Off to a rocky start: Colo. fans are lonely in the Fens
Colorado Rockies fans at Fenway Park this week knew they would be booed and jeered, taunted, and cursed. They expected to weather the insults directed at them - and possibly their mothers - and were prepared to tolerate pretty much anything that Red Sox fans might do.
But those Rockies fans hadn't counted on one thing: being so alone.
"We're small in number," conceded Colorado resident and Rockies fan Jim Fick, who flew east with a friend for the World Series, only to be misidentified by Bostonians confused by his foreign-looking Rockies cap. "They thought we were umpires."
Even at Fenway and even in October, it isn't uncommon to find fans of the opposing team sitting deep in the heart of Red Sox Nation.
But this week Colorado Rockies fans have been as scarce as trick-or-treaters on the Fourth of July. And by Game 2 of the World Series last night, even Rockies fans were beginning to wonder what had happened to their brethren in black and purple.
"You know, that is a good question," said Kelsey Musslewhite, a Boston University freshman and Colorado native who was rooting on the Rockies at the game last night. "I saw one on Newbury Street, but the rest are back home in Colorado."
"Crying," interjected Amanda Silvia, a Sox fan standing next to Musslewhite yesterday as they stood in line for tickets.
"Waiting for Games 3, 4, and 5," Musslewhite corrected Silvia. "You know, we have faith."
Faith, perhaps. But numbers? At Fenway?
Not exactly.
Fick, who lives in Centennial, Colo., south of Denver, has counted a paltry 16 - sixteen - Rockies fans in the last two nights at Fenway. A disappointing total, sure. But Rockies fans have their theories for why they have been so underrepresented in the Fens.
One: They didn't know until the American League Championship Series ended on Sunday night if the Rockies would be playing in Cleveland or Boston. And when Boston emerged as the AL champs, Fick said, many Rockies fans probably decided they could not get tickets at Fenway.
"Truthfully," said Fick, "I think some actually thought we were going to Cleveland."
And two: Until September, when the Rockies began an incredible streak that landed them in the playoffs, the team didn't have a following even close to Red Sox Nation's. Most Denver sports fans were probably thinking about football and the Broncos.
"Nobody expected the Rockies to be here," said Pat Bickford, a resident of Evergreen, Colo., attending the game last night. "The Rockies in the past have been perennial losers."
The theories, as valid as they may be, carry little weight among such Sox fans as Jeremy Binckes, who spent the better part of two days waiting in line for tickets and developing theories about the opposing team's fans.
"Rockies fans are like the Loch Ness monster," Binckes said. "We hear rumors. There are some reported sightings. But there's not really any scientific evidence to back it up."
The few Rockies fans in town have come to tolerate such comments. But there's light in the west - they're headed back to Denver now to play the third game on Saturday night.
For six seasons in the 1990s, Colorado boasted the highest home attendance in baseball. And Dave Carlson, a Colorado resident at Fenway, predicted a raucous homecoming on Saturday night.
Until then, though, Carlson remained a pioneer out east, a man so shocked to see fellow supporters on Yawkey Way last night that he stopped and announced a Rockies fan's presence.
"Oh, my God," he said. "It's another one."
