David Ramsey   Gazette sports columnist David Ramsey offers opinions, views and thoughts on the world of sports

To baseball fans, Fenway Park is a magnificent shrine. They speak with such reverence that when you approach this park a few blocks west of downtown Boston, you half-expect to see a structure that resembles the pyramids.

The shock is how modest, how unpretentious, how lovably dumpy this old charmer is. The Rockies walk from their clubhouse to the dugout through a hallway that resembles a dungeon tunnel. It’s moldy and leaky. The paint, a gruesome off-white, is peeling.

But that’s all part of the fun. At Fenway, the past lives. This is where Ted Williams and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson and Tony Conigliaro and Roger Clemens and Josh Beckett have ripped home runs and launched fastballs. This is a destination where yesterday and today meet.

Coors Field is all about gleam. No doubt, it ranks as a grand urban ballpark, with terrific views of the mountains and downtown Denver.

But there’s little heritage there. Everything is just so.

Fenway is old, creaky and completely wonderful.

A confession:

I doubted the Colorado Rockies.

On Aug. 28, while sitting through a 5-1 loss to the Pirates at Coors Field, I typed, “Don’t trust this edition of the Colorado Rockies. Don’t make the mistake of seeing all that hitting power, all that youthful talent and believing this team is destined for the playoffs.”

I was wrong.

We all were wrong.

I’ve yet to encounter a Colorado resident who said they believed in these Rockies in early September. On Aug. 28, the Rockies had lost nine of 14 while surrendering 71 runs. They looked doomed to, once again, miss the playoffs.

Virtually no one expected – no one could have expected – the LoDo Miracle. Virtually no one could have predicted the Rockies, consistently inconsistent all season, would suddenly become the most reliable team in baseball. That’s the only way to describe a squad that won 17 of 18 games to earn a place in this week’s NL Championship Series.

I appreciate the honesty of sports fans in our state. It would be easy for someone, for anyone, to say he or she always believed the Rockies would shock the baseball nation.

But no one I’ve spoken with has said such a thing. That’s because it wouldn’t be true.

This run has been one long, happy surprise.

Rockies-mania has returned to Colorado. After essentially ignoring their baseball team for five years, fans once again are madly in love with the Rockies. A month ago, Coors Field was a lonely destination, a great place to take an evening nap, but on Sunday and Monday thousands of loud, happy new friends packed the stadium.

This is the team of destiny. This is the team that came from nowhere, refused to surrender and crafted one of those inspiring, too-good-to-be-true stories usually reserved for silly sports movies.

The Philadelphia Phillies have folllowed the same script. They doggedly chased down the New York Mets, just as the Rockies chased down the San Diego Padres. They defied the odds. They romanced an entire region.

Here’s the problem. One of these too-good-to-be-true stories is about to end.