ROAD TURNS ROCKY AFTER '95 WILD-CARD DRIVE.

Byline: TONY JACKSON 

It was the summer of 1995, and there was a new, festering rivalry in the National League West. Or at least that's what everyone thought at the time.

The Dodgers and Colorado Rockies were complete opposites. One was immersed in a century's worth of tradition and more stability than a major-league organization had a right to. The other was a brash, third- year expansion club that didn't know its place, playing in a jewel of a new ballpark that sold out every night.

The fans in Denver were still new to the game, and they bought into their unique style of baseball completely, with nary a clue as to why the major-league establishment turned up its nose at the nightly slow-pitch softball scores. At beautiful Coors Field, the ball traveled an estimated 9 percent farther in the light air. In a misguided attempt to offset that, the outfield was made so large that any ball hit into the gap was a good bet to roll to the wall.

But there was one baseball tradition Rockies fans were savvy enough to adopt. They quickly learned to hate the Dodgers.

Nine years later, they still hate the Dodgers, who begin a three-game series at Coors Field on Tuesday night. What has changed is that they don't love the home team nearly as much.

The Dodgers and Rockies battled to the end that year, with the Dodgers eventually emerging as winners. But the Rockies did secure the first-ever National League wild card with a season-ending victory over Houston, for the moment cementing their status as the prototype for how every expansion team should do business. For contrast, fans had only to look to the Rockies' expansion partners, the Florida Marlins, who at the time were still sputtering along like an expansion team should and not drawing nearly as well.

Both the Dodgers and Rockies were quickly vanquished in that postseason. Two years later, the Marlins won the World Series, after which they plunged into irrelevance, changed ownership twice, rebuilt and won it again last fall. The Rockies never made it back to the playoffs, never again finished more than four games over .500 and haven't won more than 74 games in any of the past three seasons.

Moreover, after drawing just short of 3.9 million in 1996, the Rockies have declined every year since, selling a franchise-low 2,334,085 tickets last season. That put them ninth in the 16-team National League and 14th in the majors.

The Blake Street Bombers and LoDo Magic are a distant memory now. For that matter, so is the Rockies' once-prominent place on the major-league landscape. In dropping two of three at Dodger Stadium last weekend, the Rockies displayed an amazing habit of leaving bases uncovered, swinging from their heels at first pitches and allowing opposing runners to steal at will.

Not coincidentally, Coors Field long ago ceased to be the Mile High City's cultural center. It began in the summer of 1996, when the Colorado Avalanche, in its first season after relocating from Quebec City, captured the Stanley Cup. Nineteen months later, the Denver Broncos - who had always held a more significant hold on the local sense of self-esteem anyway - won their first Super Bowl, then repeated a year later.

Finally, in 2002, the Rockies failed to draw 3 million for the first time in their history.

As for that budding rivalry, well, it had pretty much fizzled by the next year, and it never came close to re-materializing. The Dodgers have had their problems in the interim, too, having missed the playoffs the past seven seasons. Coors Field, once the crowning jewel of Denver's LoDo district, is now just the colossal curiosity the city's yuppified residents have to walk past to get to all those cool restaurants, pool halls and watering holes.

The Dodgers are coming to town. And in a twist once deemed unthinkable, no one really cares.