This is a really ironic article. You say the Rockies have no decent players. Well, there are a few twenty-five-plus home run guys by the names of Matt Holliday, Brad Hawpe and Garrett Atkins who all also hit for 100+ RBIs. Oh and don't forget Todd Helton who has three Gold Gloves and Troy Tulowitzki with 99 RBIs. Also, they have the best defense ever in the 120+ years of baseball.

You say they do not want anyone who is not Christian, but they have Kazuo Matsui who, last time I checked, was not Christian. You also say that they don't have any African-American players, but please tell me how many the Yankees or the Red Sox have. Finally, I thought you said they weren't any good, yet somehow just somehow they have won twenty-one of their last twenty-two games and are in the World Series. Now you can believe me or not, but I think that God has something to do with this.

Jonathan Lanning

Thornton, CO

I'm not sure why The Nation has bumped this old article up to their front page again.

But considering the Rockies are in the middle of maybe the most remarkable finishing kick in the history of baseball, Mr. Zirin might want to double-check that theory that God ain't playin' a hand in the Rockies' fate.

Win or lose at this point, they have indeed become a "team of destiny," even if only normally defined. Whether God itself has anything to do with it obviously depends on your point of view, but to believe it would be the first time God had exerted influence in history would at this point be a false assumption.

That doesn't explain away ridiculous comments about blacks' intelligence like you quote from Mr. Coors. There's way too much of that stuff in many walks of life, and he will have to answer to his God in the end before all is over. It does, however, point out to something else even more obvious, that the Lord moves in mysterious ways. That indeed is a well known fact too...again, depending on your point of view.

P.S. The quote from Sweeney is nice: on one side of The Nation you talk about the sex trade and global slavery and the rape of many of today's young daughters, on the other you offer up a ballplayer's right to a Playboy as a sign of liberated freedom and the possible totalitarianism of, I guess, Christianity. One day you guys are going to get it right. Until you do I suggest a lesson in principles...heck, even consistency would do.

S. Debs

San Diego, CA