Every time a Philly team visits Denver, it brings back a lot of memories.

Somewhere in the back of a closet, I have a piece of paper that says I'm a graduate of the University of Colorado. That's in Boulder, about a half hour away from Denver.

It was the late '70s, and I'm told Denver and Boulder are both much different places today. The downtown area where Coors Field now sits was kind of a ghost town back then. I always thought of Denver as one of the smallest "big" cities I had ever been in.

Nobody lived downtown. And pretty much everyone went home at 5 o'clock.

One thing obviously has not changed. The weather can be very nice in the Mile High Region, but fairly unpredictable. So no, I was not surprised when that storm blew in, dropping the temperature about 20 degrees just as the Phillies-Rockies playoff game was getting started.

I distinctly remember driving into the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 west of Denver one day heading for a day on the ski slopes. We entered the tunnel on the eastern end amid brilliant sunshine, and exited on the other side, which is also the other side of the Continental Divide, to blizzard condtions.

It's that kind of town.

And no, I wasn't terribly surprised when the lights went out in the stadium in the second inning. After all, the lights had gone out on the Phils offense in this series a long time ago.

How sweep it ain't. The Phils lost three straight. Maybe we celebrated winning the National League East too much. Maybe we exerted so much energy in overhauling the heated New York Mets we had nothing left.

At any rate, just as it does every year, next year has arrived for Phillies fans.

It didn't end on a Rocky Mountain High. Maybe it's just as well. They're calling for snow showers today in the Denber area.

Yeah, that's the town I remember.