Harold Squared

Then, in the midst of such flotsam, actual news broke in connection with the Rockies online ticket sale. Under ordinary circumstances, the team would have been blistered for its methodology, which gave wealthy Red Sox aficionados nationwide as much of a chance to get tickets as Coloradans. (The success of so many explains why such a boisterous cheer went up at Coors Field when the Rockies recorded their final out in game four.) But matters were made infinitely worse when the system crashed, frustrating tens of thousands.

Rockies spokesman Jay Alves handled this kerfuffle with the sort of artlessness and arrogance that's fueled the Rockies' typically shaky press relations in the past — but the necessity of covering the actual competition prevented subsequent critiques from gaining much traction. Now that the games are over, reporters should be encouraged to look closely at the Rockies' dubious assertion that the ticket system went down due to a malicious hacker.

The Rocky and the Post have the resources to mount such an inquiry, since they took advantage of the Series to make a killing via special sections described in a Rocky memo as the "Sports Authority wrap" (named in honor of the retailer that provided primary backing). These supplements were labeled "collector's editions," and they could well have become treasured keepsakes had the Series evolved in a way anyone in these parts wanted to remember.

Too bad the dailies couldn't get the papers containing all these World Series extras to subscribers in a timely manner. Thanks to the complications of running off more color pages than ever before, coupled with a new agreement to print the Boulder Daily Camera, the dailies' expensive new press ground more slowly than ever. Hence, deliveries on October 24, the first day of the Series, were horrendously late citywide, and delays of varying lengths and severity continued for days, necessitating not one, but two published apologies from Rocky editor/publisher/president John Temple.

Predictably, Temple didn't say sorry for milking the Series for every last cent of revenue possible. On October 30, the day after the Rockies cleaned out their lockers, the dailies each published yet another World Series section — a cheery compendium that shrugged off the losses in favor of wait-'til-next-year sunniness. The same edition also featured a second sports-related special section, this one keyed to the impending start of the 2007-2008 Denver Nuggets season. At times like this, it seems that if the dailies were stripped of sports coverage, they'd be thin enough to fit into a business envelope.

Unlike the Rocky and the Post, Fox, which broadcast the Series games, treated the Colorado ballers like members of the supporting cast, not co-stars. Because broadcasters Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, Ken Rosenthal and Chris Meyers were much more familiar with (and more interested in) the Red Sox, their mentions of the Rockies tended toward tokenism. Of course, the Rockies brought much of this inequity upon themselves with their impression of the Not Ready for Prime-Time Players. But that's no excuse for the game-three moment when a long Matt Holliday fly-out that might have given his team new life was punctuated with John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High." What — were fans supposed to feel high because he came up short of a homer? Or should they have gotten high in an attempt to dull the pain?

Either way, the Rockies' swift exit from the Series meant that reality returned sooner than most locals expected, and the transition was bumpy. Right after the aforementioned Channel 31 report about beer, for instance, anchor Weaver said, "In other news..." and began reading a story about a gas-station robbery.

It was a sure sign that the dream was over, at least for now — and even the media had to wake up.