GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — The baseball teams began arriving about 10 days ago, mostly in charter buses after the beauty-pageant-of-a-drive along Interstate 70, over Vail Pass with a breathtaking view of the snow-capped Rockies, through Glenwood Canyon with cliffs up to 2,000 feet high by the roadside, past the Grand Mesa and finally into Grand Junction, a city 247 miles west of Denver along the Colorado River at its confluence with the Gunnison River.
It’s a hike, but a glorious one, for the junior college players who arrive at Sam Suplizio Field, home of the National Junior College Athletic Association’s Division I Baseball World Series, known here simply as JUCO.