Jim Saccomano

Every season starts with promise for all teams, and when it is over one stands as the champion, but sometimes there is an air of improbablilty to the accomplishment.

In no way does that imply that the champion is unworthy, just that the path taken to a title is different for every team, and sometimes the destination is reached in the strangest of ways.

Few paths ever have seemed as improbable as the one being traveled by the Colorado Rockies, who began a mid-September run that has seen them win 21 of 22 games in a streak that includes a playoff game against the San Diego Padres and postseason sweeps of the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks, the latter giving the franchise its first ever National League pennant.

The best and most recent comparison in Denver sports history is the Denver Broncos’ 1977 trip to Super Bowl XII.

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The baseball playoffs are upon us, and that puts me in mind of a book written by a Cincinnati Reds pitcher about four decades ago.

I would expect only the most obsessed of baseball fans (yes, my hand is raised) to have heard of The Long Season, by Jim Brosnan.  A really fine book, one of the finest insider books I have ever read, the more so because it was penned by an actual major league player during the season.

Brosnan also wrote Pennant Race, an equally fine addition to the literary world, but I again digress.

The point of mentioning The Long Season is in reference to the way everyone feels about the Broncos right now.

I have some degree of agreement with the concept that the sky is falling, but only to this degree:  when you raise your head, you can see the sky.

And that’s as far as my agreement goes.

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