The Colorado Rockies hosted their home opener today for the twenty-third time. The talk of baseball right now is a rookie phenom, Trevor Story, playing shortstop for the home town team. He has hit a home run in his first four games, and six over the course of the first week of the season. Pretty exciting stuff, but then again, great hitting has never been much of a problem for the Rockies, but great pitching, that’s another story…
For those of you who regularly read my column, you know I usually write about outdoor recreation, wildlife, mountain roads, weather — but baseball? What’s that got to do with mountain living in Colorado? Turns out everything, and is probably the biggest reason why Colorado has never won a World Championship.
I was fortunate enough to take a tour of Coors Field, home of the Rockies, by someone who knows a lot about climate and weather. And climate and weather has a lot to do with both the hitting and the pitching of our home town Rockies. Lest you forget that the Rockies play at the highest altitude of any major league team, there’s a distinct purple strip that encircles the upper deck, remind everyone who goes to team there exactly where 5,280 feet is. Balls travel longer and higher through that thin air of Colorado, making Coors Field a great place for hitters and home runs. A baseball hit at 5,280 feet travels on average 9 feet farther than a ball hit at sea level. It is estimated that a home run hit 400 feet in sea-level Yankee Stadium would travel about 408 feet in Atlanta and as far as 440 feet in the Mile High City. But the thin air giveth, and the thin air taketh away…
The thin air and the climate also can wreak havoc on pitching, especially for breaking balls like curves and sliders. A curve ball thrown at Coors Field just does have as sharp a break as a curve ball thrown at sea level. Which could mean the difference between a strike out and one in the batter’s proverbial wheel house. However, on the plus side, fastballs become just a wee bit faster because of less air resistance, which may explain one of the rare phenomenons I witnessed at Coors Field a couple of years ago.
My hometown is St. Louis, and therefore I’ve always been a Cardinals fan. We try to go watch the Cardinals play when they visit Denver, and two years ago I enjoyed watching Cardinals pitcher Lance Lynn do something that had only been done 20 times before in the history of Coors Field. He threw a complete game shut out. If anyone could do it, I suppose Lynn would be the one to do it — over 80% of his pitches are fast balls. Still it’s a rare treat, and one I don’t expect to witness again any time soon.
On the flip side, I’ve attended many a game at Coors that really wasn’t over until it was over, as Yogi Berra famously said. Because of its hitter friendly confines, more games that looked out of reach have famously had defeat plucked from the jaws of victory due to the hitting and home run barrage that seemingly erupts out of nowhere. No lead really is ever safe here in Colorado.
So go Trevor Story, and go Rockies, enjoy the hitting and home runs while you can, because you are going to need them to have any hope of winning.
