The winter is cold. Rockieton is dark. And your heart is broken.

Why even be a Colorado Rockies fan anymore?

Why bother? What’s it all for? How much longer can you keep pouring so much daily emotion into something that never seems to love you back nearly as much?

Memories of October baseball featuring this cast of characters might as well stem from lifetimes ago.

In their stead lies a heaping husk of potential squandered on fields of waste.

The freshly-minted white and black and purple jerseys that hang in your closet feel like they belong to ghosts. How many of the names on the back will be emblazoned in some other colors before long?

And how long have you worn them? Years? Decades?

Can you continue to feel a sense of pride when you do? How often have you ever?

In a world where ballgames are played in front of empty plastic chairs and cardboard cutouts – when not even the sure promise of the allure of Coors Field can bring a smile to your face – what is the point?

And yet… something lingers.

Something lingers in you even if you’ve grabbed your torch and pitchfork.

Something lingers in you even if you’ve sworn to never spend another dime on this wretched product.

Something lingers in you even if you’re already scouting a new group of battered bastards to cheer on.

Something keeps telling you that no matter how many times you promise to move on in your heart, you simply can’t quit this team. Not all the way.

You tell yourself you will. Definitely this time. But Opening Day rolls around and that “CR” hat finds its way back onto your head.

Why?

For some, this is home.

You could no more root for another baseball team against the Rockies than you could your rival high school against your own. It isn’t a matter of quality or ineptitude, you bleed for your home team and would have it no other way.

The other guys are the other guys. There are 33 states in America that don’t even get an MLB club to begin with and you’ll be damned if you’re gonna take yours -in the state with the smallest population to have one – for granted.

You are proud of where you’re from, and your sports alliances follow suit.

The big city teams will always have allure, but they’ll never be yours.

The Rockies aren’t quite old enough to have been your grandparents’ team but they might’ve been your parents, or yours since you were a kid. They belong to you, it’s as simple as that, and nobody gets to tell you otherwise.

For others, that isn’t enough.

But you also know that the game isn’t fair. Just like life. It is the moments between the losing that make the bitterness so sweet. They cannot be separated.

You aren’t a front runner. You can’t cheer for the Dodgers or Yankees from out of state knowing that, sure, they will always contend but that’s because they have massive built-in advantages.

You know that it would be too easy to move the goalposts from hoping for a great year to expecting one. And that can be just as painful.

The game is designed to make people suffer. You won’t outrun this anywhere.

You know the glory of the moment is grander when it has been earned through years of suffering.

Also, the landscape of baseball isn’t exactly brimming with alternatives. You could hop on the bandwagon for the Rays or Braves but even just reading that word doesn’t sit quite right with you. It’s easy to buy a soaring stock.

A part of being a fan, for you, has been sticking with your team through thick and thin. And boy are we in some thin times right now. But these are the moments that test your mettle the most, and you are determined not to fail that test.

After all, rooting for perennial underdogs has its advantages.

If the day ever comes that Colorado does break through and win the big one, they will have done so despite a monstrous list of reasons why they shouldn’t have.

They will always be outspent. They will always have the unique feature of altitude that impacts both play on the field and individual’s ability to phusically recover. They have always had an owner whose heart is in the right place but whose head is in the clouds.

If this team wins at any point in the near, or even semi-distant future, they have to overcome all of that, including their own current GM and owner.

It is the conquering of these obstacles that you live for.

It will mean so much more to you than hoping for the success of a team that is supposed to win and then, y’know, does.

You are also probably a problem solver and this is one for the ages. So you’re going to see it through. It is in navigating the rough waters that you find as much fulfillment as enjoying the smooth ones.

For still others, it is far simpler than all of this.

The laundry the players wear and the place they call home is window dressing for the real reason you love sports; the people.

Whether in the perfect sun-drenched spot in the bleachers or at your favorite sports bar with the volume turned all way up, you find community.

You see, the pain is part of it. Your pain is their pain. You’ve maybe never met before and yet you are family.

You might buy them a beer, or they you, and commiserate over the latest aspect of this team that neither of you can believe.

It’s similar but not the same as the conversations going on in New York and Boston and Chicago.

People will tell you that Denver isn’t a baseball town. Yet there you sit engaged in deep philosophical debate about how much to properly weigh park-adjusted statistics when dealing with the uniqueness of Coors Field.

There you sit thinking about whether or not the outfield should be smaller or if they should go the other direction and get rid of the humidor and go back to the days of the Blake Street Bombers.

There you sit, trading stories of that time Larry Walker did a thing you’ll never forget, and swapping your best impressions of Dante Bichette’s famous introduction and ranking the Blake Street Bombers.

There you sit, getting personally offended any time someone refers to anyone other than Todd Helton as “The Toddfather.”

There you sit with your blood ‘a boilin’ anytime someone starts to bring up Nolan Arenado’s splits.

There you sit ready to defend every Jorge De La Rosa and Kyle Freeland who somehow never get the benefit of following logic to reasonable conclusions.

There you sit with your Rockies phone case and background and years’ worth of collectible memorabilia and knickknacks and you wonder to yourself, “Should I throw it all away because I just can’t support this team anymore?”

But that’s not why you do it. You know that. It’s not for them. It’s not even just for you. You do it for each other. This thing is yours. It exists outside of and above and beyond the people who make it go.

So, you might take a break. You might even start to see another team for a little while. You might not even feel the least bit guilty about it.

And nobody could blame you. The Colorado Rockies sit inside of a mess of their own design and it is their burden to prove to you that they are worth your time. And your energy. And your love.

But this team has been deep enough inside your heart that they can never fully be removed.

If you find yourself in March and April once again searching for hope and reaching for that hat despite everything that has transpired, you are no fool and you are no patsy. You aren’t naïve. You aren’t betraying your better judgment by being loyal to those you feel have betrayed you.

If you decide to buy a hat or a shirt or a ticket or a hot dog… if you decide to turn on the game… you simply wish to remain a part of something that you can call your own.