This isn’t just like a month of Sundays. The Rockies’ Shameful Streak has reached four months of Sundays.
Suet Sixteen. They haven’t won on Sunday from April 24 to Aug. 7.
The Rockies lost Sunday, of course, in the final homestand game to the Washington Gnats, 3-2, on a lousy defensive play in left field and a run-scoring single to left. Same old Sunday.
“This is not the first type of a game on Sunday we have played like this,” manager Jim Tracy said when I suggested that the sad Sunday situation no longer could be considered an aberration. “The game was sitting there to be taken. . . . We did not capitalize.”
The Rockies again showed, he said, “effort” but not “execution.”
Etymology, but not excellence, I say.
Maybe the Colorado legislature should bring back those old blue laws prohibiting Sunday baseball.
With apologies to The Mamas and The Papas, Sunday, not Monday, is the day the Rockies can’t trust.
“Every other day of the week is fine, yeah, but whenever Sunday comes, you can find Rox losin’ all of the time.”
The Rockies are 51-46 on Monday-Saturday and 2-16 on Sunday. The first Sunday game of the season was rained out — a warning. The Rockies prevailed in the next two, but have not since. They’ve lost to 15 teams in five divisions and two leagues. They have lost in every imaginable way — in blowouts and walkoffs, on blown saves and on failed comebacks.
They trailed 2-0 in the second, tied the score in the seventh and were lowdown in LoDo in the eighth. The Rox had opportunities in the fourth (bases loaded, one out, no runs), the seventh (walk, single, sacrifice bunt, error, single, two runs) and the eighth (single, forceout, steal, out, out.) They went quietly and quickly in the ninth as Troy Tulowitzki struck out, bat not moving, for the last out. He struck out, bat swinging, in the seventh with runners at first and third.
I played word association afterward with center fielder Dexter Fowler.
“When I say Sunday, what do you think of?”
“Church.”
“Maybe you should all go to church together on Sunday morning.” (The Rockies do have a chapel service in the clubhouse.)
Maybe somebody up there doesn’t like them. Somebody in the third deck.
“I can’t figure it out,” Fowler said. The Sunday stench “is unbelievable. We’re playing hard, but something always happens. We should have come back and won today.”
Fowler can’t be blamed for all 16. He was in Colorado Springs for several.
Todd Helton can’t be blamed for all of them, either. Tracy has rested him on five Sundays.
In his 15 seasons with the Rockies, “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Helton offered succinctly.
Doesn’t really matter now.
But baseball is all about records, and the Rockies have never lost on this many consecutive Sundays. The Rockies’ media relations department certainly wasn’t comparing this dubious achievement to others. I checked the 1962 Mets — undoubtedly one of the worst teams ever. Not even the Amazin’ Mets dropped 16 in a row on Sunday. They went 10-22 — with one tie.
The Rockies would have accepted a tie Sunday.
The Broncos lost four straight on Sundays three separate times the past two seasons.
Then, there were the old, awful Nuggets, who, in a span from 1990 to 1992, won only one of 19 games on Sundays, but their longest losing streak was 14.
For those who are looking ahead, the Rockies still have seven Sunday games — including three at home. They play at St. Louis on Sunday, then home against the Dodgers, at Los Angeles, at San Diego, here against the Reds and the Giants and, finally, in Houston on Sept. 25.
Surely they’ll win one of those.
“We’ve got to stop this,” Helton said.
Perhaps, though, not so surely.
This is a team that has no passion, no real leadership around the clubhouse, nothing to feel good about after losing Ubaldo Jimenez in the trade and losing Juan Nicasio to that terrible, possible life-threatening injury Friday and nothing much to feel positive about as they drift aimlessly toward the end of the season. The clubhouse was so quiet you could hear a church mouse.
On any given Sunday, the Rox can lose.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
