We are Fangirl. We are Legion.

 So. The Colorado Rockies failed to make the playoffs this year. There are a number of reasons for this, some of them pretty legitimate (injuries, more injuries, overworked pitchers), some of them not so much (hello, I'd like to report the Rockies offense missing in action... and what kind of defense was that at the end of the season?). The main problems were the abysmal home-road splits and the yo-yoing offense, both of which led to the abovementioned pitcher problem. Now, I'm not trying to make excuses for guys who were just bad, but if a pitcher pitches fairly effectively for most of the season, and then just suddenly falls off a cliff, I'd say fatigue could be the issue, especially when the relievers were seeing much more time than they probably should have, due to injuries and such, and Ubaldo was seen as the only person keeping us afloat in the first half of the season.

But. I could go on in this vein all day (no, really, I have no one to talk baseball with here, especially Rockies baseball), but that isn't what has me so pissed off this year. No, this year, the "fans" are getting my ire. Well, and the Giants with their stupid refusal to understand how a humidor works, but that reduces me to instant whargarbling, so we probably don't want that. I find it distinctly ironic that the Mythbusters tested the effects of said humidor IN San Francisco, on an affiliate field of the Giants', and they still don't get it. To summarize: The difference between a MLB baseball at 10% humidity, which, as all you Wyoming people know, is not only possible, but highly likely, and one at the standard 50% is fairly noticeable. To the point where you would definitely notice the difference. The remaining problem with how the ball moves is not with the humidity, douches, it's with the altitude. High altitude=thinner air. Thinner air=less break to the ball, and less resistance for the ball to travel through when it comes back off the bat. I should totes write in to the Mythbusters and have 'em test that one. It'd be cool TV if nothing else. Yay fluid dynamics! /:€

And yes. That is as brief as I am capable of getting about that particular problem. The nerdiness and the ranting get noticeably worse as I go on. On a non-ranty note, I could go on about fluid dynamics for hours by themselves, because it's so cool! Anyway.

To the "fans," which, as I should point out, are different from actual fans. It's okay to be angry with the team for not performing to their potential; I get angry, too. It's also completely all right to be seriously torqued off that they seemed to fall off a cliff in the last two weeks, especially since we all thought their offense had finally figured out how to do what they're supposed to. No, I'm talking about the people who said, in August, "I'm a fan, but this team has hit the crapper and the only way to go is down. Carlos Gonzalez is overrated, so is Ubaldo, and Tulo is never going to get it back." In AUGUST. The season ended Sunday, October 3. That's two months of people going, "SEE SEE? THEY SUCK" and then loudly proclaiming that they're never coming back. This goes deeper than baseball, I know. Most fandoms have this, especially sports fandoms which have had a recent influx of fans (2007 for the Rox) due to people realizing that they actually don't suck. It goes without saying that the fans that just needed to be introduced to the team and now love them on their own merit are perfectly fine by me. As I know at this moment all too well, it's kind of hard to hear about the western part of the country that isn't California the further you get from it. No, the people who keep jumping on and off the bandwagon (They jumped off again in 2008, back on in 2009) and declaring that they're much smarter than the rest of us and they are bigger fans, and what the fuck ever, those ones should all be beaten to death with purple foam fingers.

For the record, the Rockies did play beneath pre-season expectations. Pre-season expectations, however, don't factor in future injuries, or the Beast that was the Padres (they fell off a cliff, too) in the first five months of the season. The Giants as a team, much as it pains me to say this, deserved to take the NL West, because they played the best at the end of the season. Sometimes that's what it comes down to. It's how the Rockies got into the postseason in 2007 and 2009. But, for the first time in ten years, the Rockies had two seasons in a row with a winning record. We'll see what happens in 2011. If you're superstitious, and following the trend of the last four seasons, they should get to the postseason since it's an odd year, but superstitions don't actually win baseball games. They just give the fans something we feel like we can control. All we can really do is watch and cheer our team through thick and thin.

I will be cheering for the Reds this postseason, because it's more fun to watch if you have a team to cheer for, and I hate the Phillies. I'll also be cheering on the Braves, since it's Bobby Cox's last hurrah, and I still have some fondness for the Braves, and of course they're playing the Giants. But come March (who am I kidding; it'll be earlier than that), I will be back in this chair, looking for any scrap of Rockies news I can find.