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Here’s Why I’M Still Watching The Colorado Rockies

By Michelle Stalnaker

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Because a long time ago, someone taught me to love the game and the team.

It’s a lost season. We all know that. Obligatory stuff about Jon Gray is great, Nolan Arenado is otherworldly, Cristhian Adames is the future.

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Okay, that’s all I want to say about how bad the Rockies are. Earlier this week, my editor Bobby DeMuro wrote a post explaining why he’s still watching what has become one of the biggest messes in Colorado Rockies history (and that’s saying something). He made a lot of great points, and the main one was that baseball is about people. It’s about the people you watch and root for and claim as your own, but it’s also about, and maybe mostly about, the people with whom you love it.

I’ve thought a lot about why I love baseball, and why I love the Rockies. I mean, A LOT. I have a masters degree in writing, and for my thesis I wrote a memoir about that very topic. I spent literally an entire semester thinking and writing about it. And guess what? I’m still not sure. The answer is complicated: it has to do with where I feel at home, what reminds me of childhood, and participating in great moments. But I will tell you the person around whom all of this orbits: my dad.

A lot of us probably watch baseball because of our dads. My dad was not a huge baseball fan himself, but he always believed that it was important to join in on things that might become memorable. For example, when I was a kid, the Stanley Cup came to Denver. This was before the Avalanche came. My dad begged and begged me to go see the Stanley Cup with him, because he felt that it was an exciting opportunity that I would always remember. He was probably right, but I didn’t go. In any case, a major sports trophy was one thing, but a major sports team was quite another.

I’m not sure how long my dad had to beg to get me to go to my first Rockies game, but I think he managed it sometime during that inaugural season. Somehow my brother has all the souvenirs from that season, and he won’t give them up. He’s barely a sports fan, so it’s totally unfair, but whatever. I don’t have clear memories of those early games. At that point, I still didn’t really know what was going on.

But then one time, my dad brought a scorecard to the game. He showed me how to fill it out with the starting lineup. As each player came to the plate, he taught me how to use the key below to record the result of the at-bat. That was about all it took for me to get hooked. I like order and structure, and I appreciate systems of organization. This was about the most orderly, organized thing I had ever seen. I could spend three hours watching a game, then distill it down to a bunch of lines, letters, and numbers on one card. And later on, I could explain to someone else what happened, using that same card.

I don’t score games very much anymore. Scoring was mostly a gateway for me. It didn’t take long before I realized for myself what my dad was saying: getting in on the front end of something is cool. Participating in something memorable is cool. Doing something that a lot of people will wish they had done is cool. My husband is a Yankees fan, which goes back several generations in his family. The Yankees are a neat team to follow, and I certainly wouldn’t mind a World Series title or 27. Still, none of them can say that they went to a Yankees game during the inaugural season. None of them saw Joe DiMaggio retire, much less Babe Ruth. While their team comes stocked with decades of history, they weren’t there for it. By the time they Rockies were making their first playoff appearance in 1995, I knew that I was there for the history.

And I’ve never been able to fully turn away. I got pulled in, and now I’m a part of this team somehow. I feel even more a part of this team than I do my other favorite, the Georgia Bulldogs, and I’m an alumna from that university. There is something about being there from the beginning, and being there with someone who shows you the ropes, that makes you stay.

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There is more to it than this. (If there wasn’t, my thesis would have been a lot shorter, and maybe I’d have even figured out the answer for myself.) But when I think about my love for the Rockies, I think about Rocktober, the Toddfather, and the Blake Street Bombers, and none of that would have ever come to my attention if not for dear old dad. Thanks Dad.

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