Mile High Baseball

I don’t remember when I came up with the goal of getting to a sporting event in all 50 states.  Whenever I did, I had probably already been to a sporting event in 30+ states.  But actually doing all 50 seemed like a long shot.  The state that seemed most unlikely was Wyoming.  Well, I crossed Wyoming off the list and I only have three left.  It was the second leg of my first trip of the summer.

I flew out to Denver and went to Marlins-Rockies.  Those two teams didn’t exist until I was nine years old.  It was my third time at Coors Field.  The first was in 2012 for Dodgers-Rockies.  The second time was when I flew out to Denver and met Tom to help him move across the country in 2017.  We didn’t get to a game, but we did the stadium tour.  So I was back for a second game.  It was really just because I wanted to combine Wyoming with something and Denver was pretty much the only logical choice.

I got to Denver and I didn’t have anything planned other than the game so I took a nap when I got to my hotel room before the game.  The forecast was good for the game, but when I left my hotel to walk to the stadium, the sky looked ominous.  There were some rain drops and I saw a few lightning strikes in the distance.  But the forecast still looked good for the game.  I got to Coors Field and took a lap around the stadium and then headed up to my seat.  Right before the game started, it started raining pretty good.  So I headed up to the purple row, which is 5,280 feet above sea level.  It was about five rows from the top, but it was high up enough to be under cover.  So I watched the beginning of the game from up there.  The rain didn’t last long and then I went down to the field level to get food and a beer.  I got the taco trio (three different tacos) and a 90 Shilling Amber Ale from the Odell Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado.  The tacos were pretty good and the beer was underwhelming.  I got it because it was one of the few craft beers I saw at the stadium.  There was a lot of crafty beer (Coors Field is where Blue Moon was created, but that’s owned by Molson Coors), but not a lot of actual craft beer.  I watched a little bit of the game from the field level down the first base line and then I headed back up to my actual seat.

This was the view from 5,280 feet above sea level.

As for the game, I didn’t really care too much who won.  In theory, the Rockies are a division rival for the Dodgers, but they’re terrible so I didn’t care if they won.  They also had Eric Karros’s son playing third base so I guess I was rooting for them.  It was Tanner Gordon pitching for the Rockies against Eury Perez.  The game was not very competitive.  The Marlins took a 1-0 lead in the first, but the Rockies tied it in the bottom of the first on a Mickey Moniak home run.  But the Marlins retook the lead in the second and then went up 5-1 on a three-run home run by Javier Sanoja in the third.  The lead got to 10-1 on a Joe Mack two-run home run in the seventh.  The Rockies scored a run in the bottom of the seventh to make it 10-2.  With a non-competitive game that I didn’t really care about, I left after seven innings.  The Marlins ended up winning 14-3.  It was 83° and attendance was 20.526.  I assume that will be the smallest crowd for a Major League game that I get to this year.  The game lasted three hours.

The next day, I was off to Casper, Wyoming.  But before that, I picked up breakfast at Sam’s No. 3 in Denver.  It was on Man v. Food.  I had a breakfast burrito that was pretty good.  Then I flew to Casper.  As far as I could tell, Denver was the only city that had flights to Casper.  The post-security area at the Casper airport was like one big room.  There were vending machines and no other food (there was a restaurant on the other side of security).  Casper is the second biggest city in Wyoming with a population of about 59,000 in the 2020 census (Cheynne had about 65,000).  The elevation is about the same as Denver.  In 2012, I drove from Denver to Cheyenne for breakfast because I figured I would never be in Wyoming again.  As it turns out, this was my third time in Wyoming.  Tom and I drove through Wyoming going from Denver to Salt Lake City on the first day I was with him when I was helping him move.  But of course, I hadn’t been to a sporting event in Wyoming.  Casper had a minor league team from 2001 or 2002 (Wikipedia has conflicting information) to 2011.  It was a rookie league team (rookie league doesn’t exist anymore) and the team eventually moved to Grand Junction, Colorado.  They played at Mike Lansing Field (named after a former Major Leaguer who was identified in the Mitchell Report as a cheater).  Now Mike Lansing Field is home to the Casper Spuds (the minor league team was the Casper Ghosts, which was a better name).  The Spuds are a collegiate summer league team.  I’ve done collegiate summer league baseball to cross off Alaska, Oregon, and Vermont on the list of states to see a sporting event in and so I was doing that with Wyoming.

I went to two games because I didn’t want to take the chance of traveling all the way to Wyoming and having a game rained out.  It was the Casper Spuds against the Oahe Zap (from Pierre, South Dakota).  I’m pretty sure the Zap won both games.  I left after seven innings both times.  I tried to look it up, but the websites for the two teams and the league are not good.  There was no information about the players (I would have checked to see where they play college baseball).  The Zap’s website has their scores from last season, but not this season.  The Spuds’ website doesn’t have anything.  But the Zap were leading when I left in both games and when I went to the second game, I heard some people talking about how the Spuds made a comeback the night before but came up short.  The food and beer selection was fine for a collegiate summer league team.  I had a bratwurst at the first game and nothing to drink.  For the second game, they had a food truck making quesadillas, but they were kind of expensive and also it was July 2 (our actual Independence Day) so I wanted to have a hot dog.  That worked out well because Thursdays are energy night.  I had no idea what that meant, but apparently it was $2 off hot dogs and beer.  So I got a hot dog for $3 and a Spuds Suds from the Black Tooth Brewing Company (a craft brewery in Wyoming).  Unfortunately they only had yellow and not real mustard, but the hot dog was good.  The beer was nothing special, but it was very cold.  The temperature was in the 80s for the games (on days when the highs back home were right around 100°).  I have no idea what the attendance was.  Wikipedia says that the stadium has a capacity of 2,500.  I’m pretty sure there were less than 1,000 people at the games I went to.  The stadium reminded me of the stadium in Boise, Idaho (another spot that no longer has a minor league team).  There were three sections of seats (one behind home plate, and one on each side of the field).  I sat behind home plate up near the press box for both games mainly to stay out of the sun before it set.  I think all the tickets were $10.  The scoreboard looked super old.  It must be the scoreboard from when the stadium originally opened.  If this was still a minor league stadium, it would be pretty terrible, but it's fine for collegiate summer league baseball.  So I got to cross Wyoming off the list of states to see a sporting event in and I celebrated the 250 years of American independence with baseball, a hot dog, and craft beer.  That was pretty good.

I think Wyoming was the most unlikely state for me to watch a baseball game, but I did it on my third trip to Wyoming (which is at least two more times than I ever thought I would be in Wyoming).

The only states I still have to see a sporting event in are West Virginia, Mississippi. and Hawaii.  I don’t know which one will be next or when that will be.