DENVER -- After striking out the first time, Rockies fans will get a second chance Tuesday to purchase tickets for the World Series games at Coors Field.

Rockies spokesman Jay Alves said the 20,000 tickets still available will again be offered on the Rockies Web site beginning at noon Tuesday. The tickets will only be sold online, he said.

Alves said the Web site had been a victim of a "malicious attack" Monday morning that shut it down.

"Our Web site, and ultimately, our fans and our organization, were the victim of an external malicious attack on our Web site that shut down the system and kept our fans from being able to purchase their World Series tickets," Alves said.

An IT expert told 7NEWS it is possible the Web site fell victim to what's called a denial-of-service attack.

These kinds of attacks work by overloading the target machine with external, spontaneous requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.

Or it could be that the server simply didn't have enough capacity to handle the load of ticket buyers, he said. Either way, the computer expert questions whether the Rockies have enough time to fix the problem by noon Tuesday.

Alves did not specify what exactly happened to the Rockies Web site but did say a contingency plan had been put into place should anything happen Tuesday.

"We have backup plans in place. Should something go wrong tomorrow, we will immediately go to those plans," Alves said.

Alves said after weighing all of the options, the "online sale approach is the most fair and equitable approach."

He added, "It has been a very frustrating day, not only for our fans, but for us in particular."

Fans Endure Major League Disappointment

"The news that the site was subject to a 'malicious attack' astounds me! How arrogant can Rockies management be? Are we honestly supposed to assume their ill-prepared servers went down because of an attack and not the 10-plus million hits it received in just over two hours?" one Rockies viewer wrote in our online forum. "This is a horrible cop out. At what point do they accept responsibility for what happened? Here's $20 that the servers go down again tomorrow. If ticket sales are any measure of success, the Red Sox are already 1-0 in the World Series."

Colorado's sales of World Series tickets were shut down Monday morning after the computer system handling the sale was overwhelmed.

Rocktober quickly gave way to Mocktober for thousands of frustrated fans who were left staring at error pages on their computer screens.

Team officials had said earlier their computers were ready to handle the expected crush of traffic because they are hosted on MLB.com servers. However, they didn't mention earlier that ticket requests would actually be funneled off to servers hosted by evenue.net in California.

Ticket sales were suspended about 2 ½ hours after online sales began.

"We're shutting the system down, we're going to suspend it," Alves said Monday afternoon. "We're as frustrated as our fans are."

The spokesman made his comments as dozens of fans gathered at Coors Field, chanting and booing throughout his brief news conference. They had gathered at the ticket office after they had no luck buying tickets online and had hoped that the Rockies would change their mind and sell tickets at Coors Field. Some even carted out their wireless laptops, just in case the online system was available again.

"I'm trying to cover all my bases -- no pun intended," said one Rockies fan.

Alves said about 500 tickets were sold to several hundred people before the system was shut down. Those tickets are valid and will be honored, Alves said.

He said the company actually handling the ticket sales was overwhelmed by Rockies fans -- unlike anything they had seen in previous online sales.

"Our ticket vendor, Paciolan and Major League Baseball, were overwhelmed -- 8.5 million hits in an hour-and-a-half is a phenomenal total. Paciolan services more than 700 college and professional level teams and they are amazed and overwhelmed by what's happened here this morning," he said.

That figure probably did not surprise many fans who had predicted the computer system would melt from the crush of fans wanting tickets.

According to the Rockies Web site, Paciolan experienced a system-wide outage that impacted all of its North American customers. The outage affected Paciolan's other clients including the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the University of Colorado football team and the National Western Stock Show.

Paciolan CEO Dave Butler said he did not yet know whether demand for Rockies tickets caused the crash. Paciolan owns evenue.net.

"This is not the Rockies' fault in anyway, whatsoever," Butler said. "We are working hard to address it."

On its Web site, Paciolan states that it sold 120 million tickets last year -- about 25 percent of all concert and sporting event tickets sold in 2006.

Some irate fans pointed out that Paciolan has dozens of job openings posted on Monster.com, but it was not clear if this helped contribute to the problem.

The owner of Fark.com, a popular news aggregating Web site, was one of those trying in vain to get tickets for his father, who lives in Colorado.

"These idiots always have these consultants that tell them, 'Sure, the server can handle the traffic,'" said Drew Curtis. "In reality, that only works over the course of a day. If a zillion people hit the damn thing all at once, it goes boom. Think CNN on 9/11."

One fan has even threatened a class action lawsuit.

"I think it's unethical in terms of the fans. This is what it's about. We came here and we supported these guys and now they're taking this, and just like other big events like concerts and sporting events, they want to capitalize on it, " said fan Bryan Hartmann. He believes that selling only online leaves out too many fans and gives ticket brokers the advantage.

Coors Field seats more than 50,000, but about 30,000 spots per game are allotted to season-ticket holders, the two teams and Major League Baseball.

Season-ticket holders got a chance to buy their World Series tickets last weekend and experienced no major problems.

The online-only sales for regular fans began at 10 a.m. Monday, and the Rockies site was re-directing fans to evenue.net to purchase tickets. A check of a number of computers showed all users either getting very slow loading pages or getting "unable to display Web site" errors when trying to buy tickets.

The Rockies went to the online-only option saying that it was the most fair and efficient way to sell tickets, doing away with selling tickets by lottery.

The Boston Red Sex sold their World Series tickets a week ago, before the team knew it was going to the Fall Classic. Red Sox fans had to register by Oct. 8 for a random drawing. Those tickets were sold over the phone last Monday. Buyers were allowed two tickets for just one game.