Could you imagine if the Yankees, the Red Sox, or even my Mets were to ever go on a mad rampage into the World Series the way the Rockies just did? How many major sports writers would be waxing poetic using headlines like, The Best Ever? and Team of Destiny and Runaway Train: Next Stop... Baseball Immortality? They'd be falling over each other for the chance to sound off with their opinions on where the '07 Rockies rank with the best teams of all time.  I imagine we'd see words like Unbeatable and Unstoppable plastered all over every sports section, sports website, and sports magazine that matters.

But instead we have one admittedly wonderful article by Jayson Stark buried on ESPN.com click here to read it along with the standard, obligatory coverage from every other national sports news organization in America. I would imagine that any member of the national media who still loves sports, still likes the see the underdog win once in a while, still has red blood in his veins and a beating heart, and most importantly, was lucky enough to actually be in Colorado for the past week or so covering this story MUST have been justifiably swept up in the avalanche of good emotions this team has invoked. It appears Jayson Stark did. I have as well. I just can't help but imagine how the media attention (and casual sports fan's attention) might be different if this was a team from one of the traditional big baseball markets.

But wait? Those of us who love this story so much probably wouldn't love it so much if it actually was one of "those" teams (unless it was YOUR team in which case you'd love it even more). It wouldn't be the same story though. Sure, we'd maybe start believing all the hype about best team ever and what a juggernaut but it wouldn't be like this. It couldn't be like this. It wouldn't be this unexpected, this improbable, or this flat-out incredible. How could it be when the payroll is 135 million and the team was villified almost all regualr season long as the floundered in the middle of the pack and were even 9 games under .500 at one point? With big payrolls come big expectations and then the only real surprise comes from NOT winning. Who doesn't know every single twist and turn surrounding Joe Torre's employment status? How many of us have never even heard of Clint Hurdle?

They've now won 21 of 22 games, beginning about a month ago and extending right through the NLCS. Simply amazing. I don't care how bad the National League was this year. They're not exactly a tree falling in the woods but based on the TV ratings it's damn close. Worst ever in fact. At least in a few days, once the ALCS is finally decided, we'll all start getting our fill of the 2007 Colorado Rockies story... once MLB has no choice but to promote the hell out of the last 2 teams still standing. If it's Cleveland I'm not so sure anybody outside of those 2 markets are really gonna care anyway, no matter how much that phony, talent-less piece of #### Dane Cook tells us we're supposed to.

Let's just hope the AL representative doesn't make the Rockies look like a quadruple-A team once the Fall Classic gets under way. That could so easily happen too, as we all know. But that would just be bad for baseball, bad for sports, and bad for our collective belief in a higher power when you come right down to it. Ok, maybe I went too far, but it'd be bad.

And yet without the Mets almost equally historic late-season collapse none of this might have happened. In retrospect I'm almost happy the Mets fell out of it and didn't get in the way of how this thing pla.......... ok, I just spit out the Rocky Mountain Kool-Aid, #### that... we should all be talking about whether or not Pedro should pitch Game 1, and watching SportsCenter footage of Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner as we get ready for an HGH-fueled World Series feast with all the fixins.

But in the absence of that guilty pleasure... GO ROCKIES !!!

I can practice irresponsible journalism in this spot, right? I mean, I am not a credible sports journalist (Hell, I'm not even a sports journalist)!

Kenny Rogers is clearly on something. This much I know. He is emoting something akin to an Ecstasy trip. I have a theory. You can call it a conspiracy theory but I trust my instincts when it comes to a situation where something is amiss, and this Rogers situation has all the signs.

I won't even address the pine tar he had on his pitching hand in the first inning. I'm not sure we've heard the last of this, and LaRussa and Selig probably spoke before Fox went to your local news.

Look at his pupils. Listen to his voice in the post-game. Watch him in the dugout during the game. This guy is not behaving normally. All this curious behavior (and even more curious pitching performance) combined with his already shaky reputation equals something apparently yet to be exposed.

My theory is that Kenny Rogers once, a long time ago, had the drug ecstasy in his system during one of his regular season starts, either due to circumstance or as part of experiment. I believe he pitched lights out that night (or day). I think at some point he tried to duplicate that experiment in order to validate his findings. I think he did. I think this oddity became well established over the course of his long career (apparently after his stint with the Mets much to my dismay). You can't take this stuff too often though, so he used it sparingly. He's now using it to shock the league in the twilight of his career.

I guess I will touch on the pine tar on his hand after all (this is obviously much less debatable)....

This blatant and ballsy decision to use a "foreign substance" in a game of this magnitude shocked the umpires so much that they were not able to deal with it with equal bravado. They did not have the confidence to make a bold decision. They were probably afraid to do something as severe as ejecting a starting pitcher in the first inning of a World Series Game. To quote Carmella Soprano, "sometimes more is lost from indecision than wrong decision." The umpire basically made no decision, simply allowing Rogers to merely wash his hands between innings and continue in the game. Rogers had the balls to employ a mid - July pitcher's trick in an October game on the biggest stage and I believe this actually shocked the officiating crew into inaction.

Kenny says it was a "clump of dirt" on his hand, and Major League Baseball is now scrambling to cover this up and cover their collective ####. Steve Palermo (MLB Umpire Supervisor) has been sent up to the plate, in an impromptu press conference, to deal with this situation before the media heads into the of####ay with all this speculative blood in the water. This is pathetic. This guy has obviously been asked to run interference here in MLB's feeble attempt to cover up the tracks, with the media hot on the trail of this story.

So just to summarize what we're being told here....

Kenny noticed a clump of dirt on his hand after the first inning and he wiped it off. Steve Palermo just told us that the umpire was actually the one who told Rogers to wipe off his hand (maybe Palermo should have sat down with Rogers before this press conference so they could get their stories straight). What kind of dirt looks like sticky gummy iodine #### goo anyway? Kenny should now be cursing the advent of HDTV more than Gregg Popovich does? You are gripping a ball 15 or so times attempting to throw pitches with pinpoint accuracy and you don't notice that half of the hand you are throwing with is covered with a "clump of dirt???" The only way you don't notice, and then promptly remove, a foreign substance on your throwing hand is if that "substance" is not a hindrance at all but rather a vital component of what you're trying to accomplish on the mound. 23 scoreless post-season innings all thanks to pine tar, ecstacy, greenies, HGH, steroids, etc... This just wreaks of scandal.

And this just in to ESPN... Shawn Merriman of the San Diego Chargers has been notified that he will be suspended 4 games for violating the league's steroid policy. PERFECT... right on the heels of a still unfolding scandal in professional sports we have an already unfolded and ready for use scandal, albeit a boring one. Same old story. But wait... in addition the the steroids in his system they also found some marshmallow fluff spread on his game jersey. I love that stuff... with some chunky peanut butter on some white bread. YUMMM!

Anyway, I gotta stop now, but I just wanted to say....

Why would the umpire tell Kenny to go wash his hands? Shouldn't he have said, "don't you dare wash your hands until we are able to determine what exactly this substance is."

Does anybody know what all those place kickers were on today in the NFL? Some BIG kicks by some little guys.  Can we please look into this, because I lost a lot of money on these kicks, and I would like some closure on something more than just my off-shore account.