Klee: On Memorial Day, Coors Field presents a worthy show
David Zalubowski
DENVER – The Rockies organization does so many things well. It really does.
Take Monday, for example. On Memorial Day, they put on an All-American show worthy of the selfless men and women who protected the greatest country around. The Electronic Attack Squadron 129 buzzed Coors Field with a flyover that gave goose bumps to goose bumps. Later, the six pilots earned a standing ovation atop the Rockies’ dugout. They honored four men assigned to the USS Colorado, including Colorado’s own, Lt. j.g. Mike Nielson of Arvada and Chief Petty Officer Joshua Erickson of Fort Collins, and this seems as good a place as any to say: Thank you.
The Rockies always do Memorial Day right – a moment of silence for those who gave all, fireworks for days, even a sweet pair of red-white-blue (and purple) socks for the first 20,000 (of 30,608) fans through the gates.
Then the game started, and sheesh. Baseball is still the hard part.
The Reds beat the Rockies, 11-8. Hear that? Cincinnati just homered again.
The Reds smacked five home runs (totaling 2,073 feet in distance), a season-high 17 hits and scored 10 runs for the first time in a month. Even Dinger looked bummed.
“Eleven runs for the opposing team, it’s not going to happen. You’ve got to pitch better than that,” red-hot slugger Carlos Gonzalez said. “They know that. We know that.”
Rinse, repeat. Tuesday is the end of May, not yet time to write off this season. I still believe the arms coming through the pipeline, and some who are already here, give the Rockies a fighting chance in 2017 and beyond. But this season is tiptoeing close to the tipping point that says you must determine your reason for going to the ol’ ballpark.
Is it to watch winning baseball from the home team?
Or is it to take in the show?
The show is always worth it, whether it’s Memorial Day or a Tuesday. I would buy a ticket simply to shake the hand of company officer Capt. Melissa Belton of Buckley Air Force Base. She played softball for 18 years, so she knows the game, and owns a college degree from UCCS.
“It was a wonderful ceremony,” she said before first pitch. “Very overwhelming, actually. We just wanted to honor those who wore the uniform, those who have fallen.”
That’s a proper reason to attend a game, don’t you think?
Winning baseball is another, far less important matter, and it remains mostly absent from Coors Field. The Reds had lost 12 of 13. In their first game at Coors, they made like the 2001 Mariners. The Rockies are 9-13 at home.
Trailing 5-1, the Reds busted out a 10-0 run. By the time the videoboard announced “Alcohol sales will cease at the end of the seventh inning,” triggering a rush to the beer kiosks, the Rockies had trotted out four pitchers. They would use five in all.
“Ideally, we didn’t want to have to go to the bullpen until the seventh,” manager Walt Weiss added.
CarGo remains a bad man. Gonzalez homered for the third straight game, a 459-foot moonshot that landed, finally, at the base of the pine tree over the center-field wall. He’s part of the show, a proper reason to go.
“We know we’re better than the way we’ve been playing at home,” Gonzalez said.
Are they, though? Until proven otherwise, two decades of Coors Field pinball suggests this is what they are – playoff-caliber offense with pitching that can’t hang. Not yet, at least.
The Rockies do many things well. Baseball still isn’t one. Honoring our brave military men and women is one, and probably the best one.
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Twitter: @bypaulklee





