Is this how it happens? And did anyone see it coming? In the 25th season of the Rockies’ existence, at 3:44 on a warm, spring afternoon, a Colorado native walked from the mound at Coors Field toward the dugout, and Denver became a real baseball town.
“I got chills from that standing ovation,” Kyle Freeland said Wednesday.
Me, too. As Freeland received a standing ovation from the crowd of 36,909, I looked at my arms.
Total goose bumps.
I’ve been waiting for a quarter century, longer than Freeland has been alive, for Denver to take its baseball seriously, to live and die with the Rockies on an afternoon game in the middle of the week, the same way Broncomaniacs give their heart to the local NFL team 24/7.