Game 16: Colorado Rockies

One of the many pianos on the 16th Street Mall.

This is it, our final stop on this long haul across the country.  We made the long drive from Chicago to stop in Denver to see the Rockies before continuing westward toward our home in Berkeley.  Coming from the east you're greeting with a pleasant skyline of downtown Denver, particularly of the section they call "LoDo", or Lower Downtown.  After parking our car we grabbed a quick bite to eat at a Mexican food joint and from there (guided by the advice of the bartender working) we walked over to the 16th street Mall, an outdoor mall that stretches for about a mile.  This can certainly be considered one of the must-see spots in Denver as it is crowded with foot traffic from all walks of life.  On top of that, there were multiple pianos sitting in the middle of the long walkway for anyone who had the desire to step up and twinkle the keys.  On our way back to the ballpark we stopped at one of the coolest bars on our trip, in my opinion.  It was called 1 Up and had all kinds of old school arcade games throughout the bar.  You couldn't even tell it was a bar when you first walk in!  All of the games had cup holders to conveniently keep your beer within reach whenever you needed to insert another quarter.  Very cool.  We all agreed that if this place had been in Berkeley our paychecks would probably be going straight into their cash register.

Jake and Ryan getting their game on.  While drinking beer.

The ballgame itself was a near sellout because the Rockies featured a fireworks display that night.  We bought the cheapest tickets we could find at $4 a pop!  Talk about a steal!  We had grown accustomed to seat hopping and figured we'd do the same here.  Not at this ballpark.  There were ticket ushers at every entrance to the seats including every single section in the nose bleeds!  And they weren't afraid to ask for your ticket as soon as you poked your head out to see if the coast was clear.  We tried nearly every trick in the book to get by them, asking to take a picture and then sneaking behind them, trying to look around for your "friend" in the section, and even just playing dumb.  Alas, none of these worked and they kept their watchful eye on us the entire time we remained.  We we forced to concede to the ticket Nazis and went to find our actual seats which were right at the mile-high level marked by a row of purple seats spanning across the whole ballpark.


I had particular interest in this game because the Rockies were taking on my beloved Padres.  It was nice to see the Pads warm up during bp but not so nice to see them take a shellacking they way they did against the Rockies.  They were routed 10-2 and I had already begun to forget about the game and enjoy the view of the actual Rocky Mountains by the 6th inning.  Once the game was over they invited all the fans sitting in the Left Field Bleachers to move down to the field to get a better view of the fireworks.  In about 30 minutes the field was covered with lawn chairs and blankets.  We all waited with anticipation and we weren't disappointed.  Even though our seats in the right-center nose bleed section were pretty crummy for watching baseball they were fantastic for watching the fireworks.  That was easily the closest to any fireworks display I've ever been.  The grand finale was mind blowing.  With so many fireworks exploding it looked like there was just a huge ball of light going off 100 yards from us.  It was the perfect way for our trip to go out with a 'bang'.


I feel it's necessary to note the events later that night.  We drove about 2.5 hours after the game into Wyoming where we found a quiet campsite to rest.  In the middle of the night we were woken up with a ferocious howling wind that whipped around the tent.  We thought it would die down but it only increased after what must have been half an hour and we began thinking, "Are we in tornado country?"  After a far-too-long while the wind slowly died down, but not our heart rates.