Disappointing

Unfortunately, the Rockies have followed up one of the best stretches of baseball in franchise history with the first four game losing streak of the season. As good as the pitching had been during the period of close to 30 games, that's how shaky it's been in the last four. And it's not just the starters, with the bullpen giving up runs and Fuentes blowing two saves when he had converted 9 of 10 save opportunities during the Rockies' surge. Overall, the bullpen that gave up only two blown saves in a span of 27 games has three blown saves in the last four games. Despite all the talk from the players that the series against the Yankees was just three games like any others, you can't help but wonder if they didn't get caught up in the hype as much as most everyone else. The pessimists outnumber the optimists right now. I'm not ready to go there. We've seen what this team can do. Hopefully they can recapture it soon.

The RMN has a good article about Ryne Duren, the only home pitcher in Denver baseball history to throw a no-hitter. I first read about the feat while researching for my "History of Baseball in Denver" series back in March of 2005. In January 2006 I added a Ryne Duren autographed baseball to my small, yet significant collection. To Duren's credit, he considers his biggest accomplishment in life not as pitching in the big leagues, but overcoming an addiction to alcohol. Also to his credit, he has focused his life after baseball on helping others with the same addiction. Way to go Ryne!

The staff at DITR want to offer a belated congratulations to Rick Cummings, the great-great nephew of Candy Cummings, on his partial retirement (for the Nth time, I can't keep track). As has been mentioned here before, Rick as one of the inspirations for the DITR blog and had a role in the naming process. Rick traditionally takes the summer off from blogging, but you can find him here when fall arrives and he resumes.