Coupla mini's (ST/YB) shading toward the right field foul line. I do hope the Rockies' Rookies' "swarm the field" day this year is as fun as '09.

"The fuck you looking at? Ain't you never seen nerds at a baseball game?"

One guy wondering why the hell that asshole is taking his picture, the other blissfully enjoying the Voices of Summer on his radio headphones as he takes in the game.

This was a late season 2008 September 06, complete game shut-out loss to Roy Oswalt and the Astros. Francis took the loss 2-0. Between this date and today, I believe he has pitched one other game for the Rockies.

the two rulers of the Swanky's shuffleboard table...

Great old shitty cell phone photo. Backstory here is TD, Ol' Reichy, and myself went to an afternoon weekend game, and had the misfortune of sitting behind the most obnoxious fat, tattooed, mulleted, (and lesbian?) group. Seriously not one iota of attention paid to the game. Loud yammering, waving to people in other sections, standing up. The worst.
Now I'm not always the most saintly, respectable fan, but this was a bit much and we decided to leave for different seats. The place was pretty full so we just opted for some new seats that were at best similar in quality but more likely were worse. An usher busted us for "sneaking" into the new seats. I pitched a little fit about our other seats are better than these (showed him our non-Rockpile tix) and that he should concern himself with the mulleted riff-raff a few sections over.

If you careen through the BSB annals of Coors Field/Rockies memories of the past couple years and you ponder what are the most lasting? The most vital..?.
I present you this disdainful looking visage of Young Tato.
"one wonders, how much more vital could a shot of someone at Coors Field be?" And the answer is none. None more vital.
I know the Rockies lost this game. I don't even need to check baseball-reference.com . The look of utter disgust provides more information than a newspaper boxscore ever could.

Things look pretty dire for the young Rockies' Rookie here....but actually 6packthief is just plain tuckered out and taking himself a little nappy-poo.
30pack seems amused but that little feller is dead-weight waiting for the Coors Field scamper. Not sure I would show such patience and fortitude with a Rockies' Rookies member getting drowsy at such a key moment.
C'MON! You're about to get to run around on the BASEBALL FIELD. Look alive!

Mas images from Paws at the Park '07. Damn those hounds were greedy for the suds. (or just looking for some agua from the portable dog bottle thingy I see on the bleachers)

The photo is revealing from a Sammy standpoint, how "un-grey" his facial fur is in these photos. Damn, 3 years take their toll on an orange/brown faced basset.

Not sure who the Rockies were playing, and am not going to do any investigating either. Rather simply, it's just forever known as the 2009 "High/Low" game. It was a GNO game that saw me picked to make an idiot of myself on the jumbotron. Apparently Lauren sees something in a goofy hat to single me out for selection. Thank god, I never got on Card Sharks....I would have most certainly sucked at that too.
"29"?

Hey. Why the hostility DT?
Rox took this late '09 season game against the Mets. A full on Guys Night Out affair. DLR with the W.

Not exactly a picture from Coors Field. This is one from my "bus stop" series.
This, as is most of them, is entitled "Waiting for the 38"....in honor of the bus line that transports me to nearly every game I've attended over the past ~7 years.

kidz get crazy. rockies rookies taking full advantage of the warning track. we got little 'uns from the young bear, germplayer, sonic tooth, and 30packthief broods loose somewhere in this shot. i gotta say, as an old person out running with the (young) bulls during these things, i freaking love it. being anywhere on a MLB diamond is pretty cool.
Rockies kicked the Dodgers' ass 10-4 in the game that lead to this kiddie chaos (all boasting aside, they were 6-11 at this point). It was a nice step in the '09 turnaround. Major step yet to come. Hurdle getting canned.

Sort of a Rockies crazed mini-ST on the loose in the Coors Left field playground. I believe this is the promised land for the 6 and under set.
Based on the western sky I think this was the night I finally broke down and bought one of those "If my agnostic concept of a creator isn't a Rockies fan, why are sunsets purple?" bumper sticker for my truck.

I don't mind that sight. Stadium beer shuttling coming around the bend, thanks TD.
Not able to place this one totally. It's from a late May '08 Mets weekend game...back in the old season ticket seats. Rockies did take 2 of 3...but am not sure if we saw Francis' Saturday loss or Cook's Sunday win.

Here's one that won't mean anything to anyone.
Consider this my so-long tribute to BigHitYorvit (dude was pretty engaging with the crowd, especially since he wasn't in the lineup).
An August 2008 game against the D-Backs that I made the odd decision to trek down solo on a Tuesday night and buy a single ticket. Wound up getting a pretty damn nice seat right behind the dugout for like $15 bucks. Probably aided by the eventuality that there would be no miracle run. No playoffs.
This game (like many in 2008) was a loss...regardless of the fact that the Magnificent was on the hill.
I'm pretty sure I was wearing shorts with black socks and sandals and a hat with tons of Rockies pins on it and a too-small Walker jersey and nursed a diet-Pepsi and kept meticulous score in a program and had head phones on listening to the Voices of Summer and may have even splurged for a tray of nachos or some other wild, decadent food item.
No come to think of it, I bought my normal array of stadium brews and shuttled in a bag of nuts. Nerdy? sure. That Nerdy? hell no.

A real favorite of mine.
Post-game, Blake St. early 2008 (boy did that season suck eventually though...) Rockies and Cookie take down the Cubs. This feisty Cubs fan didn't care for my photo snapping while I was en route to Swanky's. Her reaction was more volatile post-photo snappage if I recall, which is not captured. I didn't give a shit.
The fat Cubs fan lady and her fat Cubs fan son, were non-plussed. I guess a lot of stadium hot dogs, nachos, tor-na-doughs, and dippin' dots will make you fairly docile, even in the face of defeat and obnoxious photo taking. Ha!

I guess you're supposed to wear a T-shirt under your baseball jersey....
A sunny Sunday June series sweep was unfolding against the Pirates here.

A nice snacking shot of 6PackThief and MiniST from the '09 Labor Day game against the Reds. (Note the copious amounts of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish on the ground....6PT was spilling those things at a torrid pace). You know it was another Rockies winner....! (this was a huge 4 game home sweep of the Red Legs in fact.)
Post-game included a rather drunken BBQ at 30Pack's.
The night before (for some) was an out of hand Red Rocks ween show.
I got a feeling I didn't like going to work Tuesday the 8th.

Well. This is a weird one, that will only bring back memories to a few. Another Cubs game, this one last season, a Friday nighter. (shit-ass seats are a fairly good indicator that a team like the Cubs were in town)
DeathTruck, A-Pup, and I had these nosebleeds up the first base side. What I tried to capture was this nutty little fucker who was going apeshit, dancing and cheering on the home team that was sitting next to us. He ruled.
A Blackberry is not a good camera sometimes. The kid is just a blur. He was pretty busy.
This was another Rockies' winner by the way. 6-2. The Amazing Ubaldo with the W.

Paws at the Park '07. 2 hounds and 1 cattle dog....loving a Rockies' thrilling victory over the Padres. Jesus Christ, my Aramark stadium beer totals at this game were through the roof, Sammy-dog is such a brew mooch.
Bring this promotion back!!!

Converse Chuck Taylor's enjoy taking in a ballgame, this is from a Giants game back in September '08. Weird extra inning affair where Grilli got the win I believe...(I know, hard to fathom) Lincecum and Livan H. were the starters...

YB makes like Spider Man and robs a potential homerun....miniST roving over from left field, apparently to make sure that he's got this one.
I like that scoreboard....Dodgers lose! Dodgers lose!

Pot-bellied fella observed at a Cub's game from a few years ago....he apparently likes oranges. Bit of a surprise really.

I Can't Say Enough About How Rad This Photo Is

How long til pitchers and catchers report?

That's Right My Friend, I'm the Manager of the Year

Congrats dude; to say that it's a well-deserved award is an understatement. Then again, in contrast to Hurdle, I could probably win manager of the year.

Stoked to have to have this 'really special' manager in the Rocks' clubhouse the next three years. Now let's go win some pennants!!

Well That Sure Sucked

This picture is from the end of Game 4, but could have also been taken at the end of Game 3. A soul-crushing way to end an otherwise awesome season. Lots of blame to go around from the obvious two losses (and blown save) by Street, to the lackluster plate performances from starting position players not named Carlos or Yorvit, to the hitless playoff wonder that was Clint Barmes (dude - we would have settled for ONE hit in the bottom of the 8th for the whole series), to the questionable and flat wrong calls by the umps, to the entirely too many damn walks given up by the Rocks. Bottom line is the Phils' starting pitching and offensive stars (1-5 spots beyond scary) were superior to the Rocks'.

The straight-up statistics would indicate this series was a blow out, but the scoreboard indicates it was a highly competitive, white-knuckle affair with the exception of Game 1. In the end, the more talented and experienced team won out, which is hard to feel too bad about. Still, after enduring a snow postponement and freezing to the bone in a one run loss Sun night, to be given hope with 8th inning offensive heroics in Game 4, only to have it smashed to pieces in the top of the 9th is straight-up cruel. It feels like this season deserved a much better ending. But, as the old saying goes: those baseball gods sure are a bunch of cocksuckers.

I ain't over it yet and I won't be able to engage in hot stove talk for at least a couple of more days, but through my disappointment, disillusionment, and raw anger, even I can see there should be a solid future for this team. That was a big question mark going into this season when the magical '07 World Series run was seen through the fecal prism that was the 2008 season. With some smart (read: not totally cheapskate) tinkering of veteran players to go along with the young core of very talented and now more experienced players (Carlos and Tulo have to be the cornerstones), this team should at least be in the playoff mix for the next few years.

Which gets me back to the blame game I love so much. Forget all the factors listed above for why we lost this series. I'm going to take this final opportunity to blame our exit on Clint Hurdle. Yes, Hurdle gets all the credit for this one. Had he not dug the team in such a hole for the first two months of the season, we would have won the West rather easily and hosted the NLDS against the Cards. After sweeping the Cards, we would have gone on to oust the Phils with home field advantage. Thanks a lot Hurdle. Still screwing up my baseball enjoyment 4 months after being released as manager...

View From The Top Row at Coors Last Night

Yes, it was cold. But, as someone sitting in what had to be one of the coldest seats in the joint, I still say FUCK domes....

I Think Chase Utley Might Have Hit That Single Off His Leg

Not that you should expect to win in the playoffs when you walk as many batters as the Rockies did (maybe due to a lame strike zone for Rocks' pitchers?), but the 'hit' that allowed the sac fly to decide the game was not a hit. Oh well.....the series ain't over. Rockies shouldn't be afraid. Win tomorrow and the series is still within reach. Ublado, what ya got?

(Side note - shit it was cold there tonight....feel free to warm up tomorrow D-town).

Things to do when the playoffs are snowed out....

Lame arctic blast wiping out tonight's Game 3 matchcup at Coors Field. Been kind of curious about how many regular season games I went to this year, so I dug out the stubs. If this is an accurate account, I went to at least 30 games. At an average Aramark clip of $25/game, that works out to about $750 in beer money spent at Coors Field this year (so far). I'm not really sure how I feel about all of this.....