The lovely Penny, 45 minutes before the first pitch, from centerfield at Coors Field 

Denver: The Rockies; a hitter's park; a tourist's downtown

Coors Field and the area around

August 5, 2019

San Francisco Giants 6, Colorado Rockies 5

This is like welcoming an old friend. The baseball blog.

Life has gotten in the way of happiness – if I’m defining baseball as happiness, that is, which I am.

This is a late, late blog entry, which certainly defeats the purpose of writing a blog, I suppose..

But here’s what happened. Penny and I visited Denver in August 2019 and took in a Saturday night game at Coors Field between the Colorado Rockies and the San Francisco Giants. It was, in fact, one of the best games we’ve seen on our journey of touring ball parks. 

The number of parks we've visited is now 23, by the way.

But about life interrupting us, since that excellent, warm night at Coors Field in August, we have experienced sickness in the family, personal illnesses, the birth of a grandchild and the onset of COVID-19. The coronavirus event means little to no chance of Major League Baseball for us this season – whatever season there is.

Our plan in 2019 had been to hit Denver and the two New Yorks, which would have put us at 25 MLB stadiums visited. Alas, we didn't make it to New York..

Aside from the Yankees and Mets, we have Arizona, Los Angeles (twice), San Francisco and Seattle to go. Oddly, on other travels we have driven right by the San Francisco and Seattle stadiums, but neither team was home. Since we started this whole journey in Oakland, with the Giants not in town, it seems only fitting that we should return to the Bay Area and make San Francisco the final stop. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Whereas life often blocks happiness, sometimes it gives you an assist. I had a business trip planned for Denver during the first week of August. Tah-dah. The Rockies were hosting the Giants on Saturday night before my conference started. Penny joined me for the first couple of days.

We had been to Denver before. Last time we experienced a bunch of Colorado-tourist experiences. We visited Pike's Peak, the Air Force Academy, the State Capitol, Colorado Springs, the Garden of the Gods, Boulder and Buffalo Bill's burial place. We hit downtown on our last trip and even drove by Coors Field, in a similar way to what we did in San Francisco and Seattle.

This trip we stayed in downtown, just a couple of blocks off the extraordinarily trendy and cool 16th Street, better known as the Pedestrian Mall. The street is filled with high-end and some medium-end shops, plus a million bars and restaurants.
And, yes, the pot shops are somewhere close by. I asked a friend what one should expect if he were to venture into one. He said: "Expect more security getting in than you'll get at Coors Field.

Coors Field, by the way, is also close by, five blocks or so north of 16th. It's an entertaining walk.

And Coors Field was a nice, clean, comfortable venue for a good game. On a side note, it's somehow satisfying that there is a stadium in the Major Leagues that has the same name it had (in 1995) when it opened. Not iconic in the Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field sense, but still, Coors Field definitely says baseball in Colorado.

Bottom line: Terrific area, pleasant stadium, reasonably good atmosphere, full house, even though neither team was playoff bound.

An added bonus for me was that one of the best pitchers of this era, Madison Bumgarner, was on the mound for the Giants.

It only diminished the evening a little for me that Bumgarner got shelled in the third and fifth innings. He lasted five innings, giving up five earned runs. Still, the dude was humming it.

Good tickets, behind third base, therefore, screen in the photo.

Another extremely cool part of the evening for me was that the winning run came off the bat of Buster Posey, who was pinch hitting in the eighth. With the Giants trailing 5-4, Posey’s single to right drove in the tying and winning runs.

I remembered watching Posey’s clutch play in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series. I am a fan.

I wondered if Bumgarner’s less-than-stellar outing had anything to do with Coors Field’s reputation – backed by a wealth of stats, I will add – as a hitter’s paradise. You know, these baseball trips always dredge memories for me, and I recall when the Rockies first entered the league, I would hear Skip Carey and

Buster Posey, game-winner coming

Ernie Johnson, the Braves announcers on Superstation WTBS, discussing the fact that hitting a baseball in Denver was sometime like teeing up a golf ball and slamming it with a driver.

We saw three homers, none of them cheap. Gennett homered for the Giants, Story and Blackmon for the Rockies. Ian Desmond almost added another Rockies’ homer, but Steven Duggar made one of those leaping reach-over-the-fence grabs to rob Desmond.

It was a fine night at the park.