Coors Field

Colorado Rockies, National League

8/10

Another park with a circular rotunda for a front door, plus a redbrick facade.

Besides the forested bullpens, the right field corner has several restaurants on the upper deck.

The view from behind home plate, with the "rockpile" in center field.

I rolled into Denver in September 2015 as part of my summer loop. It was a Monday night and I drove up from Amarillo, Texas after catching an afternoon game there the previous day. Traffic in and around Denver was not the greatest, but I still showed up about half an hour before the 6:30 start time. The park is just north of Downtown Denver, in the midst of your average upscale entertainment oriented neighbourhood.It is a chip off the Retro-Modern block for sure, but it does have some things that you can only find here.

Firstly, the food here is something else. I opted for the "Jalapeno Elk Brat", which was amazing. There was lots of craft beer here too, despite the sponsor. There are some restaurants on the 3rd level in right field, which looked somewhat expensive. The game featured the Arizona Diamondbacks opening a series with the Rocks. A.J. Pollock took advantage of the thin air hitting a fly ball into the left-field alley that just kept flying. But, things came apart for the D-Backs in the bottom of the 9th, with Brad Ziegler struggling to catch the game winning out, then throwing it away, breaking a streak of something like 25 consecutive save opportunities converted. Arizona went to the bullpen, but their 2nd pitcher of the 9th couldn't stop the Colorado comeback, giving the Rockies a win they had no business getting. You don't really notice the thin air as a spectator, until you walk a lap of the concourse and come up slightly short of breath, which admittedly, was a little worrying.  The most unique architectural feature is the center field bleacher known as "The Rockpile". I found Coors Field to be a nice ballpark and all, but nothing spectacular. It gets an 8 because of it's concessions. I will likely be back sometime soon though.

Update 2019: I managed to get back here when we ended up visiting friends in the Denver area. We headed down very early, owing to Denver's lousy traffic situation and ended up eating at a pub a few blocks from the park, before heading over. This place hasn't changed that much at all, which I'd say is a good thing. The only obvious difference was, for a variety of reasons, that the latest game was much better attended.  This is hardly a bad ballpark, but I feel like if I charted out all the MLB parks I'd been to, this would be just into the bottom half. Still, our friends aren't moving anytime soon, so I can see us ending up here again, maybe even this summer.

2015-08-31
                      123   456   789  R H E
Arizona            003   010  000   4 11 2
Colorado          001  000   004   5  11 0
Temp: 68F  Time: 3:30  Att: 21,386



2018-09-12
                        123   456   789  R H E
Arizona               012  100  000  4 4 0
Colorado             002  010  002   5 13 0
Temp: 91F  Time: 3:07  Att: 31,687