Baseball High

I will never again make the mistake of eating a veggie hot dog at a ball park. Or anywhere. Bad food choices aside, I had a great afternoon yesterday at Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. And my beer choice, a Dales Tall Boy, was perfect.

Having been decidedly Floridized, my arrival in Denver on Tuesday was a bit of a shock, cold and snowy. But the weather gods made up for that the next day with abundant sunshine and temps in the mid-60s, perfect for a ball game. And when you're a mile up, the sun can make 65 degrees feel like 75 degrees.

My son had purchased tickets for the three of us (Sam, his girl Andrea, and me) ahead of time, and he chose wisely. Front row of the third tier, right behind home plate. If you look up to the Upper Deck, you can see that the 20th row of seats are purple instead of green. That row marks 5,200 feet above sea level, a mile high! Coors Field is the highest park in the major leagues! Not only that, it is the third largest baseball park (by capacity: 50,445) in the United States, bested only by Dodger Stadium and Yankee Stadium.

And those mile-high seats are purple for a reason. The Rockies' mascot, Dinger, is a purple triceratops (not to be confused with Barney, the purple tyrannosaurus), a tribute to the dinosaur fossils found during construction of the stadium in 1962. Workers unearthed a 7-foot long, 1000 pound triceratops skull, believed to be 66 million years old. (What do you think of that, Young Earth Creationists?)

Coors Field is inarguably the most hitter-friendly park in the country. The low air density at such a high altitude means that hit balls will travel farther than in other ballparks. And the designers of Coors Field knew that ahead of time, placing the outfield fences farther from home plate than they are placed at other parks. Consequently, Coors Field has the largest outfield in Major League Baseball. Hitters love the increased chances of hitting a homer; pitchers, not so much.

We watched the Rockies beat the Padres 5 - 2 with Jon Gray pitching eleven strikeouts. Although there were no home runs, David Dahl hit a two-run triple in the third inning. Seeing the Padres play, I couldn't help but remember being at AT&T Park in San Francisco with Sam on September 25, 2014 to watch the Giants beat the Padres 9 - 8. Not only was it memorable to be at a ballgame in San Francisco with Sam, but we got to see Brandon Belt hit one into McCovey Cove, a feat known as the "Levi Splash." This has happened 78 times in the ballpark's history; we witnessed "Splash 68." And to make the experience even better, Sam and I happened to be seated in the section that won gift cards to the Levi Strauss store on Market Street!

Coors Field is known for many things, including the fact that the Blue Moon Brewery at the Sandlot produces the same fresh beer that you can get at the Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado. I will confess to having done that tour, and I will also confess to having had a second tall boy at the game yesterday . . . a Blue Moon, of course. (It helped me digest that horrid veggie dog.)

At Coors Field: me, Sam, and Andrea