SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Truth is not always found at the batting cage, but that's a place to look.

The Rockies are jumping in and out of the cage to address the pitches of manager Clint Hurdle, wearing another of his hats, swapping this one for the fungo task earlier and before the main one, which is to make good on promises long made, that the Rockies are ready.

"A wonderful time of the year," Hurdle had said, meaning only that, but how easy it is to extend the thought.

This is the best time of year for the Rockies, the time when a promise is proof enough. It has thus ever been and shall continue until . . . well, I ask general manager Dan O'Dowd that very question.

"We have no more excuses," O'Dowd said. "We've got to play better baseball."

Off over the center field wall in the distance are the Superstition Mountains, another portent of sorts, since faith and mystery seem to be the guiding principles of the Rockies.

They will play the Giants of San Francisco this day, swapping off a return in Tucson today, where it is unlikely any more of the primary Giants will make that trip than did the Rockies who matter.

The Colorado lineup looks like an early-bird menu, the cheaper version of the main course, with smaller portions and softer bites.

Barry Bonds, the biggest name in baseball, is in left field, but that's a column to come, except to say, Bonds looks more like a middle-aged banker than a ballplayer. Bonds will hit a two-run homer in the second inning off Byung-Hyun Kim, his fourth of the spring, and the Giants will win 11-7.

Just as the Rockies are better preseason, so are they better pregame. Yorvit Torrealba leaves the cage and Cory Sullivan jumps in. Clint Barmes waits. Sullivan bunts a ball fair.

Hurdle had asked me how many spring trainings this was for me, a polite inquiry, as if Hurdle really cared. But his particular charm is that he seems to. And so I give it an honest thought.

What occurs to me is an indignant column I had done on Bobby Murcer making more money than Mickey Mantle. How dare he. And that would place me around 1968 or '69, before even Hurdle became famous for, I guessed, 20 minutes.

"Less than that," Hurdle corrects.

No, Hurdle was quite the rage there for a little while, clever and handsome, and he could hit.

Hurdle tells me he liked the Yankees but he was a Tiger fan. And both of us agree that the Mick was better than Murcer.

Barmes is batting now. He whacks the ball sharply to left, a solid single and takes an extra moment to admire it.

Barmes makes, what, the minimum, and that is still three times more than Mantle.

But to answer Hurdle's question, this would make the 39th, the 40th spring, and all that matters is how reassuringly things are just the same. The stretching, the throwing, the casual lean into another day.

I'm thinking that three springs ago I asked O'Dowd about when things would get better, when the Rockies would matter, and he had ready a list of players in the minor leagues, learning the game, honing their skills, ready to arrive together and to the rescue.

Should this not then be them? Sullivan and Garrett Atkins and Troy Tulowitzki and Chris Iannetta and Aaron Cook and Jeff Francis, Brad Hawpe, Matt Holliday, those guys.

"Yes," O'Dowd said, "they are here. And there are more behind them."

But what O'Dowd agrees and what any Rockies fan should expect is that that building with youth plan ought now to be ready to produce better results.

Willy Taveras, the new center fielder, smacks a pitch smartly. Good form, good result. He could help.

"This is the most talented, the deepest, most experienced team we've had," O'Dowd says, which could be argued with, but I let it pass. "We've got to be focused better. We've got the ability. We just have to execute when the game is on the line."

O'Dowd is convinced that last year's Rockies - as he says, still playoff eligible until the third week in September - should have won more than they lost. They just did not get the hit, make the play, shut down an inning often enough.

"We've got to find confidence," he said. "That comes with winning, with making the play, getting the hit."

It occurs to me that I have heard this somewhere before.

From O'Dowd, surely.

From managers of the Cubs and the White Sox and the Yankees and even the old Washington Senators and Ted Williams himself, if in saltier words. It is the language of spring.

It all sounds so familiar, and because it is spring, so possible.

My, didn't Steve Finley look good turning on one of Hurdle's batting practice pitches?

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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