerstaff, for instance. Bick helped destroy what was left of an ascendant Nuggets squad in the late '90s and has been since the anti-Midas, turning each program he touches to shit, but Krieger can be reliably counted on to produce a pro-Bernie or Where is Bernie Now? column once per annum. And, of course, his affection for the Monforts.

The Monfort family, for the two of you reading this out of state, made its fortune raising beef. Its Greeley plant has, for decades, been mostly responsible for the particular odor enjoyed by residents of that fair town. Look--I enjoy a good steak as much as the next guy. (Unless the next guy is Paul McCartney, and if it was, then I'd have to mention how much I liked his work with the Beatles but man, Wings sucked, and that dancing ukulele or mandolin or whatever commercial for Starbucks just gags me out.) I've even had some, er, fun in Greeley over the years with friends who went to UNC. I have fond memories of Broncos camps and Vanilla malts.

And to their credit, they did--to use the phrase that Jim Armstrong uses every single damn time he talks about this--ride in on their figurative white horse to save major league baseball in Denver after the original investors turned out to be charlatans. Good for them, good for us.

But the intervening years have been one long downward slide. And this season's semi-competence aside, don't look for it to get much better. They have committed themselves to being a small-salary team, they don't say what they do with the extra cash baseball gives 'em and they generally let their best players walk. They're prepared to do so again with Matt Holliday, who is set to enter free agency two years from now.

Yet there's Krieger, calling Holliday unsung and unappreciated...by the fans. That's right. The fans. He says that fans are gun shy about committing to a player who might not be here in a few years--ok, that I agree with. But do the fans market players? Do the fans build ad campaigns to raise public awareness of the potentially great outfielder in town, campaigns aimed at least partially at stickin' a few more All-Star votes in for the guy? Management, it seems, has already given up on Holliday. So why should Rockies fans care about a guy that the brass has already signalled to be as good as gone?

Krieger seems to think that Rockies fans have no honorable duty but to grimly soldier into the ballyard day after sunny day to watch a team that wants to be the Twins or A's, but can't figure out how. I know he must be buddies with the owners, since every year he claims to make a dinner bet with Charlie Monfort based on how the squad does, but the time to urge patience is long past.

It may not be smart to tie up your entire payroll in one guy, but financial baseball isn't smart. It's the Wild Fucking West. Figure out a way to get it done and do it, or Holliday will become yet another stinging reminder of management's permanent cheapness and ineptitude. For Rockies fans, it must be like living in the old Soviet Union. You know it sucks, everyone you know knows that it sucks, but you know that it's going to suck forever, and why? Because status quo sucking works for the guys at the very top. It's a simple formula: the Monforts make money and don't like pumping it back into the product.

So, adios, Matt Holliday. Adios, future Rockies (Ian Stewart, maybe?) with the temerity to be good. Our modern-era Connie Macks don't need you.

10 comments:

blairjjohnson said...

Dude, I can't believe you just dissed Wings. I'll take the good ol' band on the run over Little Feat eight ways from Grunday.

Note: Grunday is the day I just invented; it will fall in between Sunday and Monday, making Sunday less hated for the working masses.

Cecil said...

Happy advance Grunday!

Dude, Wings over Little Feat?

I just don't know what to say about that. Except maybe that there's a fat man in the bathtub wearin' sailin' shoes, humping a Dixie chicken, and he wants nothing to do with Sir Paulie.

Unknown said...

Fuck the Wings. There is only one team poised for dynasty right now, and we ALL know who that is. It ain't the damn Wings, and it ain't the Blues. It sure as hell isn't Colarado. Get used to it boyz ... the new NHL has arrived, and you're goin' down.

'Nuf of that bullshit. I get so much goddamn NHL free agent news on a daily basis, that it actually makes me want to puke while I'm writing about it. Excuse me for a moment ...

Alright, much better.

In case any of you motherfuckers didn't notice, the US U-20 MNT (If you don't know the acronym, then you ain't no damn sports fan, and it's time to stop kidding yourself.) had a nice win against Brazil yesterday in the WORLD FUCKING CUP. Freddy Adu made a stunning move to beat two men in the corner and set up the second goal. I have NEVER seen a US player pull a move like that.

The team will be advancing to the next round of the tournament.

Open your eyes, boyz, the sports world is passin' ya by as you muse about your "glorius" MLB mid-season "news."

I pose the question once again, is Freddy Adu the answer to the US MNT World Cup blues? Y'all can tackle this. Soccer is just another game, man. Don't be so easily intimidated.

Cheers,

The Lone Reader

blairjjohnson said...

Listen, dude. Wings is a fucking Paul McCartney band from the 70s, and last time I checked, they a) had zero to do with hockey free agency, and b) were much more interesting than fucking soccer. The offer has been tabled for you to write for the HoG. You seemed stoked, and then fell off the face of the planet, only to come back talkin' shit that we aren't covering a fucking sport none of us care about.

You wanna write on this here blog about soccer? The offer still stands if you got the brass to step up to the plate, but if you're going to try and song and dance us into giving soccer notoriety, good fucking luck. It ain't happenin'. Not in mid-season baseball, not in Oc-fucking-tober.

So pony up, or shut your Canadian piehole.

Cheers.

Cecil said...

By the way, I answered your question a few posts back.

Unknown said...

Now that's some good fire.

I have no "Canadian" pie hole to speak of, but I wouldn't shut it if I did.

Props to the African nations for advancing to the round of 16.

Your soccer post will arrive before Wednesday. I will need some instruction on some of the minor blogging details, ya hoser.

Cheers,

The Lone Reader

P.S. Cecil, I'm diggin' through some old posts to find the answer. Any idea which one?

blairjjohnson said...

Answer is in BitD: 7-5-07

Unknown said...

Cecil,

I found your reply, and am not surprised. How quickly we lose faith in our phenoms. It's troubling, really.

I'll give you some further comment on Freddy in the future, but I must say your immediate dismissal will likely turn out to be a little premature. (See hat trick vs Poland U-20 and the remarkable move to setup goal number two in the victory over Brazil).

He may never be a Kaka or Ronaldo, but I suspect he'll make a larger impact than most naysayers predict.

As far as US players and training is concernend, I'm not sure that you're taking a look at the big picture. It sounds like the standard Euro soccer fan argument. The US is behind European development program, yes, but you may be ignoring some rather important developments and results in the past 5-10 years for the US program.

I'll give you some more detailed perspective this week.

I like the skepticism. I think that's the kind of attitude that drives progress ... excellent motivation, ya know.

Cheers,

The Lone Reader

Cecil said...

This is the thing--we were also supposed to see these developments 20 years ago. And then again 10 years ago. Now, we are supposedly going to see them in another 10?

I think the simplest answer--see: Razor, Occam's, and God does it wet my nerd-puss to write that--is that the notion of American competency at the world's game (of which I am a fan, if a relatively inert one most days) is a lot of smoke and mirrors.

It boils down to this: the best athletes in England, Brazil and Cameroon all play soccer. Other sports are second, third, maybe not even that close. Thus, we have Didier Drogba, the aforementioned Kaka, Wayne Rooney.

In the U.S., Rooney would be a red-assed infielder with speed and a .330 average. But he's English, so instead he gets paid twice as much to score goals. Take a guy like, I dunno, Allen Iverson--and leave aside your "practice?!?" jokes for a sec--and project him as a Frenchman. AI growing up kicking a ball instead of passing it? The guy would have made an all-world forward. But...you see my point.

If soccer ever does reach that kind of critical mass in this country, I'll be relatively surprised. Not totally surprised, but still.

Unknown said...

I see where you're comin' from. I've heard the angle a few times before. The ol', "There's just too many sports availabe and not enough athletes interested in soccer" angle. It was a reasonable one 15-20 years ago, but things change. I'll detail some of those changes and the philosophy behind them in a future post.

One thing to note in your arguement .. apples and oranges, brotha.

You can't just go around comparing athletic resources among countries without any sort of commnent on population, density, avg annual income, avg age, avg lifespan, heritage, colonial history, not to mention resources available to young athletes. These are all noteworthy and highly influential factors in a country and a culture. They shape priorities, values, morals, politics and budgets. Differences in such characterisitcs can lead to vast variation in opportunities among countries, and in the availabe means to choose them.

As I've said, I like the skepticism, and have been skeptical myself for year. We are however witnessing a pivotal transition. The revolution will come, and I'll tell y'all about it soon enough.

Cheers Cecil,

The Lone Reader