Fickle in the Rockies

THE CHICAGO Cubs, a team with a longer hard-luck history than the Red Sox, should have been the National League entrant in the World Series this year. But the Cubs were eliminated two weeks ago, and the Sox will face the Colorado Rockies, a major league newcomer. Boston fans will get a glimpse of the new look of baseball fandom as they bask in the enjoyment of New England's more traditional enthusiasm for baseball.

For 106 years Red Sox fans have handed their allegiance from fathers to sons, and daughters too, as women increasingly come to support the team (as shown by the number of pink baseball caps at Fenway Park). Not so in Denver, where the Rockies began playing in 1993. They were hugely popular at first, drawing almost 3.9 million fans in 1997, but attendance waned to 1.9 million in 2005 before recovering to 2.37 million this year. "In Colorado, on a sunny afternoon, you've got places to go," said Tom Clark, one of the people who brought the Rockies to Denver. The fan base is fickle in the newer franchises.

The Red Sox have yet to break 3 million, although they came close this year when regular-season attendance reached 2,970,755. Coors Field in Denver, while it's built in the red brick style of an old ballpark, seats 50,445. If Fenway could hold that many, the Red Sox would attract 4 million each year.

Within the memory of many Sox fans, yearly attendance of more than a million was considered impressive, and 2 million unthinkable. The first 2-million plus season came in 1977, two years after the epic Sox battle with the Cincinnati Reds in the '75 World Series. It hasn't dropped below 2 million since 1985, with the exception of strike-shortened 1994. Over the past five years, fervor for the Red Sox has surpassed all previous limits, and has gone national. In many ballparks the Sox visited this year, Boston fans seemed to outnumber supporters of the home team.

This level of enthusiasm ought to be rewarded with a World Series victory. Fan fervor and tradition don't guarantee victory at this level, however, as the Cleveland Indians discovered against another of the new franchises, the Florida Marlins, in 1997 and the New York Yankees against the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001, and the Marlins in 2003. The top new teams may not have enjoyed stable fan bases but they've got talent on the field.

So do the Red Sox, as shown by their comeback from a 3-1 series deficit against the Indians. And whatever happens in the World Series, it's been a great season for Sox fans, with the emergence of Dustin Pedroia and Hideki Okajima, the affirmation of Josh Beckett as a big game pitcher, and the drama of Daisuke Matsuzaka's in-and-out season. Unlike Wrigley Field, where the Cubs haven't been to a World Series since 1945 and haven't won one since 1908, summer lingers wherever Red Sox fans gather this year.