Another Opening Day at InsideTheRockies.com

Meet InsideTheRockies.com, where Rockies fans go to talk about the Rockies, not shit on them.As a Denver sports fan -- and a Colorado Rockies fan, in particular -- I was disappointed by my inability to raise the level of discourse on the comment boards of the Web site's sports section while at the Rocky Mountain News. While away for a little more than two years in Chicago, I had tried to follow Denver teams through the sites of the city's two newspapers. In both cases, I was disappointed and went looking for an intelligent discussion elsewhere, without really finding it. Purple Row came close, but the site is too Sabermetrics-focused and too reliant on the newspapers' for new.

To some extent, I expected the nastiness and cynicism on display at the Post's web site. The newspaper long had a beef with the Rockies and took whatever opportunity it could to state, unequivocally, the Rockies would never be winners because the owners were more concerned about making money. The absurdity of the argument -- that the Rockies owners would prefer a mediocre team -- baffles me to this day, but I digress. The point is, their Web site's comments section reflected the attitude of the newspaper: the Rockies were owned by a bunch of cheap bastards bent on ruining the summer of every casual baseball fan in Denver.

The Rocky's approach, editorially at least, was better. Tracy Ringolsby and Jack Etkin have never been the sort of reporters to get down in the muck of rumors and expectations setting. They didn't buy into the Post's game of criticizing the Rockies for wasting millions of dollars signing Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle only to turn around and rip the team for not spending enough money in free agency. On top of that, columnist Dave Krieger had a nasty habit of actually talking to someone from the Rockies when writing about the Rockies. That consistently led to informed commentary, rather than just snarky column writing.

Yet, the comment board at the Rocky was identical to that at the Post.

When I came back to the Rocky as the online sports editor, one thing I wanted to do was raise the level of discourse. How, exactly, I planned to do that without policing the comment boards, I never quite figured out. To some extent, we were able to create a few features, chats and a ongoing polls, where people interested in civil conversation quickly drowned out the trolls. But still, on every news story, it took mere minutes for the comments section to devolve into cynicism. If the Rockies signed someone to a minor league contract, the team was cheap. If the Rockies signed a free agent, he was a bum. As a baseball fan, it was the most disheartening aspect of my career. I knew there were smart fans in this city, not blind optimists, but people who pay attention to their teams, win or lose, and could deal with bad seasons like adults. To fail to engage them meant we were failing as journalists.

When I launched InsideTheRockies.com with Tracy Ringolsby and Jack Etkin a little over a year ago after the paper closed, our primary goal was to stay relevant. We hadn't considered the possibility we might actually create the very forum that was lacking in the city: honest, intelligent conversation about baseball.

My former colleagues and I tried a lot of different things last season to keep doing what we were doing, with more or less disappointing results. InsideTheRockies.com is different. We're not making much money, certainly not enough to compensate for the time we devote to it. But having created a place where devoted baseball fans can talk about baseball intelligently and civilly in ongoing conversation with some of the most experienced and best baseball writers in the business in Tracy and Jack, this venture is an overwhelming success.

We start another season Monday. How much longer we can keep it up while pursuing other things is an open question. But we cannot yet turn our back on this little corner of the sports world we have created.