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April 12, 2004

Opening Day

Amanda and I headed north to Denver today for a new experience: attending the Rockies’ home opener against Arizona. This was our first Opening Day, and it turned out to be a good one, although the temperature certainly made a bid to move the start of the season back by a few weeks.

We got to the stadium a little more than an hour before game time. The streets were already pretty full, and the area was clearly ready for the Rockies. Purple bunting was in evidence on almost every building, and all of the streets leading to the park had arches of purple balloons floating above them. The main entrance to Coors Field opens onto a large sidewalk where there were numerous games and even a small bandstand where a band was playing to entertain fans prior to the game. Amanda and I were in a hurry to get to our seats, so we skipped past these events to get into the park.

We reached our seats as the players finished warming up. The Rockies started the opening festivities roughly 40 minutes before game time. The first event was recognizing a young boy with cancer who wanted to meet some of the Rockies. The Make-A-Wish Foundation had granted his wish, so Preston Wilson gave him a bunch of Rockies memorabilia. The Rockies also gave his family season tickets and a number of other smaller benefits. Watching Wilson with the kid, I have to wonder how tough a part of a ballplayer’s job that is. There is, sadly, no shortage of sick children in the world, and I’m sure a sizable fraction of them wish for nothing more than to meet a favorite ballplayer. It has to be incredibly emotionally draining for players to see these dying or potentially dying kids who have asked only to see them. Yes, the ballplayers get paid big money, but I don’t know that all the money in the world would be enough for me to have to repeatedly deal with sick kids.

In any case, the Rockies followed this up with what has to be the lamest promotion in history. Frontier Air, “Official Airline of the Rockies,” had a flyover that consisted of a plane flying by the stadium at a distance of 10-15 miles. The crowd was nonplussed. With that excitement out of the way, the teams introduced their rosters. Not their starting lineups: their rosters, including all the coaches. On the plus side, Robin Yount is now hitting coach for the Diamondbacks, and it was nice to hear him get a rich ovation from the Colorado fans. While the teams were being introduced, color guards from each of the military services marched onto the outfield grass behind second base and a trainer with a bald eagle took position directly behind second base. Other color guards from the Denver Police and Fire Departments lined the foul lines in the outfield. An even larger group came into the outfield with an American flag that, when unfurled, covered almost the entire outfield.

The cast of Colorado’s longest-running play, “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” sang the National Anthem. They did a fair job, although it was difficult to focus on them. When they came to the rockets’ red glare fireworks went off in the outfield, and shortly thereafter four F16s overflew the stadium, demonstrating the proper technique for a flyover. As the National Anthem ended more fireworks were fired off, along with purple streamers, and purple balloons were released throughout the outfield. All in all, an impressive start to the season.

The Rockies then performed two first pitch ceremonies. The first was with a season ticket holder, which is apparently a Rockies tradition. The second included Colorado Governor Bill “Help, My state is on fire” Owens and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. None of the three skipped the pitch, which was good to see, although none of them threw off the mound, either. And with that, it was finally time for the game to start.

The first six and a half innings were a low-scoring affair, doubtless affected by the temperature. I saw reports that the game was a sellout, but there were plenty of open seats visible from where we were sitting, so I think the cold scared a lot of people off. They missed a very interesting game. Arizona opened up a 3-0 lead with single runs in the second, fourth, and sixth innings. The Rockies came back with three runs in the bottom of the sixth, and Arizona scored again in the top of the seventh to make it 4-3. Then things got weird. The Rockies’ leadoff batter reached on an infield single that was all hustle, and Royce Clayton bunted him to second. The Diamondbacks intentionally walked Todd Helton to set up the double play, and Koplove never found the strike zone again, walking Castilla to load the bases and Burnitz to force in a run. Valverde was even worse: his first pitch hit Charles Johnson to force in a run, and his next pitch was wild, letting another run score. Valverde then walked the bases loaded again and threw a second wild pitch for the fourth Colorado run of the inning. Valverde then settled in, but it was too late, as Colorado now led 7-4, the final score of the ballgame.

Following the game we headed over to a chophouse a block from Coors. That area of Denver is known as LoDo, for Lower Downtown, and it is full of brewpubs and restaurants that sprang up after Coors was built. It’s a great part of Denver, and we thoroughly enjoyed our dinner, the perfect capstone for a great day of baseball.

A quick thank-you to David Pinto, without whose Opening Day project I would never have thought to have gone to the game.