The voodoo is gone. The skies look brighter. Luck is on their side.
The Rockies can actually feel it. In their victory over Houston on Saturday at Coors Field, everyone could see it.
Take the plays involving the game’s starting right fielders.
Early on, Rockies right fielder Brad Hawpe, for a moment, lost a flyball in the sun. Then he came crashing in. He missed it. Hawpe was sprawled for a minute on the field. But OK.
“Just the wind knocked out of him,” Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said.
Hawpe stayed.
Houston right fielder Chris Burke later in the game ran toward the wall in right-center and caught a hard-hit ball. But Burke slammed his left shoulder into the wall. He is not OK.
A subluxation of the shoulder, it was announced. Sounded scary. Actually, that is a fancy name for a severe separation.
Burke left.
He looks lost to the Astros for a while.
Any given game in any given year during the Rockies’ toughest times and those injuries would have been reversed.
The Rockies always used to draw the shortest straw.
But they are 8-8 at home, 5-2 in their past seven home games. They are road tough. They are in first place. They just watched Jason Jennings pitch his first shutout since his major-league debut five years ago.
Five players drove in the Rockies’ five runs in their win.
“He’s got a lot on the line,” Hurdle said of Jennings. “He’s out to prove some things to himself and to this league.”
That sounds like the team’s tune.
You can see it in the Rockies’ approach. It is there early and late in games.
A bid to set their record straight. To make their obvious passion and desire account for something.
“I had a great rookie year, and the last couple have not been so great; I want to get back to my best,” Jennings said. “I want to be that pitcher that eats up innings. I know a lot of people are waiting for us to fail. We know our past. This is all new.”
Choo Freeman started in center field Saturday night. This was new, Freeman hitting in the No. 2 hole. In his five other starts, he had hit at No. 7.
He drove in the Rockies’ first run. He caught the game’s final out.
In between he was steady, fluid, in only his sixth start of the season. The Rockies are 6-0 in those games.
Freeman, 26, epitomizes all that the Rockies are and what they hope to become.
He was drafted in 1998, the 36th overall selection. At 6-feet-2, 200 pounds, he has the prototypical wide receiver body. He was a star receiver at his Dallas high school, a 4.4-speed guy in the 40-yard sprint. Texas A&M wanted him to play football. Freeman chose baseball.
“The more I played baseball, the more I wanted to play,” Freeman said. “There was something about it.”
He was raw. So raw that he spent the last eight years in Asheville and Salem and Colorado Springs, all in the minors. He thought he might have been ready in 2004. He thought he could have made it for good last year. But this year, with the Rockies facing having to turn him free on waivers, with him prepared for his best spring, Freeman made it.
“I was not going to give them the option to say no,” he said.
He is finding a way to make an impact in his reserve role, whether it be with a timely hit, fleet-footed catch, stolen base or run scored. He is working his way into more playing time.
The Rockies say they have been waiting. Waiting on Freeman to blossom.
And we have been waiting on the Rockies. Waiting on them to return to some semblance of a competitive team.
Freeman’s rise is coinciding with the team’s rise.
“I am just trying to make an impact every time I go out there,” he said of his first two-hit game of the season. “I was having success seeing the ball and using my hands.”
Just like any good receiver.
Thomas George can be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
