Woody Paige

Woody had an article in today’s Denver Post that shed some light on the ticket fiasco and he also opened our eyes to some unknown issues. I had given the Rockies a pass on blaming them directly for the online ticket mess, I had only said they poorly managed the communication aspect of debacle. However it looks like I was wrong, Woody had this to say: I asked a high-ranking major-league official if Major League Baseball had suggested the Rockies follow the pattern of other teams who had reached the World Series. “Of course we did. They didn’t listen.” I figured that MLB had given the Rockies the go ahead to do an all online sale of World Series tickets, that they wouldn’t go out and do this on their own. According to Woody’s contact that is exactly what happened, this just adds insult to an already terrible situation. Not only did they try to hang the ticketing company Paciolan Inc. out to dry, blaming it solely on them when MLB had already recommended that they not do it this way.

Woody also shed some light on some issues that happened in the press box, that reporters were not able to get online to file reports and that they were all supposed to share 2 working hard-lines. The Denver Post wrote an article on this very subject last week, how Qwest was working to get Coors Field all wired for this. Qwest clearly dropped the ball on this, but why wasn’t this planned for? We all know the Rockies miracle run to make the playoffs was unexpected, but there was plenty of time from when the Rockies won the play-in game to the first game of the World Series to get these kind of things worked out.


Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Sayonara Kaz

Baseball is what people would call competitive. You compete on the field, your compete for fans, you compete for players. Well most teams compete for players. Kaz Matsui isn’t the next coming, but he was solid this year. He hit .288, had 34 stolen bases, and had a solid year defensively, he is clearly going to get paid for those efforts.

However Dan O’Dowd had this to say on Kaz:

“We like Kaz and would love to have him back,” O’Dowd said. “And I know Kaz loves it in Denver, so we’ll see.”

O’Dowd said the Rockies will make Matsui a good offer, but he stressed they will not get into a bidding war.

I understand about overpaying, but you can’t just throw out a low ball offer, get out bid and then say you aren’t going to get into a bidding war. The Rockies do have some options at second base, they are going to try to move Ian Stewart over from 3rd base to second. Players have done this in the past with relative success, but usually they move from short to 3rd or vice versa. Not across the infield. I hope it works out for him because Kaz won’t be around next year.


Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Even the smaaat kids think so………..

Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College professor and sports business expert had this to say in the Boston Herald , “I don’t think the Monforts have done a wonderful job. Obviously someone in their scouting system did a good job.”


Monday, October 29, 2007

So much to say………….

This article by Jim Armstrong is chalked full of stuff to talk about. I have already hit on the best of 10 quote, so lets go to some of the other great one-liners.

When Jim asked him about the future Charlie had this to say:

“We’ve got Matt Holliday (eligible for free agency) in a couple years, but we’ll deal with that,” said Monfort. “I think Matt wants to be here now that he sees we can compete. You’re going to see this team for a long period of time.”

“Oh, we will,” he said, when asked if he anticipated making an offer this offseason. “Yeah, we will. We will, and hopefully it will be a good market contract. If he wants it … if not, then we go from there. We want Matt here. That’s the bottom line.”

This was actually solid fodder. Charlie is going to try to make Matt Holliday look like the bad guy. The Rockies will offer Holliday what they will call a “good market” contract, it will be this, somewhere in the range of $12 million a year, for most likely 4 years. What that “good market” contract actually is, is nothing more then a joke. Boras will laugh at Charlie and say they can get in the Matt Holliday sweepstakes in two years. And barring a major injury, Holliday will get a 6-7 year contract for $15+ million a year. What would you do if you were Holliday? You can’t blame him, Scott Boras is his agent and we all know his negotiating record. He just convinced a guy named a-rod to leave $72 million on the table. Holliday will have no choice but to decline the offer and the Rockies will try to vindicate themselves of their cheapskate tag by saying they offered him a competitive contract and he declined it.

On to the next Charlie quote:

Monfort said he didn’t envision problems keeping the Rockies’ core of young talent together. “It won’t be that difficult because the fan support is there,” he said.

So now you are setting the fans up as the scapegoat? So if the Rockies start off slow next year and the attendance dips, are you going to blame the lack of support in the team why you don’t invest in the talent, that you can’t afford it because we didn’t show up?

And maybe my personal favorite:

I just gave a little spiel (to the players),” he said. “I said, ‘You know, you brought the Rockies back to credibility.’ They’ve brought credibility back to the franchise, not that we ever lost it.

Come on, it is ok to admit it. I will admit it, this Rockies team did bring a little bit of credibility back to the Rockies and back to you Charlie. It is ok to admit it.


Monday, October 29, 2007

Did Charlie really say that?

So somebody sent me an email today that stated Charlie Monfort had said that if there was a best out of 10 series between the Rockies and the Red Sox, that the Rockies would win. At first I didn’t believe it, my first thought was no way, this person is joking around. Chalrie wouldn’t really say that. But I clearly had to google it, and to my shock it was actually true.

Charlie had this to say in the Denver Post:

“These guys did amazing things,” Monfort said. “I think this team is a better team than Boston. It would have been nice to have another two, three, four days. We’ll wake up tomorrow and go, ‘There’s no baseball game to go to,’ but what a deal they did. It’s an amazing thing they accomplished just to get here.”

They were amazing, all right. But better than the Red Sox?

“I think so,” said Monfort. “How did we win 21 out of 22? We got the breaks. And I think they got the breaks. Are they a better team? I don’t think so. You give us 10 games against them, we’ll beat them six.”

Really, really? Did he really say that? I understand passion and disappointment, but the Rockies were already are having enough problems showing that we aren’t a joke; first with the ticket sales fiasco and then the game 1 blowout. Now our owner has to go off and say in a best of 10 we would take them, after we already lost the first 4? He would probably back track and realize what he said was ridiculous, but an owner should exemplify class. Not be the epitome of a poor loser.


Monday, October 29, 2007

Rockies Rocktober Rocked

What is there to say? The Rockies didn’t only get beat down last night, they couldn’t have looked worse in the process. Hopefully a wheel on the Rockies bandwagon didn’t fall off last night. It will be interesting to see the fan reaction. On ESPN radio this morning they were trying to get Rockies fans reaction, and they were met with silence, they had only received 2 emails from Rockies fans. Whether we are embarrassed, shocked, or if the majority of the fans are truly bandwagon fans, is still up for debate.

This goes to a point that I have made before, the Rockies fans still don’t trust this team and this management. They like the players, but are so used to watching these Rockies teams be so miserable that they are hesitant to throw their hearts and soles into this team.

Hopefully the outcome tonight will be a little different.

Go ROX


Thursday, October 25, 2007

Al Lewis blurb

Al Lewis who writes a business column for the Denver Post had an interesting take on the ticket fiasco. Titled “Monforts = idiots”, he went on to say:

Finally we have another chance to showcase Denver as a world-class city, and the Colorado Rockies badly botch the basic function of delivering World Series tickets to the public.

What an embarrassing way to say, ‘yep, we’re still a cowtown.’

And to blame “an external and a malicious attack” without providing details seems irresponsible.

Seems pretty clear now that the Rockies won their way to the series in spite of their low-budget owners, Dick and Charlie Monfort.


Tuesday, October 23, 2007

And then there were none

29 hours after World Series tickets went on sale they officially sold out. It was a mess, there were many frustrated uses, countless stories, but in the end they were eventually all sold. I read multiple forums, browsed craigslist, and read the major Denver media outlets and there seems to be a lot of animosity towards the Rockies front office and towards the Monforts directly. This will surprise many, but I don’t actually hold the Moforts directly responsible. I have heard the argument many times today that this shows that the Monforts are in over their heads when it comes to running a Major League Franchise, while I won’t go that far, I do agree that argument is difficult do dismiss.

I know that tickets did sell out, so clearly people did get a chance to buy them. I however wasn’t one of them, I am not so much disappointed that I didn’t get them, I knew it was a long shot, but it was the way that I didn’t get them. My experience or feelings aren’t unique, I know of many people who watched their counter get down to 1, freeze, then redirect to a page cannot be displayed page. With no other option then to refresh and start the counter again, without a doubt putting them at the end of the queue over and over and over.

I hope the Rockies get to learn from their mistakes, only time will tell.


Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The debacle continues………

So you woke up this morning and one of your first thoughts was, Rockies tickets today, 10:00 AM. Well nearly 10 hours later would you ever believe the Rockies still haven’t sold out their World Series games? The great server crash of 2007, aptly being called “Purple Monday” isn’t the Monforts faults, nor is it anybody in the Rockies front office fault. The Rockies have clearly placed that blame on the MLB’s ticketing company, Paciolan (Pack-ee-o-lan). That is fine, the Rockies put their faith in a system and a company they rely on for ticket sales year in year out. The problem begins with that the Rockies didn’t do it like anybody else does it, other teams use phones, lines and lotteries, from what I can tell this is the first World Series all on-line sales only. Did the Rockies really need to change course and decide to be the first to go all on-line when a lottery system was in the original plan?

The second and possibly more troublesome problem has been the Rockies lack of updates to the community. I like everybody else logged on at 9:15ish, got put in the queue/waiting room and sat back and waited, and waited, and waited, surfed the web to see if tickets were sold out, and then waited some more. Nearly 2 1/2 hrs later we got word that maybe they actually hadn’t sold out tickets yet, that there had been a server problem (which NOBODY saw coming). The problems for the Rockies couldn’t get worse from here could it? Well yes it could, after we heard around 2 that on-line ticketing had been stopped and at 4 the Rockies would make an announcement, it was actually at 6:15 Rockies Spokesperson Jay Alves drew the short straw and had to go out and face the media to tell them, well to tell them absolutely nothing. The Rockies haven’t ever had to handle anything close to this kind of a mess before and unfortunately it showed. It didn’t matter if Jay Alves had nothing to tell us at 4:00 other then to tell us he would talk to us at the next scheduled press conference that is what he should have done. I wish somebody could put an actual dollar figure that the Denver Metro area lost in productivity today because of the lack of updates from the Rockies front office. And the Monforts try to continue to say we are a small market team, well we managed to crash your fool proof servers with 8.5 million hits and sat by our computers waiting for your updates all day. We aren’t buying what your are selling anymore.


Monday, October 22, 2007

Biggest debacle in Rockies history????????

Possibly the biggest debacle in Rockies history came today (10-22-07). It didn’t happen on the field or even in the front office, it happened on coloradorockies.com. For some reason the Rockies thought that it would be a good idea to have all on-line ticket sales. Has nobody in the Rockies front office played fantasy football before? Anybody who has ever played and tried to check out the live scoring option during the first game of the year is met by a server is busy screen. This is what happens when there are way to many people trying to log onto the servers. ESPN.com can’t figure it out year in and year out, why did the Rockies think they could? I don’t only love technology as much as the next guy, I LOVE TECHNOLOGY WAY MORE THEN THE NEXT GUY, but this was just a ridiculous idea. Never in a million years did I or anybody I talked to about this think this was possibly going to work. I mean seriously who else absolutely hates “The server at ev8.evenue.net is taking too long to respond?”.

I had many friends logged onto the site this morning, many logging in with multiple computers, people who know the internet, not windows 98 people, and not a single one of them got tickets. I would like to know if any Rockies fans actually got tickets. If you did let me know, and sell me one:)

And why didn’t they do a lottery, wouldn’t that have been part of the World Series fun? At least if your number didn’t get called you felt like you had a chance, and you wouldn’t have had to look at The server at ev8.evenue.net is taking too long to respond.


Monday, October 22, 2007