When Troy Tulowitzki was pulled from the ninth inning of Monday night's game against the Chicago Cubs, I and other Rockies fans feared he might've been injured as he twisted his upper body running down the line to first base.

Turns out our fears were wrong. Sadly, wrong. He had been traded.

Almost a year to the day after the Colorado Rockies infamously misspelled Tulowitzki's last name on a jersey giveaway day, Rockies fans are now learning how to spell "Toronto."

Man. I'm open minded to see the return for Tulo, but initial gut reaction is that I'm just kinda bummed out — Hayden W Kane (@hwkane) July 28, 2015

Within an hour of the trade on Monday night, though it was near midnight Mountain Time on a weekday, over 500 comments had been rung up on the popular Purple Row blog. Former Rockies players and current Root Sports commentators Jason Hirsh and Ryan Spilborghs tried to console fans as Tulo trended on Twitter.

I am a shocked. I am sad, I am happy. I am curious the whole deal. A great friend. A great teammate. Wish him nothing but the best. — Ryan Spilborghs (@spillygoat19) July 28, 2015

For many of us Rockies fans, Tulowitzki was Rocktober. That was the nickname we gave our 2007 team that rode a 20-8 September and survived a 163rd-game tiebreaker into the Rockies' only World Series appearance. As a rookie playing in his first full season, nary a day went by in which Tulowitzki wasn't involved in some clutch hit or jump throw from deep in the hole. At Coors Field, chants and claps for "Tulo" and "MVP" began that year and have echoed throughout the ballpark since.

Even through the lean years, of which there had been many of late at the corner of 20th and Blake, Tulowitzki received our raves and accolades. Fans named their children or pets after him, wore his jersey, and grew mullets as a sign of their admiration and allegiance. Tulowitzki epitomized the desire to win, something a sports crazy town like Denver can appreciate.

Ever since Rocktober, Tulo has driven us crazy. One day he'd do things with the bat and the glove we hadn't seen before. The next day, he might be injured for a day or a month.

You'd never see him smile, but you knew he loved baseball and didn't take the game or anyone in it for granted. You saw him intensely focused on his job, cheering teammates if he wasn't turning a game around himself. We appreciated that he cared more about winning a baseball game than the fan vote for the All-Star team. As he said at the time, "My job is to go out here and play, play hard every single day, and help the Rockies win games. That's what I'm concentrating on." We believed in him.

So did Rockies owner Dick Monfort, who more than once said that when Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez are healthy the Rockies are a playoff team. Some of us fans, each year, even believed that. Tulowitzki had become a huge part of our Rockies hopes for a winning 2015 season, a winning 2014 season, 2013 ... 2012 ... so many of those hopes, dashed. This year, however, they've both been healthy and the Rockies are still not a playoff team.

This move, while sad, shows that there is a semblance of reality for this new front office. The last front office lived in a dream world. — David Martin (@RockiesReview) July 28, 2015

If anything, what this trade does is tell fans what many already knew but were waiting for ownership to finally acknowledge: The Rockies are not contenders. Many of those same fans and bloggers wanted change, and got that in part when former co-general managers Bill Geivett and Dan O'Dowd departed after last season. Some clamored for new GM Jeff Bridich to make waves, but the acquisitions of Nick Hundley and Kyle Kendrick were little more than a ripple. Now we have a tsunami. Even trading Matt Holliday to the Oakland Athletics, for Gonzalez, didn't rock the boat like this trade.

Gone as well is LaTroy Hawkins. He was also on that 2007 team that went to the World Series. He also liked Colorado enough to come back. His fan club extended well into the Rockies' fan base, prolific on Twitter and on Instagram. We loved watching him "solve Coors Field" after so many other players with more hype struggled. Last year he took the reins as Rockies closer and handled it well. When he began 2015 with a few rough outings, he took the demotion from that role gracefully. As the elder statesman of the pitching staff he was a positive clubhouse presence for the assortment of homegrown arms that tried to chew through the altitude. Part of Rockies history left Denver with him.

Hey #Rockie Fans it has been a pleasure to play in front of you for 2 1/2 years. Denver will always... https://t.co/GvPaPXgKnM — LaTroy Hawkins (@LaTroyHawkins32) July 28, 2015

So now, for the baseball fans in Denver, we have what we wanted. Real change. We sigh a little sadly and acknowledge that, yeah, Gonzalez, our CarGo, who fought through an injury-riddled 2014 and an early 2015 slump, is likely the next to depart.

We turn our eye toward Nolan Arenado, fresh off his first All-Star appearance and well on his way to his third Gold Glove, and wonder if he will be on the next winning Rockies team. We'll ask that the money that was to go to Tulowitzki’s contract will eventually go to Arenado.

We cross our fingers and toes and wish we could do it with our nose, hoping that this is not a salary dump but a true rebuilding of the organization. For those who root for the Rockies from a vantage point closer than the upper deck rooftop at Coors Field, we plead that change is brought to the organization, not just in terms of external players and prospects but in external player evaluators or, dare we say it, a new Rockies president, hired from outside the organization to look over all things Rockies with a more critical eye than our owner's passionate but hopelessly hopeful biased one.

Perhaps Bridich, Rockies roots and all, is that eye. We won't know the results of this trade, or a potential CarGo one, nor the results of his first draft, for years. Until then, we'll wonder if he, too, will be a part of the next winning Rockies team.

But enough of "until then." Fans of the Rockies franchise woke up a little bit stunned, a little bit resigned that our Tulo is actually gone, and to Toronto, of all places. Different country, different league, and with no scheduled date that the Blue Jays will be visiting Coors Field or grace our television sets. It might've been easier to say goodbye to Tulowitzki and give him that one last standing ovation if he had been traded to the moon. He deserved better.

Richard Bergstrom runs the Rockies Zingers site.