The Colorado Springs Sky Sox have been out-of-business since the end of the 2018 baseball season, but that didn’t stop them from showing up in the news last week.

A video of the ruins of the former team’s stadium went viral on social media, garnering headlines describing the scene as “eerie” and “sad.” With weeds taking over the infield dirt, an abandoned golf cart parked in the overgrowth and an empty concourse and press box strewn with trash, it’s easy to see why.

The beginning of the end of the Sky Sox dates back to 2014 when the Colorado Rockies broke ties with the team. The Milwaukee Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate arrived in 2015 and then departed after the 2018 season. The Rocky Mountain Vibes of the Pioneer League were a last-gasp effort by the Elmore Sports Group to keep professional baseball in the city, but that fledgling venture ended last year.

David G. Elmore, the man responsible for bringing the Sky Sox to Colorado Springs back in 1988, passed away in 2023 at the age of 88. Trained as a lawyer, David was an early real estate investor up in Vail and then Hawaii. Before specializing in sports franchises, he focused his efforts on buying struggling travel companies and then making them successful.

Business breakups are rarely sudden, and that was certainly the case between the Rox and the Sox. Tension between the clubs date to the early 2000s when Classic Homes founder Jeff Smith made a play to buy the minor league team. As part of the proposal, he floated the idea of building a downtown ballpark. Jeff’s bid was bold and visionary. The Rockies loved it, knowing that a new complex would benefit the team’s rising talent.

Of course, Jeff never bought the team and the Elmore Group, reluctant to give up on the real estate on the east side of town, made renovations to the existing facility rather than going big downtown. That move proved too little too late. The Rockies lost patience, and our city lost the local affiliation agreement. Though there were other contributing factors, the Rockies moved their Triple-A-affiliate to Albuquerque.

The Colorado Springs Switchbacks’ Weidner Field, which was a phenomenal partnership between the soccer team’s ownership and the city, is a smaller snapshot of what Jeff Smith and the Rockies were envisioning two decades ago.

Being a baseball fan and advocate of the current downtown redevelopment efforts and contrasting the viral video of the abandoned Sky Sox stadium with the gleaming Weidner Field, I’m reminded of the poignant verse from the poet John Greenleaf Whittier: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been.”

The city of Colorado Springs is a wonderful illustration of the power of human imagination and visionary thinking. We’ve been blessed with people who have possessed the ability to see what might be otherwise invisible to others. A high-elevation, semi-arid city on the edge of the Great Plains with a high-desert feel, Colorado Springs has never found development easy.

Garden of the Gods is arguably the world’s most magnificent city park because the city’s founder, General William Jackson Palmer, in 1879 urged his friend, Charles Elliott Perkins, president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, to buy it. Perkins envisioned future generations enjoying the land and instructed his family to gift it to Colorado Springs upon his death.

Before the Prussian nobleman Count James Pourtales arrived in 1884, most people just saw a dairy farm down near Cheyenne Mountain – but he saw a future suburb with lakes, a country club, and beautiful homes. When Spencer Penrose came on the scene a few decades later, he and everyone else could see Pourtales’s casino – but “Spec” had a vision to replace it with the finest luxury resort in America.

From the Broadmoor to the Olympic Training Center to Kissing Camels, the Flying W. Ranch, the Air Force Academy and Hotel Polaris, Colorado Springs is a testimony to and a triumph of human innovation and imagination.

As Colorado prepares to celebrate its 150th birthday this weekend, it’s critical that we encourage and incentivize the dreamers, builders, and visionaries who can see beyond what exists today. Great projects often begin as impossible ideas. The question is not whether we have enough land or opportunity. The question is whether we still have the imagination to see what isn’t but could be — and the courage to build it.

Paul J. Batura is a local writer and founder of the 4:8 Media Network. He can be reached via email at Paul@PaulBatura.com or on X @PaulBatura.