A guest posting by my friend Rusty...sports can indeed offer lessons for real life.

Much has been made in recent days of the SURPRISING success of the Colorado Rockies. Many esteemed local sports pundits (and loud-mouthed “fans”) have had no choice but to admit that their criticism of The Rockies “build from within” strategy was wrong. So much crow has been eaten around these parts that they may be in danger of becoming an endangered species.

During these last several years, while the Rockies struggled mightily (and even not so mightily at times), it was easy to criticize their failures while their successes, in the form of young players with great potential slowly developing into solid contributors, were usually obscured by the headlines decrying another Rockies loss.

More significant though than just this year’s success, which, given the nature of Baseball, undeniably involves more than a modicum of luck, is the strong foundation for future success that O’Dowd, Hurdle, and the Monfort brothers have built.

How did this happen? First, there was a vision. A vision established upon a set of underlying principles and belief in one’s self and one’s “teammates”. Then there was persistence-dogged determination in the face of long odds and vociferous detractors. Then was more persistence, and more persistance and more persistence. Of course, during the course of the execution of this strategy, a lot of fine tuning and improvisation was necessary. For example, two of the Rockies best pitchers weren’t even on the roster at the beginning of the year.

If the Rockies management had taken the early season advice of these esteemed writers and loud-mouthed fans, we’d likely be starting over again with a new manager, new general manager and rebuilding a team (or rather trying to construct a team from remnants of other teams). Sitting here right now, with one game against the Phils in the bag, the stay the course choice looks pretty good. Maybe the lesson is that to do something grand takes not only vision and persistence, but also time.

Hmmmm...Monfort, Monfort, O’Dowd, & Hurdle....Does anyone else see the parallels to Bush, Cheney, Gates, and Rice?