(Choo Freeman, Matt Holiday, Jamiy Carroll and Todd Helton show their disappointment upon viewing the long-awaited “Frantix Story” DVD)
Well, at least I know I’m not hearing things. The Colorado Rockies, according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, have an agenda of some sort or another.
No copies of Playboy or Penthouse are in the clubhouse of baseball’s Colorado Rockies. There’s not even a Maxim. The only reading materials are daily newspapers, sports and car magazines and the Bible.
Music filled with obscenities, wildly popular with youth today and in many other clubhouses, is not played. A player will curse occasionally but usually in hushed tones. Quotes from Scripture are posted in the weight room. Chapel service is packed on Sundays. Prayer and fellowship groups each Tuesday are well-attended. It’s not unusual for the front office executives to pray together.
On the field, the Rockies are trying to make the playoffs for the first time in 11 seasons and only the second time in their 14-year history. Behind the scenes, they quietly have become an organization guided by Christianity ” open to other religious beliefs but embracing a Christian-based code of conduct they believe will bring them focus and success.
From ownership on down, it’s an approach the Rockies are proud of ” and something they are wary about publicizing. “We’re nervous, to be honest with you,” Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd says. “It’s the first time we ever talked about these issues publicly. The last thing we want to do is offend anyone because of our beliefs.”
What could possibly be offensive about describing your workforce as “all good Christians?” Unless, of course, you’re pretty confident that you’re doing business in a part of the world where non-Christians don’t exist.
“It makes sense because of the way they conduct themselves. You don’t see the showboating and the trash talking. … They look like a team and act like a team.”
After Jesus turned the water into wine, I heard he made a muscle and pointed at it in front of the hostile road crowd.
My God, O’Dowd must be terrified at the backlash they’ll get from hotbeds of anti-Christian thought like Colorado Springs and greater Denver.
True or false — and far be it from me to call Clint Barmes on faking the religious funk — you have to admit it’s a heck of a marketing plan. For the Rockies, that is. For the Red Sox, who probably have just as many born agains on their team — including at least a third of their pitching staff (Schilling, Clement, Wakefield, Timlin) — but play in a community a bit less keen on evangelicism, it might not make as much sense. Say this much for the Coors’: they’ll use TWEEEEYUNNNNZ when necessary, but they know when to get their holy roll on, too.
They also make beer that tastes like water someone farted into, so there’s that, as well.
mushnick’s (wet) dream team.
in all fairness, I think Phil’s a) down with the Tribe and b) for all his considerable faults and attempts to inflict his own moral standards on the rest of all, I don’t think G-d or “christian thought” plays any part in that.