The Rockies ad it up
The A.V. Club's weekly sports infection
Matt Holliday touches it
The Rockies may never make it back to the World Series. The events that led to the team’s first Fall Classic appearance in 2007 were just too incredible to happen again. Throw in the fact that the Rockies are owned by the knuckleheaded Monfort brothers, and it’s a recipe for continued mediocrity. I’ll take a chance and say the Rockies probably aren’t making the playoffs this year from what we’ve seen of its woeful pitching staff so far. It’s not exactly the players' fault: They’ve been saddled with bad management decisions year after year and made the most of it. But despite having the most inept and shamelessly greedy ownership in Major League Baseball, the Rockies are peerless in one category of the sport: TV commercials.
The Monforts sure as hell can’t make any decisions regarding the team based in any reality you and I reside in. And they surely won’t crack open their cobwebbed coin purse to pay someone worth a damn (or, God forbid, bring down ticket prices to help fill some of those empty seats at Coors Field). So how is it they wound up with such great on-air ads? The spots, produced for FOX Sports Rocky Mountain, are more than just clever—they bring out the best in a squad known more for the long ball than their acting chops. But hey, if you can’t win on the field you might as well win a Clio Award.
Here’s a current commercial that showcases the general humor and good nature of the Rockies players. It's a parody of what happens when a pitcher struggles on the mound—something we’ve seen a lot of lately. Oh, and there’s a creepy sexual reference delivered by straight-laced first baseman Todd Helton:
It’s a testament to whomever created these ads that they can take the typical stiff demeanor of most sports personalities and make them charming and funny. Granted, Rockies players are known to be down-to-earth. So while this isn’t miracle work, it’s still impressive considering what self-important assholes some athletes can be.
There's also the recent classic that references the controversy about how the team got into the playoffs in '07. The question remains whether Matt Holliday actually touched home plate to win the game. And while I do believe he did, as the ad drives into the ground—"touch it"—the commercial pokes some fun at the whole brouhaha, while showing us that Rockies manager Clint Hurdle has a future in acting gig waiting for him once he gets fired later this year:
Another one of my favorites Rockies commercials uses the underutilized goldmine of cigar humor to make light of the fact that Coors Field has an in-stadium humidor to keep the balls from flying to Arvada after every pitch:
Rockies ownership likes to take credit for the positive (stumbling into a World Series berth) while refusing to acknowledge the negative (season after season of soul-crushing failure). They’d be smart to take credit for these commercials, but the Monforts might not be that shrewd. When the Rockies hit their annual slide and fade from post-season contention later this year, you can blame the owners for their lack of vision. But since you won’t be watching the games anyway, just watch the commercials and take solace in the fact that at least, in one small respect, the Rockies truly do rock.
