The row of seats at the mile-high mark is Rockies purple. Note that the seats are angled toward home plate.
Coors from center field
Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki is in the foreground. I’d first heard of him in the 2007 World Series when the Red Sox swept the Rockies. They had memorable names like Troy Tulowitzki, Taylor Tankersley and Yorvit Torrealba. When Tulowitzki came to bat the crowd would cheer “Na na na naaah, na na na naaah, hey hey, Too-low”
Todd Helton’s last at bat. September 24, 2013.
First visit: September 24, 2000. I stopped in Denver on the way home from the NAB Conmvention in San Francisco and took a cab from the airport to Coors Field. This was my fifth ballpark visit in 2000. The first was when I drove my daughters to Montreal for an Expos game during spring school vacation. The other four…Yankee Stadium (a trip back from Nashville where we shot TV commercials for Magic 106.7), Shea Stadium (a consulting trip to sister station Magic 97.3 in New Jersey), SBC Park (the SF convention I was just coming from) and now Coors, were all business tips I didn’t have to pay for. So this was the fifth.
It was about a 30-mile ride. I was surprised at how flat Colorado is east of Denver. As flat as Kansas (if you’re iffy on your state geography, Kansas is directly east of Colorado. Snow fell that September morning, but it melted by game time. I sat in an upper box, Section 126, looking down the 3rd base line. I had a Rockie Dog and a Coors. Okay, I had two. Todd Helton homered for the Rockies. Waterfalls go off in center field when a Rockie hits a homer. Former Red Sox 2b Jeff Frye played for the Rockies. Future Red Sox players Kevin Millar (lf) and Mike Lowell (3b) played for Florida. The Rockies won, 9-3.
Second visit: September 24, 2013. I flew to Denver to see the Red Sox play at Coors. Got to Denver at 10:30AM Mountain Time, so I rented a car from National, where you can choose any car in the aisle and go. I almost got a pickup truck but decided against it because I was planning on some pre-game road tripping.
As in lunch in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Then a spin east on I-80 until I hit Nebraska, which looked like Nebraska in the movie except in color. Not much there.
As I headed from Nebraska back into Colorado on I-80 there was a sign saying, “All boats must stop at the Port of Entry.” Huh? Port of Entry in Colorado? Boats? Houses there are three miles apart. I have no idea what one does out there if you have a kid with a play date. Or just need some milk. It’s a 20-mile drive in both directions. But…beautiful country. Looking east it’s flat, flat, flat. Looking west you see the Rockies with snow caps.
I got back to Denver in time for the game. It was Todd Helton night. The final home game for the longest-ever career Rockie. 17 years and 2,178 games playing 1st. He was presented with a horse before the game. His #17 was mowed into center field as seen in a photo above. Shane Victorino and Will Middlebrooks homered for the Red Sox, who won big time, 15-5. More noteworthy, Helton homered, as he had done in the first game I went to at Coors 13 years earlier. After his last inning playing 1st base his daughter went out and “stole” the base and handed it to him. At the end of the game he ran all around the park high-fiving everyone he could reach, like Yaz did at Fenway 30 years earlier. The entire Red Sox team stayed in their dugout to watch the whole thing. A guy from Denver who was sitting next to me said he thought that was a classy move by “your guys.” I didn’t argue.
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