Coors Field

Coors Field
2001 Blake Street
Denver, CO 80205

July 3, 2011: On the day that we visited Coors Field, the Rockies were going for a sweep of the Royals. We arrived early enough to get street parking on Market Street near the corner of 18th Street. On Sundays, street parking is FREE!!! However, if you don’t get there early enough to partake in free parking, the parking garage on the corner of Market and 18th is $5 on weekends and weeknights. HELLO! You CAN’T get better than that! You just can’t. We’ve never been to a stadium that had parking available for so cheap. The stadium was only a few short walking blocks away.

On this corner, there is a statue called, “The Player.” The base of the statue is carved with a lovely Branch Rickey quote: “It is not honor that you take with you but the heritage you leave behind.” Probably something someone should’ve told Roger Clemens, hm?

The area surrounding Coors Field has a lot of little cute bars and on 16th Street, there’s an outdoor shopping center. We walked up Blake Street to get a look at the main entrance of the stadium.

We entered the stadium 2 hours before first pitch and who did we happen to bump into upon entering the building? Mount Rushmore of course!

It probably looks weird, but the Rockies had a few Mount Rushmore vacation packages being raffled off during that day’s game, so their presence sort of makes sense…Once inside, we headed for a souvenir store. On the way, we passed the Kid Zone (which is kind of pathetic. It’s playground basically). We’re too tall to play in it though.

Lisa bought her little Dinger stuffed animal for $15 and Serena paid $22 for her Rockies hat.

After souvenirs, we walked over to the area behind centerfield because we knew that we could watch the Royals bullpen. On the way, we spotted this little gem:

So now we knew what we were doing for the 3rd inning. The fake landscape behind the centerfield wall is supposed to mimic the landscape of Colorado (which is quite beautiful).

This is the landscape that this area is representing:

The Royals bullpen is pretty accessible as you can see in these pictures here. Serena basically took these pictures by squeezing between 2 Royals fans (and there was surprisingly a lot of them there) and hanging over the wall. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Because we’re so predictable, our next stop was food (in our defense, we hadn’t eaten breakfast). AJ kept talking up this so-called “Xtreme Dog,” so we checked out the nearest stand on the main level near left field. Each hot dog was $6.50.

Lisa ordered the Denver Dog, which included jalapeño peppers, cheddar cheese, chopped onions, and green chili sauce. Serena ordered the New York Dog, which included grilled peppers and onions, spicy mustard, sauerkraut, and chopped onions. Because she eats like a great white shark and because she was allowed to, Serena also added cheddar cheese and jalapeño peppers. So yes. The Xtreme Dogs can be customized to suite your taste.

AJ’s Rockies’ Bacon Bleu included chopped onions, bleu cheese sauce, bleu cheese crumbles, and bacon.

Our seats were located in the upper deck. The concourse is completely open to the beautiful Colorado weather and Denver skyline. AJ’s go-go-gadget arms sure came in handy. Note the rooftop bar directly behind us. AJ tells us that it's a hopping spot and when we left the game, we walked by it and saw that the line to get in was quite long! So...AJ must've been right about his assessment.

Despite the seats being so high up, they offered a pretty good view of things.

The scoreboard is pretty standard issue:

Lisa finally bought herself a foam finger…nevermind the fact that she’s a Mets fan. She DID donate it to AJ after we left though.

Being that it was 4th of July weekend, the pregame festivities were obviously very patriotic.

There was a brief fireworks display that Lisa attempted to photograph multiple times. This is the best of the bunch:

George Washington threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Before each game, during a Rockies’ home run, and following a Rockies’ victory, the fountains in centerfield go up.

The game’s pitching matchup was the Rockies’ Jason Hammel versus the Royals’ Luke Hochevar. Since the day’s theme was patriotism and Mount Rushmore, the Rockies’ batters were posted to the scoreboard like this:

Lisa was so amused by these photos, she wanted to get a picture of each player in this state, but Serena assured her that that would be ridiculous endeavor. The 1st inning concluded with the Royals leading 1-0 because Melky Cabrera CREAMED a home run over the right field wall. It was nailed. You could hear the bat connect with the ball from our seats.

At the top of the 3rd, we ran back down to main level to the Dinger Meet & Great behind centerfield and near the Royals’ bullpen. Success!

Excited about our glorious photo and since we were in the area, we decided to hit the Blue Moon Sandlot Brewery, which is located near Gate B on the main level.

When Gate B is open, you can also enter the brewery from outside the stadium.

Lisa and Serena both ordered the Blue Moon Seasonal Summer Wheat and AJ ordered the Sandlot Brown. All beers were $6.75/each.

After polishing off our beers, we returned to our section...but before taking our seats, we had to buy some Tornadough because we were still hungry…naturally. Tournadough is a fallic stick of yummy dough available in 3 flavors: parmesan, butter, and cinnamon. Each stick was $4.50. Lisa got cinnamon, AJ got parmesan, and Serena got butter. Then we sampled each other’s sticks. We’re a friendly bunch and clearly, none of us are concerned about contracting any sort of oral disease from each other.

By the time we waddled our chubby, sweaty asses back to our seats, it was the bottom of the 5th and the score was 6-0 in favor of Kansas City, the Rockies were batting, and there was bases loaded with only 1 out. Clearly, we had missed quite a lot. Also, Hochevar had already been replaced with Eric Stults. What the hell?? Just as we sat down, Carlos Gonzalez smacked a 3-run double to right center. Following Gonzalez, Mark Ellis launched a 2-run home run to left field (that wasn’t quite as impressive as Melky’s). Cue the fountains:

Now it’s a game. Score 6-5. Unfortunately, this didn’t last long. We had two options here with this blog. We could report on every single painful play and allow you to experience the torture that we experienced OR break it down for you like this: the f*cking Rockies ended up losing 16-8. Allow us to let this resonate. The Royals scored 16 mother f*cking runs. What the flying f*ck? The only bright spot about this score is that since the Rockies score 7 runs or more, the next day, we’d be able to get 4 tacos from a participating Taco Bell for $2 from 4-6:00 pm. If the Yankees or Mets played like this, we would’ve turned off the game a very long time ago. Instead, we stuck out the full 9 innings, contracted terrible, terrible tan lines that made us look like we worked part time for a landscaping company, developed swamp ass and breast sweat, became increasingly cranky, and all for what? To see the fireworks display that was supposedly taking place at the close of the game. As per AJ. Game ended and AJ took this picture:

Note how the stands are empty. Why would the stands be empty if there was going to be a fireworks show for our country’s glorious birthday? We’ll tell you why. AJ is a liar. The fireworks displays had taken place the night before and on Friday. There’d be no fireworks on Sunday. Good job, AJ. And he’s going to be doctor some day.

PS- Troy Tulowitzki comes to the plate to Justin Bieber…pretty much the most unmanly thing we’ve ever witnessed. We made fun of Jeff Francoeur’s country music, but this?? This is pathetic. It makes us want to ask Troy if he needs a tampon.

So  to honor Troy's girlyness, we're going to to tap into that which is The Bieber: "And I was like Troy, Troy, Troy, oh, like Troy, Troy, Troy, no, like Troy, Troy, Troy, oh, we thought you'd be manlier."