ALL SPORTS: Soldier-Athletes // MLB: Colorado Rockies & Looking Ahead.

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ALL SPORTS: Soldier-Athletes  --- AT many an American sports arena and stadium a statement of appreciation for the nation’s men and women in uniform occurs just before game time, and on Memorial Day there are special activities recognizing the sacrifices that members of our army, navy and air force make to guarantee our security and our freedom. This sports/armed forces connection has been a mainstay since World War Two, which many of the country’s great athletes have been a direct part of, the more famous example that of the great Ted Williams interrupting his baseball career to become a fighter pilot in WW2 and during the Korean War, a less known example the more than 260 professional football players who have gone overseas as soldiers, sailors and airmen during and since WW2. Also, numerous super athletes from West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy have gone to war and will continue to do so.

Without question, the sports/military connection runs deep. Courage and sacrifice for soldiering are among the important variables that make the superb athlete. A stand-up “tell” about the military/sports relationship is this: at nearly every military base in the U.S., and at U.S. bases overseas, there is a baseball field, often a football field and indoor and outdoor basketball courts. Signaling who we are as a people is that when any game begins at these bases, the uniform shirts and the insignia come off. Corporals and sergeants, lieutenants, captains and colonels are suddenly but athletes on a team. Rank and authority are set aside. At the forefront are individuals respecting one another’s appreciation for a game and each other’s skills---it’s a statement that says that freedom and respect for the individual remain paramount for Americans.

Too, sports are combat, except that in sports real bullets aren’t flying and there are referees and umpires helping to reduce those physical actions that could lead to violence and serious injury. Former Green Bay Packers coach, Vince Lombardi, was quick to remind that he learned many of his strategies while an assistant coach at West Point under Colonel Red Blaik, a trained combat leader. Surely sports have been the activity that resembles real war the most with its need for bravery, discipline and sacrifice, for knowing how to win with humility and how to lose with grace.

So, it isn’t just coincidence that at arenas and stadiums on Memorial Day (this Monday, May 28) that the military personnel who have sacrificed their lives for the nation will be honored---beneath their uniforms, America’s athletes and soldiers are indeed kin of the close-knit kind.

MBA (Colorado Rockies):   Phoenix is a city in Arizona—it’s also a mythic bird, the symbol for “diehard comeback,” noted in a phrase from classic literature, “I rise in flames, cried the Phoenix,” which is what the Colorado Rockies would want as a bumper sticker after losing six games straight. Well, it could fasten, the Rockies having ended a painful losing streak with an 8-4 win against Miami’s Marlins on Wednesday, thanks to three runs from a homer by Rockies shortstop, Troy Tulowitzki, and a triple-RBI from outfielder, Carlos Gonzalez, and that starting pitcher, Alex White, hadn’t suffered serious derailment.

What, then, are the flames that the mythic bird is now trying to rocket away from? Surely they are the limitations that settled in May upon the arms of Colorado’s hurlers, among them, Jamie Moyer, Jhoulys Chacin, Christian Friedrich, Juan Nicasio, Matt Belisle, Rafael Betancourt, Drew Pomeranz, and White. Add, Jorge De La Rosa’s rehab not moving fast enough for him to be back on the mound frequently. In effect, the status quo conjured up by the Rockies starters and bull pen in May has to trade quickly for lower ERA’s, more strikeouts and fewer walks; otherwise, the team won’t be zooming ahead, surpassing mediocrity and reaching post-season competition, in that no line-up, not even that which could include hitters such as Tulowitzki, Gonzalez, Todd Helton and Jason Giambi, can sustain the high momentum needed to offset marginal pitching.   

Yet a path for the Rockies to exploit lies just ahead---six games that if won could push the team’s toughest competition down and the Rockies upward: three games against the Los Angeles Dodgers, then three versus the Arizona Diamondbacks, rival franchises that are now ahead of the Rockies in the National League-West by multiple games.

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