Basebrawl: Denver Rapscallions Bid Adieu to San Francisco With Questionable Taste -- and Accuracy

​The other day, we noted that, once again, Giants fans will have the unenviable task of determining which other teams they detest least in the postseason. It's a difficult and unpleasant task akin to deciding which kidney you'd rather part with or which non-Alec Baldwin brother you'd want to sit next to on a trans-continental flight.

It seems this notion is alien to Colorado Rockies fans, whose team came into existence back when Bill Clinton still had salt-and-pepper hair. They couldn't understand how a Giants fan could be peeved about the Rox inability to win even one of 13 games vs. Atlanta in 1993, and how that cost San Francisco in the end. But Giants fans are weaned on the bile of near-misses and failure. So we remember the details.

That's more than we can say for our colleagues at The Westword in Denver. Recounting one of the most tragic sports experiences of his life, the Denver fanatic notes "the 1990 Super Bowl, in which the Giants absolutely destroyed the Broncos 55-10."

It must have been one hell of a bender our colleague went on -- as it was the 49ers that crushed Denver in the Super Bowl that year, not the Giants. The football Giants play in New Jersey, incidentally. They have pretty blue helmets, and even won the title two years ago.
  

Not a Giant...

​But our colleague brings up an excellent point. Should fans forgive and forget 20 years after our sporting nightmares are in the books and the athletes from both teams are now pot-bellied, middle-aged men sharing laughs at the same pro-am golf tournament?

Perhaps -- though it truly is hard to not to hold some bitterness for the Rockies' potential first-round opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals, after the horrors of the 1987 NLCS and that idiotic brawl Jose Oquendo triggered in '88 (you remember; the one where Ozzie Smith attacked Will Clark from behind). Also, one is forced to wonder -- what is more grudge-worthy? The team that dispatched your favored club fair and square or the team whose ineptitude enabled the other team to beat yours? Is it misanthropic to wish ill upon the fans who derived joy from our sour memories?

Or do we just go with our gut? Well, that seems easiest. Here's my reading: I'll root for the Rockies over the Cardinals, the Phillies over the Rockies, and al-Qaeda over the Dodgers.