In elementary school, my daughter Emily really struggled to find books that interested her and consequently she was never a strong reader until she fell in love last year. Although the Rockies have always been part of our family life, both via trips to Coors Field and watching the games on TV, in 2007, at the ripe old age of 12, Emily found her passion. She started finishing her homework early so that she could catch some of the televised game before bedtime. She started getting up early so that she could read the outcome of the previous night's game in the paper and study the stats before school. She started begging us to go to more games at Coors Field.

Emily is the one who first told me that Troy Tulowitski is awesome at short, that Willy Taveras is super fast, and that Matt Holliday can hit like nobody's business. She begged us to buy her Rockies magazines, which she read cover to cover. For her birthday, she asked for a Tulowitski signed Rookie card, and for Christmas, she asked for a Tulowitski jersey. She was heartbroken when she thought Torrealba was leaving the Rockies, and she asked if we could go to a Padres-Astros game during Spring Break in San Diego so that we could see Matsui play again. Her room looks like a shrine. She regularly argues with the boy next door over why the Rockies are still better than the Red Sox, despite the 2007 World Series outcome.

This year in 7 th grade English class, Emily read Doris Kearns Goodwin's memoir Wait Till Next Year and wrote an A+ book report on it. Not bad for a girl who used to not like to read...she's started reading Goodwin's book again...this time just for fun.

Thank you, Rockies, for inspiring a middle-school girl to fall in love with baseball and discovering the world of books in the process.