The first time I visited Coors Field in Denver was in 2018, on my first Ten Stadiums tour. It was a bright and sunny June day; so hot, in fact, that I left my seat in the upper deck on the first base side in search of cooler territory along the third baseline. Remembering that, I decided it would make more sense to buy tickets where I knew it would be a little shadier, just in case it was another scorcher.

It was not, in fact, another scorcher.

This may have been one of the coldest baseball games I’ve ever attended. It wasn’t just the temperature; the wind was howling. My daughter and I were in Detroit the previous day, where at game time it was in the mid-30s, with some blowing flurries. Denver, though, was WAY colder. I feel a little bad that we didn’t make it through the entire game, especially since the part we missed was an exciting comeback by the Tampa Bay Rays to eventually beat the hometown Rockies. OK, it probably wasn’t nearly as exciting if you were an actual Rockies fan at that game, but still. We reached a point where we had both finally had enough. I think it was in the 7th inning but my mind is a little fuzzy on the details because it was, you know, frozen.

At the time, the Rockies had what appeared to be a pretty comfortable 6-1 lead. By the time we had walked the brisk 20 minutes back to our hotel, it was 8-6 Rays. Yikes. Maybe if you were a Rockies’ fan and you also left in the top of the 7th inning and then never again looked at the score, you felt really good about the day. Let’s hope that’s the case. Sorry if you are finding out about the result from my blog.

And as far as we could tell, most of the Rockies’ fans WERE having a blast at the game. It was Brenton Doyle t-shirt night and Brenton Doyle himself hit a two-run homer in the sixth to push the Rockies win probability to 97.5%. Also, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but Brenton Doyle might be the most obscure player for whom there has been a t-shirt giveaway. Seriously, though, how cool is that, to hit a home run into a sea of people wearing a shirt with your face on it?

Also having a great time was the group of college kids in our section who were dressed for a warm summer afternoon, perhaps as some sort of fraternity dare. I’m hoping they were figuratively covered up in a blanket of Coors beers. I mean, I was in gloves and a knit hat and a winter coat and a sweatshirt and a long-sleeve flannel AND a complimentary Brenton Doyle t-shirt and I was shivering just looking at them.

Despite the weather, or maybe because of it, we met a bunch of really friendly people at the ballpark, which was an added bonus. One guy, Jim, saw my Detroit Tigers’ fleece hat that I had purchased in Michigan a few days before and was really excited to say hello. He had a Rockies hat on, but a Tigers hat WITH him, plus he was wearing a Detroit Lions t-shirt that he proudly displayed. We chatted along the third base concourse for a while. Jim now goes to a fair number of Rockies’ games but he’s still very much a Tigers’ fan at heart. We met another Tigers’ guy on our way out of the ballpark (also saw my hat), who grew up on the west side of Michigan and was fired up for Detroit this season

We also chatted with Glory, who owns the Berrie Kabob stand in the concourse; she was happy to tell us all about her staff and these amazing fruit kabob-thingees that they hand dip all day long; it’s probably the menu item you see most often as you walk around Coors after…well…Coors. Glory has been poking fruit with sticks at the ballpark for the last 15 years and Dylan and I will both tell you that they are certified delicious.

Speaking of food, the reason we only went with just dessert at the game was because we loaded up on an excellent cheeseburger meal at The Cherry Cricket before getting to the ballpark. They had the best cheesy artichoke dip I’ve ever tasted, and they did this really cool thing where it came with a hunk of warm bread AND tortilla chips AND carrot sticks, so as to ensure that we didn’t run out of stuff to dip before we ran out of dip. Pretty classy. The burgers were giant and delicious as well, but if you go, you gotta have the dip.

All in all we had a great few hours in Denver on our way back home. And now, after thawing out, I’ve finally had a chance to post about it!