Just before 9 a.m. in Denver, Major League Baseball contacted team officials at the hotel to inform them that Game 3 of the National League division series would be postponed until tonight.

That gave players and coaches an unexpected day off to dine out or shop but, most assuredly, not to golf, and left scores of early-arriving Rockies fans with no nighttime plans.

"I'm so disappointed," said Allison, after she'd picked herself up, found a seat inside a sandwich shop, and learned that the game had been called. "I wanted to see that game. I'm a skier. This weather isn't bad at all."

Maybe not for mountain sports. But for baseball, temperatures in the teens and the possibility that the weather could create another PR debacle (which happened in Game 5 of last year's World Series), it was plenty bad enough.

At dawn, it was snowing and 17 degrees, and, according to the Denver Post, there were "multitudes of accidents" on area roads. By 9 a.m., the infield tarp and the outfield at Coors Field, the only baseball stadium with heating coils beneath its playing surface, were snow-covered.

Denver's streets and sidewalks were topped by a thin layer of icy snow. Workers spread sand along the 16th Street pedestrian mall. Tree branches and flowering shrubs sagged like John Kruk's belly. Conventioneers, who hadn't brought any winter clothes, shivered as they strode through the city center.

It was, three weeks before Halloween, a scary and unusual scene.

"We got up to take the dogs for a walk, and when two beagles don't want to go outside, I don't see how baseball players would see this as a real good day to be playing," Colorado manager Jim Tracy told the Associated Press. "It was snowing and 18 degrees, not very conducive for baseball."

It did warm up slightly as the day progressed, and forecasters predicted the game-time temperature would have been 33. But by 11 p.m. in Denver, when the game could easily have been still going it, it would have been 19.

"I'm glad we're not playing when it's zero degrees out," Werth said. "I don't think those are fair conditions. . . . I didn't want to play. I could have, but it wouldn't be fair."

According to the National Weather Service in Boulder, Colo., that reading of 17, at Denver International Airport, was 8 degrees colder than the Oct. 11 record of 25 set in 1905.

"That record was crushed," said the weather service's Bob Koopmeiners.

So were Allison and those Rockies fans who had landed in downtown Denver early, hoping that before they headed home their team would have owned a lead of two games to one in the series.

"I guess I'll just hang around here for a while. Then I'll go back home and come back again [tonight]," Allison said. "This really stinks. Couldn't they just wear parkas or something?"

Allison and other disheartened fans roamed the pedestrian mall and the shops at Union Station, treading carefully over icy spots even as the snow dissipated and temperatures crept slightly higher.

They were joined earlier by Utah fans in red gear, in town for yesterday's Utah-Colorado State football game at nearby Fort Collins.

"We were hoping to get back [from the football game] in time to go to the baseball game. But we'd probably have watched it from a bar near the stadium," said Kevin Manser, a Utah junior. "I even bought a Phillies hat, but only because they're red like us."

The Rockies revealed that as bad as conditions might have been last night, they'd actually played in worse. On April 12, 1997, it was 28 degrees when an Expos-Rockies game began at Coors Field.

And just last season, on April 10, an inch-plus of snow forced postponement of a Rockies-Braves game.

Meanwhile, in the tony Ritz-Carlton, Phillies players and officials strolled through the lobby en route to lunch, shopping or a movie in the quiet downtown.

Reliever Scott Eyre was heading to the Bass Pro Shops with his wife, Laura, and two sons, Caleb and Jacob. They planned to buy some warm wool socks and some "fishin' stuff."

Ice fishing?

"No," Eyre said. "We have a pond in our yard in Florida."

 Eyre said he wouldn't have minded playing because "the bullpen has heaters."

At the time, Eyre was not aware that Charlie Manuel had replaced Pedro Martinez with J.A. Happ as the starter for tonight's rescheduled Game 3.

"I wouldn't want to be the one telling a Hall of Famer, 'You're not pitching,' " he said.

Martinez called the postponement "reasonable."

"It's horrible weather for everybody," he said.

"When I got up in the morning and went downstairs to go outside, I noticed it was pretty cold," Manuel said. "Somebody told me that it was 17 degrees, and being the smart guy that I am, I figured it was going to get to 20. That's too cold to play baseball. I think they made the right decision."

Brett Myers and Chad Durbin were also bound for downtown stores.

"We're going to be here an extra day," Myers said. "I need clothes."

The good news for the Phils and Rockies is that it's expected to be in the low 50s today. The bad news is that it will be in the mid-30s by game time.

"That's warm for Colorado," Allison said. "So the Rockies will definitely have an advantage."

at 215-854-5068 or ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com.

Staff writers Jim Salisbury and Andy Martino contributed to this report.