Wednesday, June 27, 2012

7 Cities, 7 Games, 7 Days - Day 5

Coors Field is my twenty-first major league baseball stadium.  Nice thing about this one, I had company on my trip to the ballpark in the form of my sister-in-law (Emily), her husband (Steve), a good friend of hers, and Steve's brother.  They were an entertaining group and provided good banter throughout the game. According to Emily, the Rockies lost to the Washington Nationals by the score of 12 points to 5 points.  I tried explaining that they're called runs, but I really just don't think she cared.

Here's a pic of the main entrance, behind home plate, to Coors Field.  We arrived in the middle of the first inning and the Rock Pile seats, which usually sell for $5 were already sold out.  I promptly walked across the street and purchased five from a scalper for face value.  Heck, what's the use of haggling when you're paying for a $5 ticket. I can't ever recall being admitted to a MLB park for $5 though.  Nice!

The upper tier of seating in center field is known as the Rock Pile.  It totally reminded me of Wrigley's bleachers.  Not because we were sitting up high, but because we had loud, drunk, early-twenty-somethings sitting behind us.

On the way into the ballpark we walked by the Blue Moon Brewing Company, which is actually housed inside the same facility as Coors Field.  No, this was not simply a bar/restaurant, it was that AND a brewery!

Here's a shot of the scoreboard in left field, which once held the title of largest scoreboard in professional sports.

Walking from the right field corner (pictured above) to center field one passes through a corridor that is home to a mural of the history of Denver.  The mural itself was probably over eighty feet long.  Here's a small glimpse of it:

 Shot from Rock Pile in center field:

 Below is a token picture of Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals.  Harper, only 19 years old,  is all the rage in baseball right now, but he did not have one of his better nights: 1 for 5 and he committed a throwing error.

Here's a shot of the Rockies bullpen.  Somewhere in there lies a fountain among the pine.  The bullpen was kind of like a microcosm of the landscape of Colorado and it even had wildlife!  Yes, we saw the bullpen monitor chase a duck and two ducklings from the bullpen mound when a pitcher needed to warm up! 

The purple horizontal row of seats in the picture below represent an elevation that is equivalent to one mile above sea level.  Pretty cool!

I think this is my favorite picture from the trip tonight.  Steve was a great host and took the time to show me around the park.  Thanks, Steve!

At one point this afternoon it was 106 degrees by the reading on my car's thermometer. Then I passed through a rainstorm and it dipped to 82.  It was back up into the mid 90's by game time.  One more night in Golden, CO, and then off to cooler temps in Omaha.  (Well, a guy can dream.)



1 comment:

  1. Tom--just wanted you to know that I helped Ralph look at all of your vacation-trip entries/photos tonight. He enjoyed them. I asked him if he wanted to write a comment--he said no, but was glad that I would type something on his behalf. He seemed most impressed by the purple mile-high seats and the nice photo of you and Steve. He chuckled at your story about getting $5 seats from a scalper. Love & hugs, Mom

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