Inside the Colorado Rockies Red Wedding Offseason

You thought you were safe.

Five words that drama has been built on for centuries.

More specifically, it is what drives hyper tension and anxiety in drama.

Take, for example, genres that focus intently on this feeling: Thriller and Horror.

Jaws, Freddy Kruger, Jason, and Michael Myers don’t just chase their victims, reach them, and go about whatever horrible deeds they had planned. Where is the drama in that? At some point, our fear has to be heightened by dangling the possibility of escape – the hope of safeness – right in front of our faces.

We find refuge in the closet or basement and the scary music has subsided for a moment. Or better yet, we are near the end of the film, the monster is presumed vanquished (we saw it with our own two eyes!) and we’ve hit the open road, left town, and are ready for the credits to roll.

But what’s that in the back seat in the final frame?

That’s right. It’s public comments from the most talented player who has ever suited up for your favorite baseball team saying that the General Manager has been “disrespectful” to him in ways profound enough to break character and issue a strong statement through the media.

Of course, this came less than an hour after that GM, Jeff Bridich, had also provided a bit of a character-changing plot twist by announcing trade talks revolving around Arenado were now “off the table.”

This was like that moment authors purposefully build in to throw off the audience. You thought you were safe.

It’s one of the main drivers of the smash success of Game of Thrones, which managed to constantly give viewers a look at a potential future that might well be acceptable before ripping it away from them.

On the surface, it might seem weird to build a brand of entertainment on emotionally torturing your fans, but when it is presented in the world of the arts it can be a cathartic experience.

When it is stumbled into by an organization that is already in the middle of a public relations nightmare, though, it can fracture a fanbase.

Minor spoilers for the 12 remaining people who have not yet seen but still intend to check out Game of Thrones, but Bridich’s comments about not trading Arenado now feel like a promise that Ned Stark can live out the rest of his days on The Wall or like an invitation to a wedding at Walder Frey’s House.

It was a set-up for a now even-more-devastating revelation. And like any good thriller, the tension built slowly and steadily until it finally exploded.

What in hindsight felt like moments later, Arenado contacted Thomas Harding of MLB.com, telling him, ““There’s a lot of disrespect from people there that I don’t want to be a part of.” He added, “You can quote that.”

At first, this was a clearly bad-yet-somewhat-ambiguous statement.

It left just enough time for Rockies fans to speculate on all kinds of potential meanings. Who exactly is he talking about? What was the nature of the disrespect? Was this personal or a professional disagreement over the nature of the team? Did something specific happen or is this a more general sentiment?

Asked what was said that he found particularly disrespectful, Arenado initially remarked, “No. I won’t get into the details.”

So that was all we had to go on, and all fans had to panic over… for about another 45 minutes when Arenado threw in one more nugget, stating, “I’m not mad at the trade rumors. There’s more to it.”

So there was Ned Stark, hands tied behind his back, surrounded by enemies, on his knees in front of a bloodthirsty crowd. But there must still be some sliver of hope, right? There must be some way out of this.

And then, it happened.

At around 10:00 Mountain Time, less than three hours after a momentary celebration of good news for Rockies fans about their star player, he texted Troy Renck of Denver7: “Jeff is very disrespectful. I never talk trash or anything. I play hard, keep my mouth shut. But I can only get crossed so many times.”

Slash. Thud.

There’s no way to go back now, there’s a head on the floor.