PHOENIX — In Section 309 of Chase Field, high above the dirt and the chalk, Katie Cardenas is rapidly tapping her palms on her knees.
T-tap, t-tap, t-tap, t-tap.
The Arizona Diamondbacks have just scored a run to tie her Rockies. The Arizona fans around her and her husband, Ray, twirl their rally towels. Her nails are already chewed to stubs, so Katie stops her tapping and bites her left index finger.
She hopes the team can get out of the inning without allowing any more runs. She thinks the Rockies can pull out the win.
“It’s a whole new team,” Cardenas says. “They just click.”
When does hope become belief? When does belief become certainty?
The Colorado Rockies enter tonight’s home game up two games to none in their series against the Diamondbacks and needing only two more wins to reach the World Series.
These days, Rockies fans are fond of saying this is a team of destiny. But in order to believe in destiny, they must first have something Rockies fans haven’t had in a long time: faith.
In Section 139 on Friday night, 7-year-old Cooper Clayton is not watching the game. Instead, he is playing drums with two empty soda bottles on the back of a bleacher seat.
B-bang, b-bang, b-bang, b-bang.
He, his dad, Curtis, and his 13-year-old brother, Cyler, drove to Phoenix from Colorado Springs. “I think we’ll get to the Series,” Curtis says during the game.
Cooper thinks so, too. Ask him why, and he just grins.
Bless the young, for they are not burdened with memory.
Up in Section 308, Keith Covill and Brian Zimmerman, both 25, sit shoulder-to-shoulder. They are best buds who met at Standley Lake High School.
Zimmerman has been going to Rockies games since he was in middle school.
“I remember Dinger getting born, bro, out of an egg!” says Zimmerman, who is wearing a shirt that says “Believer.”
But that means he also remembers the six consecutive losing seasons, the four years when the team lost 90 or more games, the year the club finished 28 games out of first place in its division.
This team, the friends say, is different. “They’re playing for a dream,” Covill says. “You can tell it. They’re trying to hit the dream.”
But still, in this run through the playoffs, the men say there is no pressure on the team or its fans. Soaring toward destiny is not the same as lugging expectations.
“It’s just so fun to watch,” Covill says.
Bless them, for they possess enough optimism to leap without fear of the landing.
Back in Section 309, the tension has mounted and Katie Cardenas’ legs bounce up and down. She and Ray gulp with every pitch.
They, too, have followed the Rockies since the beginning. Almost every year they take a vacation from their home in Thornton to visit spring training.
The couple say they believe in this team, that Todd Helton’s dramatic game-winning home run in a late- season game against the Los Angeles Dodgers was all the evidence they needed. But as Friday night’s game drags into early Saturday morning, belief becomes slippery.
The Diamondbacks again tie the game, in the bottom of the ninth, and then threaten to win. The Diamondbacks fans are out of their seats, screaming.
Katie and Ray leave their seats and move down to the main concourse. Diamondbacks fans still surround them.
In the top of the 11th, the Rockies get a run home. Two fly outs and a strikeout later, the game is over. Rockies win.
“It’s just their time,” Katie, 43, gushes. “This definitely increased my belief that it’s their time.”
Bless the Rockies faithful, for they finally have something to believe in.
John Ingold: 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com
