Who's on First?

It's in a counterclaim to that suit that the Rockies are asking for an injunction against Lewis and rockies.com. And Kelley, who used to have a reputation as the region's most ardent defender of the First Amendment, is leading the charge.

Is the First Amendment out at first just because a baseball publication's moved to the Internet?

Lewis doesn't see the Rockies demanding that other newspapers stop using the color purple, or reproducing the team's logo, or putting out their own guides to the baseball season. "I'm a maverick," he says. "I'm a maverick publisher. I consider myself a maverick Web publisher. I'm an independent kind of guy. I'm not using the word 'unofficial.' If they can't make the Denver Post do it, the Rocky Mountain News do it, Westword do it, I'm not going to do it."

Currently, his site carries this identification: "The independent daily newspaper about Colorado Rockies Baseball."

You might think that would be enough--but you'd be underestimating the economic greed of this team, which has fought with vendors over ventures literally worth peanuts. And you'd be underestimating the enmity this team has toward Lewis, the man it has ordered arrested three times--for exercising his First Amendment rights on a public right-of way outside a ballpark built with public money.

Lewis vows to fight on. "The Colorado Rockies can't arrest me while I'm in cyberspace," he points out.

And the game continues. Before you vote to extend the tax that built Coors Field for the Rockies and commit to spending $180 million to replace a perfectly good stadium with a monument to Pat Bowlen, consider this: Lewis has also staked a claim to the address broncos.com.

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