Down the stairs in the dark arcade, pinball machines illuminate the imagination.
At Denver’s 1-up, they play that silver ball. Against the 1-up walls are classic, incandescent pinball machines — relished relics and their newfangled contemporaries.
But just down Blake Street about 500 feet — the distance of the longest home run at Coors Field — is Coors Field, the world’s grandest pinball machine.
There, baseballs zip off the wooden flippers, zooming into open spaces, bouncing off the bumpers that are outfield walls, knocking off of nooks, and sometimes caroming off the fielders themselves. Scoring totals get high at the world’s grandest pinball machine, where ERAs quickly get as high as the area’s residents.