6/26/09 - COL 4, @ OAK 2 - "Missing Matt"

It was fitting that Matt Holliday’s first at bat as an opponent of the Colorado Rockies produced a quintessentially Matt Holliday-like result – a double to the opposite field gap. That was always what impressed me most about Holliday during his years in Denver – his ability, almost unmatched, to drive the ball the other way. I feel like every time I saw him hit a homer in person, it was a bullet that wound up in the Rockies bullpen in right-center field.

That was about the only thing fitting about seeing Matt face his former team. Even if the impact of his loss from a baseball standpoint has been greatly diminished, both by Holliday’s own struggles (he came into today hitting .269 with 8 homers) and the Rockies outfield depth, it’s hard to understate just how difficult it was to watch him today. Yeah, I’d seen him in an A’s uniform on TV before, but to see him competing against guys he competed with last year just didn’t seem right.

Baseball is a brutal, unsentimental game, though, and you’ve gotta roll with it, and gotta figure out how you can possibly encourage anybody to strike out the guy who scored the biggest run in Rockies history, or curse the guy who should have won an MVP in a Rockies uniform for ripping a double into the gap. As I’m writing this, Holliday is about to step to the plate as the tying run in the 8th inning of a three-run ballgame, and I would bet my life he hits one 450 feet to dead center. To spite us, and to remind us.

That, or he’ll roll over on the first pitch to second base. That was pretty quintessentially Matt Holliday-like, too.

(See? Brutal, and unsentimental.)

(He walked. Now watch the Rox lose this one at someone else’s hand, meaning we won’t be able to even secretly feel happy for one of the all-time franchise greats.)

(Oh, God bless you, Joel Peralta. My favorite thing about you is the complete lack of faith I have in you, and then the pleasant surprise I feel when you actually come through.)

(I’m never blogging during the game again. Isn’t this what Twitter is for?)

(Huston Street comes out of the bullpen at Coors Field to ‘Hate Me Now’ by P. Diddy and Nas. The color barrier for closer entrance music has been broken! Inspired choice, too, and it was almost the best use of hip-hop in Rockies player entrance history until Ian Stewart went to ‘Turn My Swag On’ by Soulja Boy.)

(Street shakes off a liner to the ribs and gets a 1-2-3 save. Damn, he’s good. Stay hot, Rox.)