Jock Itch Of full ballparks and birth fans

If you happened to flip on the TV and see the Rockies this past weekend and thought, “Jesus, those guys are still playing?” you were not alone. The Rockies’ season will finally grind to a rusty, screaming halt this Wednesday in San Francisco, and it can’t come soon enough. The TV ratings have certainly suffered, since at this point we all have better things to do than watch the nightly ROOT Sports bloodbath. Twitter has been quiet on the topic of the Rockies and anyone even remotely involved in writing about the team has run out of ways to describe bad baseball. Still, one area of the Rockies’ most disappointing season to date has been nothing but sunshine and rainbows: the suckers who filled the seats at Coors Field.

To say this season was a disappointment is an understatement on par with saying Star Wars fans were mildly perturbed at George Lucas’ latest tinkerings with the films. The massive expectations brought on by a thoroughly encouraging offseason were crushed under the weight of injuries and severely underperforming players. The Rockies came a long way from the perennial hapless losers of the last 18 years to actually making people think they could become a baseball powerhouse this year. Boy, were we wrong.

But amidst one of the worst flame-outs in Denver sports history, the Rockies still enjoyed healthy crowds out at the ballpark. Attendance was actually up from any previous year out at Coors Field since 2001, when they cracked three million on a regular basis. The Rockies ranked 12th in attendance, with 2,909,777 people walking through the gates, and an average of 35,923 on any given night. That’s nearly 35K more people than last year and is amazing considering this team was really out of contention back in early July. So how does a team that sucked that bad get that many people out to see it?

Even when the baseball was horrendous, summertime in Colorado has a way of luring people outside, and Coors Field was the place to be. The massive amounts of people who would pay good money to watch a terrible team wasn’t surprising, but was still chalked up by local pundits to the naïveté of the Colorado fans and their ability to go anywhere if the sun is shining, the beer is flowing, and Dippin’ Dots are readily available. Naïveté and beer aside, the Rockies are enjoying butts in the seat because the team has now cemented itself into the pantheon of Denver sports as something the sports fans of Colorado can’t live without.

The Rockies have a fanbase that has grown up with the team, a fanbase who were literally children and zygotes back when Andres Galarraga was crushing fastballs into the upper deck. Having that generation of fans under their belt, fans who will support the Rockies no matter what—much likes the Broncos have long enjoyed—is a gold mine for the team. The Rox were still fairly new when us old folks suffered through the remainder of the ’90s and the horrid baseball they were playing, so there was no tie to them and the team was easy to ignore by July. Now that they are part of the fabric of the state, that support will never really go away. If you look at communities like Boston, where the Red Sox have a hold on sports fans because of generational indoctrination, it won’t matter how bad a season that team has, the fans will be back for more next year. The same now goes for the Rockies.

Most everyone had the Rockies pegged as an NL West contender and possible playoff surprise. But trading Ubaldo, the injuries, and shoddy play didn’t leave much confidence in it being only a slight hiccup on the road to glory. If Jim Tracy isn’t careful, he could be gone by next June if the team doesn’t come out of the gates hot. But still, as we say goodbye to the dismal 2011 season, we can rest assured that the sun will shine, the beer will flow, and the seats will be filled out at Coors Field.