I know the baseball season is a ways away, with the first game not until April 6th. Still though, Spring Training and the World Baseball Classic (ugh) are going on and those are usually eternal resting places for optimism for major league clubs across the country.

As they say, everyone's in first place in March.

Every year you hear some idiot from the Pirates or Royals tell you that they think they've got as good a

chance as any team to compete.

You laugh, knowing the odds of them even going .500 are about as likely as the Devil Rays ever making the World Series. Then, you mentally correct yourself (it's Rays now, damnit!), and check the odds in Vegas hoping for a repeat of last year.

With this in mind, I must say I was a bit surprised when I heard a radio ad for the 2009 Colorado Rockies.

Urging people to come out to Coors Field, the announcer begged for fans to come to the park to see, “the big league hitting of Troy Tulowitzki”, the “gold glove ability of Todd Helton”, and the “All-Star pitching of Aaron Cook”.

Woweee. Talk about your all-time 'give-ups'.

Why don't they just come out and say it: “The Rockies are going to stink this year, folks! If it wasn't any more evident when we gave up our superstar slugger for average prospects and a crap closer, we just wanted to make it alarmingly plain: this team won't be any good. Save your money, and time. We suggest learning to play ultimate frisbee. It's supposed to be a lot of fun.”

Are they trying to convince me, Joe RockiesFan, that I should go to see the Rocks because Troy Tulowitzki can hit at the major league level? I was hoping he'd be able to do that. Good, glad to hear he still can.

Todd Helton being marketed for his fielding ability has to be the saddest of them all. Here's a guy that's batted over and around .350 for many years, and won a batting title.  Injuries and reality having set in, he's no where near the player he was. But, basically he's being sold as a healthier version of Doug Mientcawicz. How the mighty have fallen.

The Aaron Cook thing is just insulting to the fans' intelligence. Even the most diehard Rockies fan (if such a thing exists---I've met one in my life) would have to admit that Cook was the definition of an affirmative action pick. Every team in the majors has to have a representative in the game, Cook was the guy for Colorado. I'm sure the Rockies never advertised Mark Redman as a former All-Star...

This type of story has “Onion” smeared all over it, but I swear, this is real. I heard the commercial twice tonight at work. You can almost read the opening paragraph now...

...In related news, the Colorado Rockies have officially decided to give up on the 2009 season, now 4 days into the month of March. Though trading superstar slugger Matt Holliday over the offseason for a laundry machine and a man named Huston hinted at the impending towel-throw-in, a recent radio ad sealed the deal...