Rockies just failed to execute

DENVER - There was no quit. Of that, they were most proud. There weren't any excuses, either. Of that, they were definitive.

Their historic winning streak had vaulted them into public view. Four straight losses to the Red Sox vanquished them from sight. But the Colorado Rockies made it clear, they enjoyed the ride and had given it their all.

"We got outplayed and we tip our hats to them. We congratulate Terry Francona and the Boston Red Sox," said Colorado manager Clint Hurdle, not long after his club had been swept away, 4-3, at Coors Field. In losing four straight, the Rockies had been outscored, 29-10, and there was no way Hurdle could ignore that stat.

"We've been a team that focused on execution all year. We keep it very simple," said Hurdle. "They executed better than us in all four games. They're a great team and they're hot - that's a tough combination."

The Rockies, meanwhile, cornered the market on a formula that is a sure way for failure in baseball: poor starting pitching and bad hitting. From the very start, it was a Colorado staple, going back to Game 1 at Fenway Park when the Red Sox greeted young Jeff Francis with a leadoff home run by Dustin Pedroia, then followed it with two doubles, two singles, and a total of three runs.

No, it hardly got any better for the young Rockies, their team featuring just one player, Willy Taveras, who had ever played in a World Series. After Game 2, they didn't even have that experience, because Taveras was benched.

That was an option that Hurdle had at his disposal all Series; the only thing is, he couldn't bench all the cold bats or he would have had no one left to play. As he stood in the Rockies' locker room last Tuesday, the day before Game 1, pitching coach Bob Apodaca described the National League champions and compared them to teams he loved in youth - the Dodgers of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. Those teams, he said, had great pitching, terrific defense, and always got timely hitting.

"Not great hitting, but timely hitting," said Apodaca, who suggested the Rockies had those ingredients.

Perhaps they do. They just didn't show it.

Five Rockies during the regular season had piled up at least 90 RBIs - Matt Holliday, Todd Helton, Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, and Troy Tulowitzki. But in four games against Red Sox pitching, it wasn't so much that they had 18 hits in 75 at-bats for a .240 average, it was that they combined for just nine RBIs.

Three of them came in last night's Game 4, which may not have unfolded in a manner the Rockies had desired, but was played out in a fashion that was at the heart of their 2007 saga. They rallied and they fought to the end. Trailing, 3-0, as they batted in the seventh, the Rockies pushed the Red Sox to the limit. It was a script so similar to the night before, when a 6-0 deficit had been trimmed to 6-5 in the late stages, but as happened in Game 3, the Rockies couldn't quite come all the way back in Game 4.

Oh, it was close. But hardly could that have been deemed a surprise, given the fact that the Rockies had lived on the edge of elimination since mid-September. When Hawpe hit a solo home run in the seventh and Atkins had a two-run blast in the eighth, it finally supplied a little bit of a power surge, and the Rockies were within one run of tying it and possibly forcing a fifth game.

Even in the ninth, down to their final three outs, the Rockies weren't about to quit. Jamey Carroll, a .225 hitter in 227 at-bats during the regular season, slammed a Jonathan Papelbon pitch into left field. A home run? It seemed to have a chance, though Papelbon later said he figured it was off the wall. Wrong on both counts, because Jacoby Ellsbury tracked it down at the wall for the second out. Several Papelbon lasers later, pinch hitter Seth Smith was down on strikes and just like that, the "Miracle on Blake Street" was officially closed.

The curtain had come down on the Rockies.

Their 21 wins in 22 games? A distant memory in light of their four losses in four World Series games.

Hurdle, however, brushed aside all the numbers. What mattered was the joy he felt in his heart.

"I told the guys that they brought me more joy this year than I had had in 33 seasons of professional baseball," said Hurdle, whose Rockies had finished last in 2006 and were mired in fourth place in the NL West as late as Sept. 13. "We knocked a lot of things off of the to-do list, but there's one thing left out there for us."

Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com.