Did you hear the one about the Rockies? Lordy, is Bob Meddles sick and tired of being baseball’s punchline. Which is funny, given how the guy’s been a stalwart of Denver’s stand-up comic scene for almost two decades running.
“I had rotator cuff surgery. I was on (OxyContin) and at the end I was still feeling a lot of pain,” Meddles told me when I asked for his best printable Rockies joke.
“I talked to the doctor. The doctor said, ‘That stuff is highly addictive.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m also a Rockies fan.’ And he hooked me up for the rest of the season.”
Ba-dum ching!
Say this for the Rox on Coors Opening Day: They’ll drive you. To drink. To golf. To chores. To church. To Netflix. To gardens that need tending. To lawns that need mowing. To leaves that need raking.
They lifted the lid on 2024 by giving up 14 runs at Arizona — in one inning. The most for any team in modern MLB history on an Opening Day. They lost 16-1.
A 1-6 start is the Rockies’ worst-ever record after seven games to open a season, on the heels of a summer in which they dropped a franchise-record 103 games.
It’s not just that it’s happening all over again. It’s how. Nolan Jones, one of the bright lights of a lost 2023, has already committed four errors. The staff ERA after one road trip sits at 8.37, almost two runs higher per game than the next team on the list (Giants’ ERA checked in at 6.52 as of Thursday).
No club in The Show has given up more runs than Colorado. No team in Major League Baseball had a worse run differential (negative-34) as of Thursday afternoon. In fact, that last number is the worst by a National League team since 1974, when the Padres were at a negative-42 clip after seven games.
That team went on to lose 102 games. While 2024’s sample size is still insanely small, Fangraphs.com says these Rox are on track to do the same. PECOTA’s projections think Colorado will lose 105; TeamRankings.com’s models say 106 defeats, the most for a modern NL club since the Astros in 2011.
“Some teams use an opener rather than a starter. The Rockies use what I call a concierge, someone to make the opposing team feel welcome,” Meddles continued “Welcome to Coors Field. If there is anything we can do to make your stay better, please let us know. Oh. You’d like to plate five runs in the first inning? Happy to oblige.”
***
Dick Monfort’s our least favorite jerk,
His duty he’s been known to shirk.
He says that the West
is too pricey to best
But the Rays seem to make it all work.
They drove Meddles to limericks.
Nobody ever built a statue for a critic, but Bob’s penned at least a dozen poems in honor of Rockies CEO Dick Monfort. A handful are even printable in a family newspaper.
“Somebody asked me, ‘Do you think you could do a better job than Dick Monfort?’” Meddles chuckled. “Dude, a lobotomized monkey on a three-day (bender) could make better choices.”
He’s lived and died with the Rox for decades. The deaths are getting old.
Life on the comedy circuit, for most, has all the glamor of a Nebraska truck stop. It’s toiling on the road, working nights, weird hours. Bit like a ballplayer, in that sense.
For company and therapy, Meddles bought the MLB broadcast package for years. One season, he logged more than 7,000 miles doing shows and made a point to catch every Rockies game, unless he was on stage at the time.
He didn’t tune in to one last year.
“I’ve watched the Cardinals a little bit,” Meddles said.
Ah, yes. Nolan.
Bob once wrote a 56-line poem in honor of Nolan Arenado, called “Nolan At The Bat,” in the spirit of Ernest Thayer’s glorious “Casey at the Bat.” He even got “Ty Blach” to rhyme with “knock,” which is almost the literary equivalent of a backhanded, diving stab.
“It just makes me so sad that (Monfort) is getting away with this,” Meddles said. “He ruined baseball for me.”
***
Dick Monfort says “we’ll win eventually,”
But he really couldn’t care less, essentially
While the titles aren’t there
He built McGregor Square
His bank account grows exponentially.
They drove Adam Cayton-Holland to apathy.
“There is no laughter, there is no crying. There is only ennui. Indifference. I’ve stopped caring. You have to,” the Denver comic and star of TruTV’s “Those Who Can’t” wrote me recently.
“To pin your hopes on an organization that honestly seems to not care whether they win or lose — remember Monfort’s statement about how he thinks they’ll be a .500 baseball team (in 2023)? I mean what kind of statement is that from an owner? How is that acceptable? What does that tell your fan base?
“There’s no motivation to put a good team on the field, because people are going to show up regardless,” Cayton-Holland said. “But my message to the Rox is this: Yeah, you can open the gates and get 30,000 in there. But you’d make more money if that was 50,000. Remember Rocktober? It could be like that all season if you would give us a halfway decent product. Denver is a killer sports town. You’re welcome to join the party anytime. Please, for the love of God, just try.”
***
For three decades the drought has gone on
Lots of darkness, but simply no dawn
With Dick at the tiller
You’ll need some painkillers
The West does not fear this moron.
They drove Cayton-Holland’s dad to turn in his season tickets, right after the Arenado trade. The last straw.
“It was just kind of a defeating feeling. I wasn’t caught too off-guard by it, but it was just like, here we go again, another good player getting traded,” offered Brad Galli, a stand-up who grew up in Pueblo.
“So I just felt kind of defeated, I guess I would say (2023 was) the kind of year where it’s like, it’s just not funny anymore. This is depressing, for lack of a better word.”
***
For three decades the trend has repeated
While Dick Monfort has constantly bleated
“Next year is the one
when we’ll get the job done.”
But rarely have they ever competed.
They drove Meddles to change his license plates.
Bob’s such a baseball nut that he drives around in a 1995 Jeep Wrangler with a livery like a new baseball, gleaming white with red stiches snaking around both sides of the ride. There’s even the familiar Rox “CR” logo on the hood.
The back of the ride, though, tells a different tale, wounds that cut right to the soul.
The cover for the spare tire has a Ghostbusters-style white circle with the word “MONFORT” crossed out diagonally in red. The plates, another new wrinkle, say simply: “86MNFRT.”
Which, again, is self-explanatory.
“I couldn’t, with good conscience — I didn’t want to say, like, ‘Golly, they’re still coming around,’” Meddles explained.
“I don’t think (Monfort’s) ego will let him say, ‘I’m not good enough to do this, and I’ll let somebody else do that job and I’ll get out of the way.’ I wish that was how it was. I don’t think I’ll see competitive baseball in Colorado in my lifetime. … I’ve got to outlive Monfort just to have any chance at all.”
I emailed Bob on Thursday, on the eve of Opening Day, to see if anything from the last six days had changed his mind.
“Looks like the only race the Rox will be involved in this year will be to see if the A’s or the Rox end up with the biggest negative run differential,” he replied. “Finally competitive on some level.”
Hope’s supposed to spring eternal this month. At 20th & Bleak, it springs a leak. And for six more months, the joke’s on us.