Jackson Hole Underground

Cheer up, Rockies fans, it could be worse. You could be rooting for the Yankees.

Bronx Bombers got a double detonation of disaster last night: While the Red Sox were sweeping the World Series, the best player in baseball hung up his pinstripes.

“A-ROD A-GONER,” screamed today’s N.Y. Daily News. “A-BOMB,” shouted the Post.

Scott Boras, agent for Alex Rodriguez, may have outsmarted himself on this one. Not only was the announcement an advertisement of A-Rod’s selfishness, the backlash against the timing was so sharp today that it might trim a few million dollars off the player’s next contract.

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As the World Series begins tonight, let’s hope the Rockies do a better job on the field than they did selling tickets for the games in Denver.

Yesterday’s Internet free-for-all was a junk show, coming on the heels of Monday’s computer crash, and it seems nobody wound up happy but the ticket brokers with software for penetrating the system.

Is there a lower caste in the sports world than scalper? A pair of field-level seats behind the Sox dugout at Coors Field is going for $6,000 on eBay today.

If a casual fan in Wyoming, 500 miles from Denver, could grow aggravated as his two browsers repeatedly got stuck, I can only imagine the frustration of the hard-core fans in Colorado (assuming any of those exist).

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About the only thing that might stop the Colorado Rockies at this point is the eight-day layoff before the World Series.

By completing its sweep of Arizona last night, Colorado has won ten straight and 21 of its last 22 — all of them essentially must-win games. We have never seen such a streak of torrid baseball in our lifetimes. Not since the 1936 New York Giants has a team played so spectacularly down the stretch.

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Some will win. Some will lose. Some were born to sing the blues.

These scraps of paper will be sports memorabilia some day, like when I’m old and crotchety and pull them from a shoebox and recall the September the Mets stunk as badly as Flushing Bay at low tide.

At least the last two weeks of aggravation are over.

For Met fans, these unused tickets will be a badge of honor, yet another reminder how the bitterness of failure only sweetens the nectar of victory. That’s what separates us from Cowboy fans, Laker fans and — most of all — Yankee fans.

Until next year, what else is a lover of lovable losers to do but jump on the Cubs bandwagon? Go Rockies!

I knew it was a jinx.

On Monday, the New York Mets e-mailed to inform me that I won a lottery for the chance to purchase playoff tickets. The Mets look after their fans in Wyoming.

Alas, the boys at Shea haven’t won a game since. I had no intention of using the tickets, but planned to give them to my brother Shawn and his friends.

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