Colorado Rockies’ hot streak pushes team into 1st World Series

DENVER – It is October in Colorado. The Broncos are playing. Snow showers are in the forecast. The leaves are turning red, yellow and brown.\nThe dominant color in the Mile High City these days, though, is purple.\nThe Rockies, crazy as it sounds, are in the World Series.\nSad-sack losers almost all their 15 seasons of existence, the Rockies have won 21 of 22 games and seven in a row in the playoffs.\n“I didn’t see this happening,” Colorado fan Jeff Zebrowksi said before the Rockies defeated Arizona on Monday night to win the National League pennant and make it to baseball’s biggest stage. “Maybe two or three years from now, but not now. We’re too young as a team.”\nAs fantastic and unlikely as it may seem to that handful of long-suffering season-ticket holders who watched their team veer from early success to unbecoming circus act to essentially irrelevant, it carries an even more poignant meaning in a city that cruelly flirted with baseball for decades, only to have its heart broken again and again.\nToday, the thought of the one-time purveyors of the unwatchable, four-hour, 12-11 slugfest in the World Series sounds every bit as outlandish and tantalizing as the idea 30 years ago that Major League Baseball would someday land in Denver. \nBut Denver finally did get its team. And now the city stands one step from the next baseball milestone in what has been an emotional ride for any native who also happens to be a sports fan.\nYes, Denver has always been a football town – a city that attached itself to the Broncos and married much of its self-esteem and hope to heroes wearing orange and blue.\nBut in between those football-filled autumns, there had to be something to do to pass the time. \nBaseball was always a dream that seemed close, yet so far away for Denver. Charley Finley nearly sold his Oakland Athletics to Colorado businessman Marvin Davis, who would have moved them to the Mile High City in the early ‘80s. A few times, the headlines screamed that it was all but a done deal. It never happened.\nMore than a decade later, Colorado finally got its own team.\nThey were embraced, first playing in front of sellout crowds at Mile High, where Eric Young hit a homer in the very first Rockies home at-bat – a moment that stood, until now, as arguably the most memorable in franchise history.\nIn 1995, they moved to Coors Field, the retro-style ballpark that sparked the revival of the LoDo neighborhood in downtown Denver and became the town’s favorite meeting place during Colorado’s cool summer nights.\nA playoff appearance that year raised hopes. It didn’t happen, and the rough years began.\n“We had season tickets for a long time,” said Karen Brennan of Castle Rock, an 85-mile round trip from the stadium. “We went for the first five years. The progress of the team and having to drive made us give up the season tickets.”\nBut Brennan is back now, and so are many fans who once left the Rockies behind. The turnstiles are rocking again, and people come for the baseball. Not to watch the Cubs or the Yankees or Barry Bonds or some other visitor. To watch the Rockies.\nThe World Series is coming to Denver.