Dick Monfort visits Albuquerque.

Dick Monfort visited the Isotopes for the first time, May 1st, 2015. Mandatory Credit: Troy Olsen (@Troybuquerque)

Dick Monfort, one of the principal owners of the Colorado Rockies, visited The Lab in Albuquerque to meet with media and talk about the relationship between the Isotopes and Rockies. Many of you wanted me to ask him questions about day to day operations or why he won’t sell the team (I like my press pass, that was never happening) etc. To be frank, most of those questions were simply not possible to ask. Now if you haven’t already closed the screen, I’ll explain why.

The owner of a baseball team is simply not involved in the day by day. Monfort is actually unusual because he is in Coors Field every day. He lives in Colorado. Many pro and minor league owners don’t even live in their own towns. This is true for Albuquerque and Kansas City off the top of my head. Monfort is the chairman of the board. He takes care of the business of running a baseball team. I realize many of you hate that. Hopefully, you are still with me because Mr. Monfort did give us some great information on the partnership between the Topes and Rockies, why they left Colorado Springs and much more.

(Dick Monfort visits with the media in Albuquerque. Full interview.)

Mr. Monfort was asked what he though of the facilities in Albuquerque and he was very pleased with how clean everything was and how helpful everyone was from management down to the training rooms.

He was asked about moving from Colorado Springs, “The Weather is brutal there. The amenities are much better here,” Monfort lamented. The bigger issue was it wasn’t building a fan base for the Rockies. “We found that Rockies fans went to Rockies games.” Monfort told us of the closeness of Colorado Springs to Coors Field, “Sky Sox fans went to Sky Sox games so it wasn’t really working as a feeder for the Rockies. Part of moving to Albuquerque was to get people from Albuquerque to think of Rockies games as a vacation stop and Rockies fans in Denver to come down and see Topes Games.

The triple A affiliation came down to Albuquerque and Salt Lake as possible fits due to Root Sports being in both markets, but when ABQ came available first, Monfort came down and it was a match made in heaven. Monfort was in Albuquerque as part of his annual voyage through all the minor league teams to see how the development of their players is being done.

Monfort wants to get the Rockies more involved here and is planning a Rockies vs. Topes exhibition game, after next years spring training.

So why should the Albuquerque Dodger Fans (the prior affiliation here for many years) change to Rockies fans? “We are the Good Guys, The Dodgers are not good guys.” Monfort said. Dick, can we be best friends?!?

He did briefly talk about buying some ownership in the Topes to guarantee a long term tie.

I finally got a question in and did ask the question many of you wanted to know: Do you see more money to go to American minors or over seas to bring in more pitching. “We’ve got the best facility in the Dominican according to the other 29 clubs. The teams that play poor get to spend more in the Dominican and we ARE spending more in the Dominican.” Monfort said, “We are using our high draft picks to draft well and we have signed all of them.” He continued that pitching is a hard commodity and hard to keep healthy in Colorado but they are spending a lot of money on pitching and he feels there is more quality pitching in the system than there has ever been.

We were out of time so I simply asked him the last Albuquerque question: Red or Green. He said red and then asked what he was answering which brought a laugh to everyone. I informed him that in New Mexico, you have to know your favorite chile which he changed to green.

Monfort isn’t a favorite to many of you but he DOES want to win. He is a business man and understands that winning brings out more fans. He won’t be selling the team anytime soon but as he said in the audio below, he does plan on bringing the World Series back to Denver.

Troy Olsen covers the Isotopes every home game from the Press Box at ‘The Lab’ in Albuquerque. You can reach him on twitter or by email.

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