Hear that Bell Ring Farewell to the Ho(l)liday

Nothing really to add to 7's take below except for GAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaa.

Fucking Tatum Bell. Wasn't Wali Lundy available? Ron Dayne. Why not Ron Dayne? I've never written that sentence before. But for chrissakes, Ron Dayne. Anyone but Tatum.

I'll be surprised if he lasts very long. Noted non-rumormonger Mike Florio mentioned that he'd recently been working selling cell phones in a local mall. Good jumping Christ.

And how about that Rockies front office? Stealing, as I frequently do, ideas from afternoon sports talk radio, I'd just like to thank the caller on 104.3 FM this afternoon who brought up the following issue re: the recent trade of Matt Holliday to the Oakland A's for Huston Street, Brighton Boulevard and a tub of liniment to be named later: how long did the Monforts and their toadies promise the future, the future, the future? And what happened when the future actually arrived?


This goes beyond the trade itself, beyond the players and numbers. Really, no one honestly expected this team to keep Holliday; and, predictably, O'Dowd & The Meat Brothers hemmed and hawed and wasted time and made noise about being a small-market club and lowballed him. He in turn did exactly what a neutral observer would have expected an All-Star caliber client of Scott Boras to do, i.e. scoff and await the inevitable. Nothing too surprising about that particular sequence of events.

And that's the problem. It's just so stupid. Disheartening too, for sure, but really just stupid.

Whatever cold afterglow remained from the successes of seasons back is now definitely gone. The team's one bona fide superstar, gone. The biggest box office draw, the Oklahoma kid with the square jaw who charmed mullet-wearing ladies from Wray and LoDo floozies alike, gone to the second city by the bay, the birthplace of Too Short.

It most definitely did not have to turn out this way. If they were going to trade him they should have done so months ago, before they lost all leverage at the GM Meetings and ended up taking a bath. Or, just maybe, they could have taken a chance on a really good player, gotten creative and figured out a way to keep him. They could have held on to their most valuable piece, retained some goodwill among the Mile High roundball cognoscenti and probably even justified the inevitable increase in ticket prices. Instead, they moved him out at clearance prices andstabbed him in the back for good measure. Keeping him may not have been feasible in the long run. But giving him away was positively ridiculous.

And that's why the Rockies will never be a consistently successful franchise. They are perpetually afraid of the mistakes of the past--they only think on a track, rolling forward and backward. Helton is an ossified reminder of their past excesses, but this franchise is haunted just as much by the spectre of angry little Mike Hampton. Of broken Bill Swift. Of Colfax Whore-lovin' Denny Neagle. As long as the Monforts own the team, fans of the local nine will be experiencing scenes like this on a regular basis. Oh, along with losing. Lots and lots of losing.