Month: October 2007

How the Rockies pissed away good will

Jeromey Balderrama

At the Broncos game last night they had one of those "Mascot v. kids" competitions to kill the minutes of half-time.  They went through and introduced various mascots from the NFL and around the Denver area.  When they announced Dinger from the Rockies, the crowd at Mile High went nuts.  Bethany made a comment that the excitement for a mascot shows you how crazy Denver is about the Rockies.  The electricity buzzing up here in Colorado has been amazing over the last week, and the Rockies stockpiled so much good will that they could do no wrong.  Unfortunately their management managed to screw everything up with this World Series ticket debacle.

I don’t really blame the Rockies for having web site troubles.  I’m all-too familiar with capacity issues with web applications.  The writing was on the wall and I was expecting the ticket site to get slammed.  Their actions leading up to the situation are questionable and how they’ve reacted to it has been inexcusable.

First and foremost: what do you expect when you go with a small company to save you money, you’re going to get what you pay for.  When the Rockies announced they were taking sales exclusively on-line, it was easy to see this coming.  I hate Ticketcrapster, and they are definitely the Evil Empire with their fees, but I give them this: they’ve never had capacity issues in recent history.  I’m not familiar with Paciolan, and although they say they sell tickets to 200 markets they obviously dropped the ball on World Series Ticket forecasting.  I’m not familiar with their infrastructure, but from what I could tell they didn’t have nearly the capacity to handle the hits they received.  With good planning it should have been easy for them to increase capacity ahead of time, but someone screwed up.  Now they have a black eye and have probably lost their MLB contracts.

Which leads me to how they’ve reacted…  As the day moved on, the latest excuse has been that we were a victim of malicious attack.  Can anyone hear that sound?  It’s the "Baaaa" of a SCAPEGOAT.  While a DOS attack is always possible, this wasn’t the situation.  Everyone was looking to buy World Series tickets and were pointing every computer and browser they own right at the site.  The symptoms may be the same as DOS – you’re site’s down – but this is far from an attack.  I won’t subscribe to the notion that this was some pissed Bo-Sox, Diamondback or Padre fan pissed at the Rockies.  Give me a break, this reeks of a capacity issue.

Rockies management isn’t responsible for the technological issues, but they were definitely caught with their pants down and don’t have an excuse for their behavior during and after the incident.  How could you not go into this scenario without "Plan B"?  It’s called risk-management – web site down and the best solution they had was to hide in their Coors Field compound.  When they finally suspended ordering they offered no details or no ETA for a fix.  They simply stated they hoped to be back soon.  People had no choice but to continue to fire their browsers at the site.

We finally get word that Rockies management will emerge and announce their next steps at 4pm.  4pm turned into 5pm, then 5pm turned into 6pm.  They finally manage to come out right before 6:30 and simply say "We’re sorry, we have nothing and we don’t know when we’ll be up."  Then they have the gall to get defensive with the media, as if they couldn’t understand why people would be upset with a 2-sentence update.

Finally they put their heads together and came up with their master plan: do the same thing on Tuesday.  Good thing they made up – I mean – discovered the "malicious attack" excuse and are assuring everyone that Tuesday will be ok.  Oh and that Plan B?  Still missing…  Tuesday’s going to be interesting to say the least.

I don’t hold the Rockies team & players responsible (and still stand by my apology), but I do have to admit that I’ve lost a little bit of excitement.  Rockies management has put a bitter taste in my mouth with this whole situation.  The Rockies players have done the unbelievable – won 21 of 22 game to get into the World Series – while their management has done the unthinkable: piss away all of the good will through their incompetence.

Technorati Tags: Rockies , World Series , Ticket Debacle

And the Rockies go to the World Series!

Jeromey Balderrama

Simply Unbelievable!  Not only did they get there, but they got through the National League undefeated, sweeping with the Phillies and Diamondbacks!  It was a bit of poetic justice that our winning out came from Eric Byrnes, who went off after game 2 about how the Rockies were outplayed and just lucky.  I have to admit I smiled when he laid on the ground after sliding to first, realizing that they had just been swept.

As Tom Petty says, "the waiting is the hardest part".  Now we have to sit back for 8 more days until the World Series kicks off.  It doesn’t matter if the Indians/BoSox series is settled in 5 games they’re still going to start.  Nothing will be more classic than watching a World Series in Colorado with snow falling on the ground.  Thanks to the MLB for their rigid scheduling.  And while we’re thanking MLB for bonehead moves, thanks for scheduling the NLCS so late that I’m up until midnight when I have an early morning at work ahead of me.

Confessions of a Colorado Sports Fan

Jeromey Balderrama

Dear Colorado Rockies,

I profoundly apologize for every/any negative comments I’ve made about you, and respectfully request admission to your bandwagon. While I have attended over 35 games since your inaugural season, I have not been the greatest fan.  Most of the time I went to those games because I didn’t have much else to do and tickets were extremely cheap.  However, that is no more.  You have ignited the state of Colorado with hope and excitement, and turned skeptics into believers (well almost all skeptics, except the East-Coast-biased national sports media that believe the Phillies lost the series and can’t fathom that large-market teams can’t get punched in the mouth by smaller market teams).  You have made a football-crazed city passionate about baseball and have given us hope – especially when hope is at an all-time low for another Denver team (dare I say 41-3 anyone?).

I humbly beg your forgiveness for all of the doubt and mocking over the years, and pledge myself to being a Colorado Rockies fan – not just because you represent the state I was born, raised & reside – but because are an amazing team worthy of cheer.

Go Rockies,

Romey

PS – If you do have any extra karma or magic lying around, please feel free to share it with the Orange & Blue

PPS – I still loathe Dinger won’t apologize for my feelings on him.  Regardless of how successful the Rockies become, Dinger is the crappiest mascot in baseball (and likely all of sports) and I still have no idea how a Barney wannabe has any correlation to the Colorado Rockies.

Plummer had fans? Who would have known?!?

Jeromey Balderrama

Jake PLummer With all of the Travis Henry commotion and the big game coming up, I’ve been watching the blogosphere for Broncos stories.  I stumbled across one of the most interesting blogs that I’ve seen in a while – Let Plummer Play.  Believe it or not, there are people out there that believe that Plummer shouldn’t have been benched after his deplorable performance last season.  They have some kind of man-crush on Jake Plummer, and have Jay Cutler on their dartboard, taking shot after shot at him.  They’re still bitter at Shanahan for benching Plummer and his ultimate retirement rather than going to play in Tampa Bay.  I’m not sure if the authors are even Broncos fans but simply Jake Plummer fans.

Look, Plummer is what he is.  He’s an athletic quarterback who brought the Broncos a lot of success in the first few years, but wasn’t able to take them over the playoff hump.  Plummer had amazing ability to scramble and make some pretty impressive plays.  At the same time, there were quite a few games that Plummer cost the team with stupid mistakes and turn-overs at the worst possible times.  Plummer apologists are quick to defend the Broncos were 39-15 under him, but I personally believe that the Broncos won some of those games despite bad play by Plummer.  Plummer wasn’t John Elway and anyone outside of Denver will always criticize fans for unfairly comparing the current QB to Elway.  There’s validity to that, but there’s more to it than just not being Elway.  For the longest time the Broncos were known as a 4th Quarter team: don’t count them out just yet if they’ve fallen behind – because they’ll rally in the 4th quarter and at least make it interesting.  Under Plummer, that switched 180 degrees: the Broncos always started strong out the gate, then always fizzled in the second half.  I think it’s fair to attribute some of that to Plummer.

Here’s what Cutler offers: he’s got a strong arm that darts the ball right in where it needs to go, he has the ability to throw the long ball and stretch the field, and most importantly he doesn’t screw up our 4th quarter chances.  All QB’s will have bad plays here and there (i.e. the Colts game), but ultimately Cutler hasn’t put us in a position to lose these games.  I remember watching the first game that Cutler started against Seattle on Sunday Night Football.  The Broncos ultimately lost that close game, but I remember Cutler being able to storm down the field to tie the game.  It was the defense in that game that ultimately let the Seahawks do the same and score the winning field goal.  Cutler got us the score when we needed it, and we weren’t able to get that from Plummer before he got benched.

Great reflection on Travis Henry

Jeromey Balderrama

Check out what Mile High Report – the best Broncos blog that I’ve found – has to say about Travis Henry and his recent troubles.

Now this, which happens at a time when the Broncos are struggling, questions about the defense abound, and the team has lost two straight.  Henry was a bright spot, leading the league in rushing through 4 weeks, a seemingly bringing some consistency back to the running game.  That is all gone now, and the Broncos should turn the page and close the book.  It was questionable that Henry would play this weekend due to injury and the Broncos should remove any doubt.  Send Henry home to deal with whatever it is he needs to deal with and let this team, which has had to deal with so much adversity this year, move on with the 52 other guys that DO want to play football, that DO want to turn the season around, that DO care about themselves and each other.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Go home Henry, we don’t need you here.  I almost hope that you play at the game on Sunday so we can "boo" you off the field.  This is why I laugh when people say that pot isn’t addictive and doesn’t affect you.  I don’t know – something about someone willing to throw away over $34 million dollars for playing a kid’s game, just so he can light up – I think that’s a problem.