Jock Itch A Rockies funk you don’t want to dance to

The Rockies are in a funk. Don’t let a smattering of wins against weak teams fool you: The Rockies are in a James Brown Live At The Apollo-type of funk. They’ve won a few games recently and finally put some runs up, but judging from this season so far, it won’t last. There’s no reason to expect the Rockies to put up a fight, let alone make the postseason, because once a funk this deep gets into you, it’s hard to shake.

The month of May was just a tragic display of baseball for the Rox, and June didn’t start much better. But the Rockies luckily drew the lowly San Diego Padres and got well in all of their flagging categories. And they needed to. Had the team lost two of three games to San Diego, they would have dropped to dead last in the talent-challenged NL West. Then, what started as a promising series against the Dodgers reverted back to the frustrating backslide we’ve come to know.

This is not where you want the team to sit after being touted as a World Series favorite at the start of the season. No one can explain why the Rockies careened off the bridge after laying rubber out of the gate in April. It was apparently all a mirage, because once that initial burst was spent and the rest of MLB caught its breath, other teams didn’t just pass the Rockies, they pole vaulted over them as the Rox played like the clueless teams of old. When they hit, the pitching stunk. When they got a decent performance on the mound, the offense was like a drunken softball team of weekend warriors, swinging for the fences, but barely hitting the ball past their beer guts.

Poor Ubaldo Jimenez started out sloppy and when he did get his act together, his teammates couldn’t cobble together even a run or two to help out. He’s now a shell of himself, with one win and everyone, including the Rockies faithful, questioning whether his dynamic season from just a year ago was a gigantic fluke. All signs are now pointing to a spectacular disappointment.

The Rockies are also wasting a phenomenal year from Todd Helton. Most wrote the Toddfather off just a year ago, and he did look like he might be at the end of the line. Pitchers were walking batters to get to Helton, and it was starting to become sad. But Helton hung in there, got back his deadly swing, and has been one of the only reasons the Rockies haven’t hit last place yet. The old first baseman may have another season left in him, but this year has been a waste of his talents. The window for sending Helton off in style is closing fast, shut by lackluster effort from his teammates.

And you really don’t need to eat Taco Bell, but it sure is nice to know that after the Rockies score seven runs, you can take advantage of the Rockies Taco Special and cram four mystery-meat-stuffed tortilla shells in your gullet for the low price of $2. Just knowing that is available is comforting, but the Rockies haven’t even been delivering in that area. Fans have only been able to feed their fever nine times in the last month and a half. Not only does that make tacos unreasonably expensive, but it means the Rockies haven’t been scoring much lately. Changing the deal to if the Rockies don’t allow seven runs in a game may work better for all of us.

James Brown did this move where he’d get so engrossed in his performance that he’d crash to the ground in a seemingly broken heap. His handlers would rush out and put a cape (a cape!) over him and help him off the stage. The Godfather of Soul would limp off like he could take no more only to toss off the cape and return to getting down with a renewed vigor. The Rockies had their cape on in May, and may have tossed it off in the last week, but they’re putting it on again, and you can expect them to limp off to the sounds of missed opportunities and unfulfilled expectations very soon. And that’s not the kind of funk Rockies fans want to dance to.