The Rockies picked a lousy season to designate “Year of the Fan,” and not just because the motto puts a sad twist on every strikeout by Todd Helton.

Why should franchise ownership care if the Rockies are on the road to 100 losses so long as the team is also on pace to sell 2.6 million tickets for bad baseball?

Seldom have so many good-natured fans been taken so much for granted.

Somehow it seems very wrong the Rockies can give manager Jim Tracy a job for life with nothing more than a handshake, while franchise owners Dick and Charlie Monfort take fans’ hard-earned cash with a wink and a smile.

There is no accountability in the Rockies’ organization.

It does not matter if pitching coach Bob Apodaca fails with star pupil Ubaldo Jimenez. Barren drafts by general manager Dan O’Dowd are dismissed with a shrug. Even when struggling to hit his weight, Helton stays in the lineup, because the team has no viable alternative at first base.

Fire somebody? Why would the Rockies go to all that trouble when opening the gates at Coors Field is a license to print money?

“I know everybody wants a fall guy and everybody wants blood. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to do,” Dick Monfort said Tuesday, in an interview with The Post. “If this is anybody’s fault, it’s mine. I will take it right square between the middle of the eyes.”

We don’t want a fall guy.

We want a baseball team with a clue.

We don’t want blood.

We want a baseball owner who gives more than lip service to the pursuit of a championship.

Meaningful change is needed. The Rockies are wasting the best years in the careers of Troy Tulowtizki and Carlos Gonzalez, to say nothing about the time and money of Coloradans who built a beautiful ballpark in Denver.

With a straight face, Monfort insists he can’t think of a general manager in all of baseball who is as good as O’Dowd.

Really?

The teams built by O’Dowd have missed the playoffs in 10 of 12 seasons. None of the other sports executives in town could survive such miserable results. John Elway beat the rest of the NFL to sign Peyton Manning for the Broncos. A year after being forced to trade Carmelo Anthony to New York, Masai Ujiri is angry when the Nuggets are bounced from the playoffs.

When Jeremy Guthrie, the biggest loser in the American League over a three-year span, joins the Colorado rotation as staff ace, we’re supposed to believe the deal is a stroke of genius by O’Dowd.

“I just think he’s head and shoulders above everybody else,” Monfort said.

Please, don’t insult our intelligence.

Let’s go to the scoreboard. Number of World Series rings won by the Marlins and Diamondbacks: 3. Amount of baseball credibility for the Monforts: 0.

If the Rockies are destined to lose 100 times, there’s no point crying in your beer about it. Instead, bars in LoDo should encourage everybody to raise a glass in salutation of our lovable losers. Marketing suggestion: Offer 2-for-1 drinks at a Don’t Worry, Be Happy Hour after every defeat suffered by the home team.

Is the sunshine at Coors Field so bright it blinds consumers to a long line of false promises, whether the next big thing is JD Closser or Christian Friedrich? Know the real beauty of next year? It never comes until O’Dowd has time to switch the story line.

The Monforts might be able to fool most of the people, including themselves, most of the time. But attendance for home games has already dipped 10 percent from a year ago.

I’m not going to tell you to boycott our joke of a baseball team, especially if you think the ballpark on Blake Street is the perfect place to celebrate a birthday, ooh at Fourth of July fireworks or root for the St. Louis Cardinals.

But you can tell all your baseball-loving friends: Empty seats at Coors Field are a bigger threat to O’Dowd’s job security than the lollipop fastballs thrown by Jamie Moyer.

Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com