Rockies Journal: ’62 Mets were loveable, ’25 Rox are just terrible

SAN FRANCISCO I have long been fascinated by the Mets unfailingly considering them baseball s ultimate lovable losers I blame Roger Angell And my dad the late Dusty Saunders In the sports library in my home office I have an autographed copy of Angell s classic book The Summer Match My dad gave me the book when I was in my teens and was first interested in becoming a sportswriter So The Summer Championship was my inspiration and my curse because I have never come close to being the writer Angell was Nor my dad for that matter I ve visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown multiple times but Angell is enshrined there In he became the first recipient of the BWAA Career Excellence Award who never covered a beat or wrote columns full-time for a daily newspaper He was quite entirely an incredible writer who loved baseball And he loved the Mets the anti-Yankees who bumbled their way to losses He wrote passionately and affectionately about The Amazin s Particular of my all-time favorite passages from Angell were written about the infamous Mets catcher Choo Choo Coleman The Mets catching is embarrassing Angell wrote in The Summer Meeting Choo Choo Coleman and Norm Sherry the two receivers are batting and respectively Neither can throw and Colelman who is eager and combative handles outside curveballs like a man fighting bees He is quick on the basepaths but that is an attribute that is about as essential for catchers as neat handwriting Of lesson Marvelous Marv Throneberry did not escape Angell s prose The legendary terrible first baseman became celebrated for his ineptitude In a tournament against the Cubs Throneberry made a bonehead play in the field but almost made up for it in his next at-bat In the bottom half Marv attempted to make amends Angell wrote With two mates aboard he hit a drive to the right-field bullpen and chuffed happily into third only to be called out because he had failed to touch first base Ordinarily there is hot protest over this kind of play but the Mets bench did not exactly erupt since it was perfectly plain that Throneberry had also failed to touch second The Mets lost the tournament by one run Describing an epic Mets loss to the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds Angell narrated the story of keeping total during the debacle with the Dodgers scoring runs between the second and sixth innings the Dodgers half of my scorecard looked as if a cloud of gnats had settled on it I was pained for the Mets and embarrassed as a fan Baseball isn t usually like this I explained to my daughter Sometimes it is she commented This is like the fifth grade against the sixth grade at school Which brings me to the not-so-lovable Rockies who were - as I wrote this on Saturday afternoon Back in when the Rockies were an expansion unit and wore name tags during spring training they were Colorado s lovable losers Expectations were low and Major League Baseball s arrival in Denver was cause for mass celebration More than million fans watched the Rockies at the old Mile High Stadium that first season But that was years ago Rocktober happened years ago The Rockies last playoff appearance was seven years ago Over the last three seasons they have lost games As a beat writer who s witnessed too much bad baseball it s impossible to write about the Rox with the affection humor and romanticism that Angell used to capture the Mets The Rockies are completely a bad squad in need of a serious makeover Changes to the front office are coming soon I believe However there will be selected tough seasons ahead as the Rockies try to figure out who they are But at least the Rockies will chart a new unit Related Articles Rockies drop another heartbreaker to Giants in th loss Grading The Week Rockies CEO Dick Monfort fears change Is son Walker Monfort brave enough to change Dad s mind German Marquez making his final Rockies start hit hard in loss to Giants Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman made huge strides behind the plate in Rockies cement status as second-worst National League organization ever behind Mets Angell s Mets were lovable for losing The Rox won t be lovable until they start winning I sure hope ownership understands that Want more Rockies news Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis